Race-Motivated Violence

Kwoh’s piece concurred with my suspicion that last month’s carnage in the Stockton schoolyard was probably racially motivated.

In military garb, with AK-47 in hand, perhaps Patrick Purdy considered it “patriotic” to eliminate as many of the “enemy” as possible--from an elementary school he once attended--on what was obviously planned as his last “mission.” The Stockton police chief claims Purdy hated “all races,” but how does he know? Kwoh noted, surprisingly, that 20% of the racially motivated incidents over the past two years have been directed against Asian Pacific Americans, despite their much smaller percent in the population nationwide.

As executive director of the Asian Pacific American Legal Center of Southern California and a member of the Los Angeles City Human Relations Committee, Kwoh is strategically positioned to help exorcise racism and ethnocentrism from the ranks of his fellow Asian Americans.

The moment of truth has arrived for America’s “model minority,” which was allegedly “accepted,” and hence, largely acquiesced during civil rights movement. The time to join other Americans in the fight against racism is long overdue. In the wake of the Stockton tragedy, all people in the struggle for equality should feel as British poet John Donne did centuries ago: “. . . Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

SHELBY SANKORE

Phillips Ranch