Binghamton shooter felt "disrespected & degraded" because of poor English skills

[Bluebear]

...Police Chief Joseph Zikuski said the actions of the gunman, Jiverly Wong, 41, an ethnic Chinese who arrived from Vietnam in the early 1990s, should have been no surprise to the man's family. He believed people he knew were making fun of him for his poor English-language skills, Zikuski said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5goR0aYWNOrpc2vYx7G_59ddblsqgD97BS27G1

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Is this a by-product of the modern "TALK ENGLISH!!!!11" social requirement on what it means to be an American?

[Berry Cool]

1. I just love how this police chief is getting his face all over the TV, acting like he knew the guy

personally, what all his thoughts and motivations were, blabbing them all over TV. And now feels qualified to tell the man's FAMILY that they should not have been surprised at what he did! Why, the police chief knows him better than his family did...everything he was thinking and feeling!

One wonders why, if that were the case, the police chief wasn't standing there at the door yesterday morning, preventing the guy from getting in in the first place!

Besides which, not everyone who feels made fun of goes on to become a killer.

[TahitiNut]

6. The guy has become a blank slate upon which anyone can project their beliefs.

It's bizarre to see the social necrophilia. Ghoulish.

[pscot]

2. I read he had been in this country

for 28 years. Are you suggesting he was a victim? He must have been a slow learner.

[Bluebear]

7. OMG of course he's not a victim!

I don't mean to suggest that at all.

I read where he came over in the 90's, not 28 years, but no matter. I'm just musing out loud how some immigrants may regard themselves as "failures" if they are not able to assimilate language-wise. I know for example that my Grandmother never quite got the hang of English although she lived here for 30 years.

[malaise]

15. Grandmothers rarely learn new languages

but if he arrived as a teenager, he really had no reason for not knowing English. Still I get your point - people are hurting in all kinds of ways. Some will lose it as he did.

[wickerwoman]

22. That's really a myth... it's how much time and energy you have to devote

and your natural language ceiling, not how young you are when you start.

My cousin was raised in a bilingual household from the time he was two and barely speaks Spanish. He doesn't have an "excuse" for not learning it... he just isn't very adept at second languages and doesn't have time to study it.

Immersion has also been largely debunked as a technique for learning languages unless it is combined with effective instruction (i.e. you aren't really going to learn Japanese by watching thousands of hours of cartoons and playing video games although they can really help reinforce the Japanese that you are actively studying... immersion reinforces instruction but can't replace it.)

I lived in China for five years and barely speak Chinese because I was working full time and didn't have the time and energy to actively study it.

It takes at least four years of full time (ten+ hours a week) study to become fluent in a language (and that doesn't include accent reduction). Many relatively fluent English speakers are still noticeably foreign sounding and make enough careless mistakes for assholes to say "so and so doesn't speak English".

Don't mean to lecture, but I get really pissed at people who assume that people who don't speak fluent English (even after years in the country) are lazy or somehow resistant (as if they can't see the obvious benefits of being able to communicate).

Saying a teenager has no reason/excuse for not speaking perfect English is like saying he has no excuse for not knowing calculus or being able to tune a musical instrument or being able to run a marathon. Yes, he might be able to do these things *if* he had the time, energy, resources, motivation, natural talent, a good teacher/coach and support of his community/family. If he doesn't learn perfect English, there's a lot of reasons I'd bet on before going straight to motivation.

[malaise]

23. Note I said rarely

My mom learned Danish but she spoke French and Dutch fluently before she moved to Denmark.

[glinda]

9. 28 years?????? Wow. Must have had some issues or challenges mentally.

[dmallind]

13. I have lived here 20 years. English is my native tongue. People still make fun of the way I speak.

I have an IQ of 155 and multiple graduate degrees.

Being able to sound exactly like an American is not contingent on any amount of mental ability or lack of "issues".

[glinda]

25. Understandable but I believe that he didn't speak English very well. Would have

thought someone living here for that period of time would have a basic mastery of the language.

[SoCalDem]

11. Often, immigrants cluster with people they are comfortable with,

and do not feel the urgency to learn the language, UNTIL they need to venture outside the group to find work.

Adults or teens coming to a new country have a harder time because they need to find work BEFORE they learn the language. It takes a LONG time to become proficient in a new language..

