Virginia Tech Massacre

I don't even know where to begin: one gunman, 33 dead, 17 others wounded in the worst shooting in US history. I can't even begin to imagine how terrifying it was and is for the students and their loved ones, and how long it will take for their community to heal and move on. The Today show was interviewing survivors this morning, and they literally seemed broken. So please, keep them all in your prayers.

For most, after the event finally registered, the next questions were, "Who could have done such a thing? and Why?" The tragedy took another turn when the shooter was finally identified yesterday as a South Korean immigrant named Seung Cho. My first thought was, "Oh no, he's Asian." My second thought? Oh whew, at least he's not Chinese. I felt guilty about those initial thoughts, but apparently many felt the same.

I don't really want to "go there," but you know there's going to be anti-Asian backlash. Call me sensitive and cynical, but there almost always is. Already people are bringing topics of stricter immigration and gun control into the discussion. Seung's ethnicity and "alien" status is in the first paragraph of every article, even though Seung immigrated to America when he was 8 and is pretty much Americanized. And both guns were obtained legally; background checks were run and they were registered under his name. I know it's part of our need to assign blame and make sense of everything, but sometimes they're called senseless tragedies for a reason.