Before his age, his hometown or his name, America learned one thing about the Virginia Tech shooter - he was Asian. That characterization has bristled activists who say the swift focus on ethnicity shows decades-old suspicions of Asian-Americans linger. The Korean community joins America in mourning the deaths of 32 students and teachers at the Blacksburg campus.

But activists see the identification of Virginia Tech gunman Cho Seung-Hui as shaded to emphasize that he was South Korean - as if his 15 years living in the United States didn't count - and the rush to describe him by race, not his physical features the way a white suspect might have been.

"When I heard that the suspect was Asian, I was just like, I know what's going to happen," said Tamara Nopper, a Korean-American advocate who teaches courses on race at Temple University in Philadelphia. "For a while, all they had was, 'It's an Asian man, it's an Asian man.'"

Early reports identified Cho as Asian, and when his identity was learned, South Korean. Nopper echoed a common sentiment: If one member of the group commits a crime, America holds the entire community accountable. [Link]