A good friend of mine was Greek, and her mother never learned English..except for "Hi..come you eat".. That woman fed all of us kids until we almost had to roll out the door:)

She was a stay-at-home Mom, so it was never an issue for her.. her kids spoke un-accented English, and perfect Greek..

My own grandparents (father's side) never learned English, but my aunt did, because she had to hold down a job.. she was lucky though, because Miami in the 60's had many opportunities for Spanish-speaking people, and many of her coworkers were in the same fix, so there was no derision regarding their accents.

Imagine yourself, ending up in Korea (for instance), and having to find work immediately..and use their language:(

This man's "problem" was depression, job-loss, poverty, and the deadly catalyst..GUNS..

[Pavulon]

3. By product of an asshole who should have just shot himself

and not bothered others with his personal problems.

[TahitiNut]

4. Tragic irony.

The ethnic Chinese in Viet Nam were treated somewhat like the Jews in Eastern Europe 75 years ago.

[mucifer]

5. He was mentally ill. People who aren't mentally ill don't do that.

[Hannah Bell]

8. i don't think "mentally ill" really explains it. is george bush "mentally ill"? no?

but he killed more people than this guy, & quite deliberately. just not directly.

the guy lost his livelihood. that is a desperate thing. if someone burned down your house purposefully, no one would say you were "mentally ill" if you attacked the person.

however, the structure of modern society is such that we have little contact with, cannot see, & in most cases can't even understand the forces & actors which rob us & destroy our families & communities. and when we "lose" we're told it's all our fault. not only by the media & prevailing social mythos, but by community authorities & friends & family who *should* be a source of support & solidarity.

some people give up through suicide, drink, drugs, some take others with them. if you shock a dog enough, he'll become passive, or aggressive - depends on the dog. neither is *normal,* but the repeated shocks aren't normal either.

and the shocks aren't blind acts of god: there are very *real* individual actors pushing the buttons *in their own interest*.

The scientist in his lab, the banker in his office, the politician in front of his microphone: rarely are they described as "mentally ill;" no, they're "successful". The shocks they administer trickle down to folks like this, the sacrificial scapegoats for the sins of the "successful".

[cali]

16. oh for fuck's sake.

your post is so morally bankrupt and devoid of reason, it stands as a monument to utter idiocy.

You insult every person who ever lost a job with this kind of "thinking". And the comparison of a person who gets fired and coldly plans mass murder to someone who in the heat of the moment attacks the person who just set their house on fire is ridiculous.

[Hannah Bell]

17. you need reading training. but i knew there'd be a response like this, & i considered

it might come from you.

[cali]

18. sorry, you fail.

simply tossing out a retort without responding, doesn't cut it. The post I respond to is contemptible. And pathetic. I pointed out why.

[Hannah Bell]

19. yes, you did. according to your understanding. but your understanding is nothing to

do with my meaning. the post doesn't constitute an excuse for the shooter. it's about facts rather than your limited idea of morality.

[cali]

21. lol. your entire post is filled with speculation and opinion

not a fact to be found within it.

do learn the difference between fact and opinion.

[Hannah Bell]

24. it's no speculation that desperate people do desperate things;

no speculation that george bush's class quite regularly makes war on ordinary people, economically & militarily.

nor speculative that there are always apologists & scapegoaters eager to defend the ptb & stop recognition & discussion of these very real *facts*.

[EFerrari]

27. It sounds to me as if he was paranoid i.e., fearing his guns would be

grabbed, believing people were ridiculing his speech. Sometimes "mentally ill" really does cover it. But, that's just how it looks to me from the little information we have.

[Hannah Bell]

31. why do you think those beliefs indicate paranoia/mental illness

in & of themselves?

i think people use "mental illness" way too loosely, to the point of meaninglessness. If people murder for revenge, personal gain, in the commission of a crime, physical threat to self or others, political movement/terrorism, jealousy, etc. - we don't automatically label it mental illness.

But in the case of these highly publicized killings, that's the immediate label. I think it's within the scope of "normal" human behavior to murder those one believes have harmed one. Also "normal" to displace aggression onto innocents, as when one kicks the dog after a bad day at the office. I don't automatically see the mental illness.

You might say, "Sure, but most people don't kill someone over a bad day at the office." Most people don't kill someone for their wallet, or because they stole their spouse, or because they invaded their country or whatever either. If those people aren't "mentally ill", then I don't see why the shooter necessarily is either.

