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A special alert was put out by the Rainbowkids website about how the Virginia Tech shootings are affecting Asian adoptees. Parents are reporting that their children are racially identifying with the Korean shooter Cho Seung-Hui and they were reaching out for help and advice on how to handle this situation. Rainbowkids’ reaction to this is a well thought out and helpful article that offers suggestions on how to help our kids through this.
I have felt incredible sorrow for the victims and their family and friends since hearing of the shootings, but I hadn’t thought about how it might affect children watching, reading or hearing the news. I’m sure that stems directly from having a toddler who isn’t yet aware of such things. Yesterday I heard a radio program that featured a woman caller who was sharing a story about her friend’s little girl who turned off the television news because the stories about Virginia Tech were too upsetting to her. I believe she was about nine years old. That caused me a little pause, but it was seeing Rainbowkids’ alert that really made me think and realize just how affected all children are by what they see going on in the world around them.
It seems that Asian children in particular are being strongly affected by the tragedy. To be perfectly honest, when I first heard that the killer was Korean I wondered if he was an adoptee and hoped that he wasn’t for fear of the negative media backlash about adoptees and adoption in general. It turns out that he is not an adoptee, but that doesn’t necessarily make a difference to the children who are identifying with him. One of the victims, Henry Lee, was part of a family who fled from Viet Nam in the nineties. So our children look at the news and see a Korean gunman and a Vietnamese victim (as well as other Asian victims) and they just don’t know what to think. How do we help them feel safe in an unsafe world while adequately and realistically preparing them for it?
Wow that was a very interesting article.
I cringed slightly when I first heard the perpetrator was Korean. Not that his race changes the terrible situation, but I shuddered to think of the racial media backlash, the headlines entitled “KOREAN killer,” and the suspicion I fear the occasional person may temporarily hold towards people of Asian heritage.
~Stefanie
Stefanie, sadly you are so right. Whenever a minority of any kind; Asian, adoptee, immigrant, etc. makes the news for a crime, members of the same minority will be looked at suspiciously for some time. It’s just so sad-I still can’t quite believe so many people’s lives were taken and others’ shattered
Thanks for writing,
Rebecca