The Blame Game

Only the Daily Cal shared the tragic news of Vi Nguyen's recent suicide at UC Berkeley. As someone who cares a great deal about the issue of mental health, I am deeply saddened to see Vi Nguyen's story be thrown into the forgotten statistic of "suicides committed by college aged students."

Contrastingly though, just weeks ago, mainstream media everywhere exploded with news and speculations about the shooting by a Chinese-Vietnamese refugee from small town Binghamton, New York. Similar to the incident at Virginia Tech, several news sources and all-knowing academic elitists fittingly linked the motives behind these tragic decisions to "immigration" and the "immigrant" story.

We blame the South-Korean immigrant. We blame the Chinese-Vietnamese refugee. They couldn't speak English very well. They isolated themselves. They were mentally unstable. They had no friends. So what did they do? They took revenge, killed innocent people, and then killed themselves. How pathetic. How cowardly. How selfish. We blame you.

And who are the players involved in the 'blame game' when we see SUICIDES committed by "immigrants"?

Recent studies show that the percentage of Asian American women committing suicide is overwhelmingly high. Much of the research shows that a significant factor in suicides by Asian American women has been the 'family' factor.

"The line of communication in Asian culture one way. It's communicated from the parents downward. If you can't express your anger, it turns to helplessness. It turns inward into depression for girls. For boys it's more likely to turn outwards into rebellious behavior and behavioral problems like drinking and fighting."

We attribute your decision in committing suicide to your culture. Your insensitive, closed off, save-face-prideful culture. Asian immigrant families, unlike American families, don't know how to communicate with each other. Asian immigrant families, unlike American families, don't know how to express their emotions to each other. So, we blame the 'immigrant family' factor. Your immigrant family. We blame you.

Vi Nguyen and Jiverly Wong lived separate stories, made different decisions, but came to the same fate. The decisions to take their own lives may have been rooted in the same seed. The seed of self-blame.

But... how is 'self-blame' cultivated in our society? Our social environments? Our media outlets?

For Hee Sun Park, Eliza Noh's sister, Ying Liu, and many others... the question must transcend beyond the implications of the Model Minority Myth and its pressure on Asian Americans...and for once, consider America's tendency to quickly blame the you - the individual, the immigrant, the refugee, the foreigner - instead of taking great responsibility for contributing to the growing and disempowering culture of 'self blame'.

After all, we all are human. We can't do every thing on our own. And we surely can't blame ourselves for every single thing that goes wrong in our own lives. We need each other, more than society allows us to admit.