Week 5_Nghi_Phan_A03

This week's readings were fascinating to read. More particularly, the Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence by Darrell Hamamoto where he shows different kinds of serial killers. It's a surprise to me that we can kill each other with no feelings. Furthermore, the "Race Murder" section caught my attention because not only men, but women also involved in killings. For example, Aileen "Lee" Carol Wuornos who was haunted by her past and began to fill a hatred towards men. Then, the next part is about a long history of African slavery and taking over the land of Native Americans contributing to the mind of serial killers because of white supremacists that violently treated against people of color. Move forward to twenty century where Asians people were involved as victims of the sociopaths. Likewise, Patrick Eugene Purdy, the son of a soldier who combated in Vietnam, filled his hatred to Asians who was connected to the Vietnam war. He murdered "five Southeast Asian American children and wounded thirty others with the AK-47 he carried" because he attended a school filled with 70% of Southeast Asian American refugees from Cambodia, Lao, and Vietnam. It seems to me that the dominant race back then believed themselves to be the greatest where no other races are better than them. They started to form a fear where people of color would take over their country because of a mass number of refugees coming to America for a place to live as a result of the war that destroyed their home country. To me, when Purdy had that gun, it seems like he owned the power to do whatever he wants. It doesn't matter to him that lives were taken just a split of a second by that AK-47 that he holds. In his mind, get rid of people of color is his priority.

I wonder what's their reaction when a non-white person kills a white person, vice versa with a white person kills a person of color.

References:

Hamamoto, D.Y. (2003). Empire of Death and the Plague of Civic Violence

[Southest Asian refugees in America] retrieved from http://khmersalem.blogspot.com/2014/01/southeast-asian-refugees-in-america.html