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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/dunbar04162008.html" eudora="autourl">
http://www.counterpunch.org/dunbar04162008.html<br><br>
</a></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=4><b>Apri1 16,
2008<br><br>
</font><h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5><b>From Jamestown
to Virginia Tech<br><br>
<br>
</i></font><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5 color="#990000">
Colonization and
Massacres</b></font></h1><font face="Times New Roman, Times" size=5>By
ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ<br><br>
</font><font face="Verdana" size=6 color="#990000">W</font>
<font face="Verdana" size=2>hat does it mean, if anything, that a
student, child of Korean immigrants, killed thirty classmates and faculty
at a Virginia university while nearby celebrations of the onset of
colonialism was taking place?<br><br>
In April 2007, all the news seemed to be coming from Virginia and was
about mass murder, occurring yesterday (400 years ago in Jamestown) and
today. I heard no commentary on the coincidence of those bookends of
colonialism. Maybe I noticed because I was working on the first chapter
of a history of the United States and had colonialism and massacres on my
mind.<br><br>
Jamestown famously was the first permanent settlement that gave birth to
the Commonwealth of Virginia, the colonial epicenter of what became the
United States of America nearly two centuries later, the colony that in
turn gave the United States its national capitol on the Potomac River up
the coast. A few years after Jamestown was established, the more familiar
and historically revered Plymouth colony was planted by English religious
dissidents, but still under the auspices of private investors with royal
licenses, accompanied by massacres of the indigenous farmers, just as
Jamestown was. This was the beginning of British overseas colonialism,
which led to its eventually far more powerful spawn.<br><br>
343 years after ragged mercenaries set foot on Powhatan territory at
Jamestown and began massacring the indigenous farmers and stealing their
food crops, the United States invaded Korea, a half-million troops
strong, with 30,000 remaining more than a half century later.<br><br>
The Virginia Tech killings were heralded as the worst "mass
killing," and "worst massacre," in the United States.
<br><br>
Descendants of massacred ancestors--indigenous peoples, African
Americans, Mexicanos, Chinese--took exception to that designation.
<br><br>
But, we know what those headlines meant; they meant the largest number of
innocents killed by one armed civilian, although even that's probably not
accurate either, so they really mean with guns and in the last
half-century or so, maybe beginning in 1958 with nineteen-year-old
Charles Starkweather, and his even younger girlfriend Caril Fugate, who
killed eleven in Nebraska and Wyoming. <br><br>
Then, in 1966, there was Charles Whitman up on top of the University of
Texas tower, sniping and killing 13, wounding 31 others before being shot
by police. Twenty years later, the post office killings began in the
quiet town of Edmond, Oklahoma, a few miles from where I grew up, giving
rise to a new term, "going postal." Other workplace killings
followed, with around 50 deaths up to now. More recently, school killings
have prevailed, some 22 incidents since 1989 in the U.S.<br><br>
Having lived through all of them, I have been interested in the mass
response to each one, ever since Starkweather, who was my age at the
time. Each mass killing is followed by an orgiastic chorus of
proclamations about a bubble of normality punctured by a sole evildoer.
Perhaps the incidents play a role in U.S. society somewhat as Dostoevsky
had his character, the "idiot," play as the member of the
family who is weird or evil so that the rest of the family can be
perceived or perceive themselves as "normal." With all the
anger and tension we experience and observe daily, it's a wonder mass
killings don't happen more often, but maybe the mass killer speaks for
many and is a preventative.<br><br>
The Dostoevskian "idiot" is a universal archetype under the
patriarchal western family and the triad of family, church, and state.
