Under the baobab: After deadly Atlanta spa shootings, we notice, and we mourn

The Korean poet/minister Yi Gae wrote his own death poem, “Oh, candlelight shining in the room, with whom did you part? You shed tears without and burn within, yet no one notices. We must part with our beloveds on a long journey and burn like thee.”

We all notice after another white boy puffed up by his own sense of privilege, attacked three massage spas in Georgia and slaughtered eight people. Seven were women. Six were Asian, four from Korea. They were our sisters, our daughters, our mothers and our grandmothers.

Xiaojie Tan was the owner of Young’s Asian Massage where four people were killed. She died just two days before her 50th birthday. Daoyou Feng, 44, was one of her employees. Delaina Yuan, 33 had come to the massage parlor with her husband for a couple’s massage. They were raising two children. He survived. She didn’t. The fourth person killed in Young’s was the one male murdered, Paul Michels, 54, an army vet and married for over 20 years.

Those killed elsewhere included: Hyun Jung Grant, 51, a single mother with two sons in college; Soon Chung Park, 74; Suncha Kim, 69; and Yong Ae Yue, 63. A passerby, Elcias Hernandez Ortiz, 30 who was on his way to a money exchange business next to the spa, was also shot and critically injured.

We immediately thought of our goddaughter, Professor Mi-Hea Cho who teaches in Korea. Mi-Hea received her doctorate at Penn State. Of course, when she is in town she stays with us. She said her colleagues in Seoul were upset but not surprised by what happened. She had told us about some of the difficulties she and her fellow Asian students were having years ago.

Asian and Asian-American students represent the second largest racial/ethnic group at Penn State, more than African-Americans or Latinx. Despite their numbers they are among the most harassed and threatened on campus. They have been especially besieged since the former president began ridiculing the Chinese as the source of the coronavirus pandemic. In the U.S. more than 3,800 attacks against Asians have been reported since the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak. Many of the students feel they have been forced to “grin and bear.” No one notices ... until now.

It is sadly ironic that one the most notorious attacks ever waged against Asian women occurred soon after an Asian woman was sworn in as vice president of the United States. We also note that last year was the first time a foreign language film won an Oscar as the best picture. It was “Parasite,” a brilliant Korean produced film. One of my best students, Joshua Chu, of Korean heritage, was the only one in the African Cinema class who correctly predicted “Parasite” would win. He thought it would be interesting to see how Hollywood would respond to the competition. The world film market is more financially important than the domestic one. China produces twice as many feature films as the U.S. India produces even more.

Part of the white supremacist pathology is the manifestation of individualized violence when infected white people feel that their superior position is being seriously threatened. It is less a grand conspiracy to collectively oppress others, wherein the person may have felt involved, but rather his/her violent reaction to the shrinking white paradigm within which they have been submerged. “You will not replace US!” Add a gun, a bomb, a mob fueled by hate and led by lies and it can potentially fuel a thousand explosions. Fanon wrote, “Hate demands existence and he who hates has to show his hate in appropriate actions and behavior; in a sense, he has to become hate.”

MLK said only love can stop hate.

We love you dear sisters.