'This Is a Betrayal That Goes Straight to the Heart of My Self-Identity'

April 18, 2007 — -- The murder of 32 innocent people at Virginia Tech Monday defies comprehension. Grief alternates with anger and strikes with a palpable force, leaving me physically stunned and emotionally paralyzed.

A fellow student of a higher learning institution, I am suddenly reminded that an ivory tower is not necessarily a sanctuary from intrusions of a terrible reality. Senseless violence lurks everywhere, and evil can manifest with frightening randomness. Such an incident sadly reminds us that we have to be ever conscious of our shared vulnerability and vigilant for each other's safety.

As an ethnic Korean, I feel a primeval sense of horror that someone connected to me by ethnicity could commit such a foul act against everything we hold sacred and decent in our common humanity.

Of course this was an act of a lone, disturbed individual who could have been from any race and ethnicity, but I cannot deny that his being ethnically Korean somehow brands me with a mental Scarlet Letter that is visible only to me but nevertheless seethes painfully against the screen of my self-identity as an ethnic Korean.

While being an ethnic Korean neither automatically qualifies nor obligates me to speak to this horrible heartbreak any more than any one else, there is a terrible connection here that is inexplicable yet all too easy to understand. Judging by the outpouring of grief and condolences from the nation of Korea, I am apparently not alone in feeling a terrible connection to this tragedy.

As a Korean American who emigrated to the United States in the third-grade and who benefited from the rich opportunities and freedom of American society -- exactly like the perpetrator -- I feel a deep sense of betrayal. How could someone like me so deliberately and with such wanton abandon seek to damage the very fabric of society that I hold dear?

This is a betrayal that goes straight into the heart of my self-identity as an American. Although the news reports specify that the killer was a resident alien who was a Korean national, he was, for all intents and purposes, an American who was educated in Northern Virginia since he was 8 years old. This is a betrayal that is painful, for it cuts against the very grain of my sense of who I am as an American. This is a betrayal that threatens to overwhelm me with fury.

Jason Lim is a Harvard Kennedy School graduate student.

However, precisely because I am an American raised by the values ingrained in this society, I caution myself against the fury that could strike out blindly at a moment of righteous anger and add injustice to the tragedy of Monday. We must be careful that the perpetrator's ethnic identity does not lead, in the irrational emotions of the moment, to wrongs against those who have nothing do to with this horrible incident.

Skin color did not make this individual do this. Eye shape did not make this person kill. He was driven by a private demon whose nature we will never understand. But we also know that racial prejudice can be powerfully harmful and subject innocent people to unfair treatment. And there are always those who will seek to confuse and divide us by using such tragedies as a podium for their hate and prejudice. It is against such possibilities that we must be extra vigilant because allowing injustice to add to the tragedy would do more harm to the rich fabric of our society than a lone, sick individual could possibly do.

I feel numb with the incredulity that we, as a nation, must once again experience the trauma of the Columbine massacre of eight years ago in this nightmarish sequel characterized by even more savagery and destruction. I feel wrecked by the indescribable pain that the families of the victims must feel. And I share the wrenching heartache of knowing that so many promising young lives have been extinguished with such an abrupt finality.

Especially in moments like this, we must stand as one, as members of a community of caring human beings, sharing in our grief and strong in our togetherness. Let us be keepers of our brothers and sisters in more ways than one.

Jason Lim is a Harvard Kennedy School graduate student.