But, there's more to it than that in the United States. This can be seen
from how we react. Some say we react so massively because it's the 24-7
television and internet that causes us to dwell on such events. But, I
recall the Starkweather crime spree from my youth in rural Oklahoma with
no television at all and only local papers and local radio, and it didn't
even happen in Oklahoma. <br><br>
Everyone knew about it, following the news of the killers' evasion of the
massive law enforcement pursuit, fearing the killers' arrival at their
homes.<br><br>
At the same time the news repelled and terrified me, I harbored curiosity
about and perhaps admiration for the teen killer and his girlfriend. I
was already successfully "the idiot" in my family, as an
invalid with chronic asthma. Sickliness still was considered a character
flaw and a weakness in that post frontier rural setting. As well, my
childhood bedtime stories were about heroic outlaws--Jesse James, Billy
the Kid, Pretty Boy Floyd, Belle Starr, Bonnie and Clyde. They were
heroes to many who were inspired by their deeds. I can understand how Cho
might be secretly admired. <br><br>
Cho stated in his suicide message, "I die like Jesus Christ to
inspire generations of the weak and defenseless people."<br><br>
Then there's the factor of the continual reincarnation of the Anglo-Scots
outlaw, so pervasive on the North American frontier, often erroneously
referred to as a "cowboy." <br><br>
But, I think we have to go back to that yesterday in another part of
Virginia, Jamestown, the site of the British queen's visit in April to
celebrate the first permanent English colony in the western hemisphere;
Vice-President Dick Cheney, in his Jamestown speech commemorating the 400
year anniversary called the birthplace of the United States. Indeed it
is, a bloody birth at that.<br><br>
When Cho went on his killing spree, there was a great deal of news about
the 400 year commemoration, especially in Virginia, highly publicized
planning for which had been ongoing for a year. Was Cho curious enough to
do a search on the internet about Jamestown? (Maybe the FBI knows from
studying Cho's hard drive, but they most likely wouldn't "get
it") Or maybe Cho just looked at a book, or had taken a history
course. Perhaps he saw some pictures of drawings of the Powhatan Indians
who were killed by Captain John Smith and his soldiers. Perhaps Cho saw a
reflection of his own features in those Powhatan faces, and was reminded
of what had happened to his own people, the multiple massacres of Korean
civilians in the 1950s U.S. invasion and occupation of his parents'
homeland, the occupation and humiliation continuing today. (I recall
stories from Native American vets returning from Vietnam, how they could
not bring themselves to shoot when they could see the faces of the people
who looked like their relatives.)<br><br>
Much was made in the press about Cho being Asian, then specifically,
Korean, surely touching on those mystic chords of memory of "yellow
peril" and Asian wars "lost" by the United States, or not
"won" militarily. Yet, there was nothing about the Korean War,
1950-1953, and the ongoing U.S. military presence. Uncountable millions
of Korean civilians were killed in the war, many in U.S. military
massacres of refugees. Millions of children were left without parents.
Cho was not a child of those Korean war orphans stolen by U.S. religious
groups, children who grew up in white, middle-American communities not
knowing their real names or birth dates or families or villages.<br><br>
Cho's parents had immigrated in 1992, when he was eight years old,
settling in a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C., where they started a
dry cleaning business, sending Cho and his older sister to the best
schools. That may sound like the "American Dream" realized, but
only if one has never taken notice of the toxic, backbreaking work
involved in a family owned and run dry-cleaning operation, with the
immigrant parents working themselves to death so their children might
have a crack at that putrid dream of consumerism. Cho and his sister were
beneficiaries of their parents' labor to pay for their elite
educations.<br><br>
In his video rant, Cho expressed hatred for the "rich kids" who
surrounded him. In U.S. society we are not allowed to hate anyone or
anything not designated by the State as the enemy. We are jumped on and
accused of "playing the class card" or "playing the race
card."<br><br>
"The rich are not like you and me." "The poor will always
be with us." Get real and accept it we are told. It's toxic
thinking. Why should we have to swallow and internalize our righteous
hatred of the rich? Hate, yes. The language can be dressed up to it rage
or outrage, but, hate is a concept underrated. <br><br>
Everyone does it, but no one wants to admit it. We are held back and
diminished by the claim that hating is bad for us, bad for everyone.
<br><br>
We are told that it's all right to hate the act but not hate the person.
We are allowed to hate wealth or capitalism but not the purveyors. Even
in the post-modern intellectual world where "agency" is
bestowed upon the poor and oppressed (they are responsible for their
actions), the rich remain an abstraction. It's a ridiculous logic that
keeps us hating and blaming ourselves for not being rich and powerful,
literally driving people crazy.<br><br>
Who are the rich? We have to be careful about that, living in a country
that does not admit to class relations, and class is subject to little
analysis. It's not a matter of income per se. <br><br>
High income can certainly make a person dilusional, and most U.S.
citizens who live on high fixed or hourly incomes due to circumstances of
a good trade union or a professional degree have no idea that they aren't
rich. In polls they say they are in the top fifth of the income ladder,
and they aren't. A majority of U.S. citizens don't want to tax the rich
more, because they think they will be rich one day. They won't. The rich
own not just a mortgaged house and a car, maybe a boat or a cabin in the
woods or a beach house to boot; rather they own us. Even the cash and
luxury soaked entertainment and sports stars are not the rich; they
certainly deserve contempt and disgust, but not hatred. Don't go for
scapegoats--Jews, Oprah, Martha Stewart, or random kids on campus as Cho
did. Hatred should be reserved for those who own us, that is, those who
own the banks, the oil companies, the war industry, the land (for
corporate agriculture), the private universities and prep schools, and
who own the foundations that dole out worthy projects for the poor, for
public institutions-their opera, their ballet, their symphony, that you
are allowed to attend after opening night, and they own the government.
