April 19, 2007
There's a fascinating discussion going around in the e-mail list for New York chapter of the Asian American Journalists Association. It began the day that news of the
Virginia Tech shootings broke, when the media first reported that the shooter may be Asian. Since then, various perspectives have been shared about whether it was journalistically important to identify the race of the shooter (I kinda think it was, considering the tragic scope of the incidents), whether there will be a racial backlash against Asians, and whether Asian Americans share sense of guilt and shame about the murders.