[EFerrari]

34. Paranoia needn't be permanent, in the first place. Second,

I don't automatically assume anything and did bother to write out a caveat which apparently you overlooked. Then, acting out aggression to the point of murder is not normal human behavior, no.

[Hannah Bell]

38. I saw the caveat; it didn't seem to me to apply to your thoughts on the beliefs.

I wasn't trying to get into a fight, just to discuss the question, which I find interesting.

"Normal" in the sense of "not indicative of mental illness & in some cases even a sign of 'heroism'".

[EFerrari]

43. I can't speak for anyone else but all of these shootings don't seem

the same to me. After living with someone who could go in and out of pretty dangerous psychotic states quickly, some of the elements do seem/sound/feel familiar, though.

Sometimes there's nothing at all in the reporting that would indicate a MH problem. Sometimes, there are dribs and drabs that filter through as in this one where the individual seemed to have some pretty irrational beliefs and had expressed them enough for people around him to be aware of them. But, that only possibly describes paranoid ideation and not the whole picture by any means.

This murder isn't the same as the one last week where that 20 something kid killed his sisters, is it? This one was planned and it involved strangers not intimates -- as far as we know. Both of these guys had neighbors that reported what could be paranoid ideation but this one seems to also involve the ability to coldly plan to kill people where the other murders looked to be more a matter of going horribly out of control on impulse.

[slackmaster]

37. edit - ignore

I got my mass shootings mixed up.

[NorthernSpy]

41. That is so easy to do!

It's like there's a plague of these things all at once.


:(

[EFerrari]

44. There have been so many lately. :-(

[anonymous171]

10. No. The man was obviously unstable to begin with. nt

[Johonny]

30. yeah have to go with that answer

[ShareTheWoods]

12. Has the motive been proven to be the "disrespected and degraded" feelings?

Is there evidence he killed the 14 people because of the disrespect issue?

[Mike 03]

14. Is it true he was recently fired from his job?

To me, that would be a much more likely trigger for what happened.

But definitely, we have some things to learn here about what caused this. And why he chose these particular victims.

He killed people like himself. He did not choose to kill the people who were symbolic of his "oppressor", but his own kind.

I would love to know what the FBI profilers think about this. Is it "self loathing" or what?

[Hannah Bell]

20. not clear to me exactly who he killed. could have been staff as well.

[Berry Cool]

29. It was. n/t

[Hannah Bell]

39. if he killed staff, then that goes some ways to making the motivation more explicable.

[Igel]

26. "Modern 'talk English' social requirement"?

Eh, every society has standards for how its members are to speak. Some people don't care if the norms are violated; some pick on violators mercilessly.

My babysitter when I was a kid was mocked because her English wasn't so great. That was 45 years ago. I was mocked because I had speech defects. Oddly, my speech defects were precisely where Polish (my babysitter's first language) and English *don't* overlap--l/r and the entire set of fricatives.

Some people make non-native speakers feel awkward without having much control over it. My parents, who seldom got away from their little part of Maryland until they were in their 60s, needed a translator in London. They don't do well with accents, whether a different English accent or a non-native accent.

[slackmaster]

32. If proficiency in English had been a requirement for buying a gun, he couldn't have bought one

Sort of a Freakonomics way of looking at it.

[uppityperson]

36. Not legally, at any rate. Illegally? meh on requirements

[daleo]

28. I wonder if he had been taking anti-depressents

SSRIs have been associated with a lot of grim crimes.

[Quantess]

33. No, I don't think it's a by-product of "TALK ENGLISH!"

I think it's his own personal issue. He sounds insecure.

[Mike Daniels]

40. Some people want to blame society even when the "victim" is the exception vs. the norm

But I guess it's easier to blame society rather than a "victim" who decided arbitrarily to ruin other people's lives just becasue the "victim" had a bad day.

[Quantess]

42. And he's not even the victim. Well, maybe he was in his own eyes.

If he was embarrassed about his English sspeaking ability, the obvious solution is to practice, get accent reduction help so that people understand him better, and in the meantime, try not to be insecure about it. Have a little self confidence.

But no, he went and killed 13 people and held 41 hostage. That indicates deeper problems than simply being insecure about his English.

[Arkana]

35. I think he was just a crazy person. Is that valid?