My oldest brother, who like me grew up dirt poor in rural Oklahoma,
landless farmers and farm workers, rebuts my arguments by saying that no
poor man ever gave him a job. <br><br>
That says it all. The rich own you and me.<br><br>
In all the arguments about the crimes of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim
religions, rarely is their greatest crime ever discussed--the leveling of
class, rich and poor are the same in god's sight. What a handy ideology
for the rich! The same with U.S. democracy with its "equal
opportunity" and "level playing fields," absurd claims
under capitalism, but ones held dear, even by liberals.<br><br>
When rampages such as Cho's occur, my first thought is not why, rather
why not more often. What do we do with the anger, the rage? Violence in
the United States is usually associated with the narrative of the
frontier having hardened the society, creating the killer, the
"cowboy," all that is bad, a direction taken away from the
rational Puritans and the wise Virginians who did all they could to get
along with the Indians. But, that's a lie; the killing began at the
beginning and the purpose was to eradicate the inhabitants of North
America, to take their land, and to replace them. There is no redemption
in exorcising the "cowboy" or firearms.<br><br>
Such probing as this is said by some to justify or rationalize individual
violent behavior, and in a way it does. But, the alternative, to name it
evil, is not helpful, nor is blaming guns, freedom, lack of mental health
counseling. Why not seize the opportunity to explore what we have in
common with the culprit, explore his humanity, rather than vilify him?
Some say that any time or effort spent trying to understand does a
disservice to the victims and their families. That kind of thinking has
strangled and suppressed even studies of history, such as the holocaust.
Whose interest is served by shutting down discussion of motives and
circumstances, and, particularly, history? One is not alleging lack of
criminal intent or behavior, but what made it possible? Wouldn't this be
an appropriate moment to at least acknowledge the pathological
celebration of colonization in Virginia at the time of the shootings, and
the war and continuing occupation of Korea as a possible cause for Cho's
decision?<br><br>
As a child during the Korean War, I sold Veterans of Foreign Wars crepe
paper roses. Several young men in our rural farming community were
drafted and came home wounded or not quite right in the mind. One of the
boys who returned sat with my brother and me and our cousins and told us
about Korea. He told us how, poor as we were, how lucky we were in
comparison with the Koreans. <br><br>
"They're lucky to eat a spoonful of rice once a day," he said.
Then he told us about going through a small village and seeing an old man
die of starvation right in front of him, and said a tapeworm came out of
his mouth. His story made us feel lucky to be free Americans fighting
communism, proud of our country for helping others. He later blew his
brains out with a shotgun, but he didn't take anyone with him. Maybe he
had a conscience.<br><br>
Video games portraying violence and casual killing are blamed for leading
young men like Cho to act out in reality. But what about the virtual real
war that has saturated the brains of everyone since the invasion of
Afghanistan in October 2001, and subsequent war in Iraq? From age 17 to
his death at 23, Cho, like the rest of us, had a head full of pictures of
licensed killing and torture. His highly functional sister, a Princeton
graduate, works as a contractor for the U.S. State Department's
management of the Iraq War. Which of the actions of the two were more
destructive?<br><br>
This essay is excerpted from
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0742561305/counterpunchmaga">
There is a Gunman on Campus </a>edited by Ben Agger and Timothy W. Luke,
from Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.<br><br>
<b>Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz</b> is a longtime activist, university professor,
and writer. In addition to numerous scholarly books and articles she has
published two historical memoirs,
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1859841627/counterpunchmaga">
Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie</a> (Verso, 1997), and
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0872863905/counterpunchmaga">
Outlaw Woman: A Memoir of the War Years, 19601975</a><i> </i>(City
Lights, 2002). She is a contributor to
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1904859844/counterpunchmaga">
Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance from the Heartland</a>,
edited by Josh Frank and Jeffrey St. Clair. She can be reached at:
<a href="mailto:rdunbaro@pacbell.net">rdunbaro@pacbell.net</a><br><br>
<br><br>
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