Reflection on Atlanta shootings and anti-Asian American racism
By Nam Sang-so
All humans have five fingers on each hand. Everyone has eyes, ears, a nose and a mouth at about the same locations on our faces. But there are no two humans that are completely identical. There are tall, plump people, and there are short, slim people. There are those with white, black, or brown skin. In our heterogeneous human societies, everyone is different.
All living things on Earth have evolved to suit their environments. Humans have also transformed to adapt to the changing natural conditions around us, keeping our ten fingers until today.
Unlike schools of fish, however, humans should never attempt to standardize ourselves. Rather, humans have found that heterogeneous, incoherent or muddled societies give us far better chances of surviving and of producing our next generations.
Nevertheless, sometimes human brains get lazy and attempt to simplify complex matters. Humans may attempt to create one standard mindset or body, give that a value of “average,” and refer to it as “normal.”
Rather than a garbled society, these human brains seem to find a society that swims together on the same course, just like a school of fish, more beautiful.
For example, countries such as North Korea and China like to show off uniformly marching soldiers during reviews of troops. They may believe that collective institutions like the military can treat human beings just like a single combine harvester handles crops, cutting down all the plants at the same time. It must seem easy to them to cut down, thresh and package these crops all at once.
Then there is the notion of the “melting pot.” This notion can refer to the process by which a heterogeneous society becomes more integrated and homogeneous. However, there is also the alternative way to think of the concept: as a homogeneous society that becomes more heterogeneous through the influx of different, new elements. This notion is often used to describe the cultural integration of immigrants in the United States.
“They've been attacked, blamed, scapegoated and harassed. They've been verbally assaulted, killed. Documented incidents of hate against Asian Americans have seen a skyrocketing,” U.S. President Joe Biden stated in a recent press conference held in Atlanta.
These remarks came after a deadly shooting spree at three spas in Atlanta and Cherokee County, Georgia, that left eight people dead, six of them women of Asian descent. “For the last year we've had people in positions of incredible power scapegoating Asian Americans… Harm against any one of us is a harm against all of us. The President and I will not be silent,” Vice President Kamala Harris remarked at the press conference.
Living things are all incoherent, garbled. Each life is different and survives in its own way. We find our values by being independent and unique from others. Unfortunately, a large number of humans do not want to accept differences. Sadly, these people attempt to standardize humans, as if to pack the same, single crop of vegetables, uniformly into one package, in the stubborn belief that this process is “normal.”
In particular, we architects should spend more time investigating how our work does not duplicate any of these existing, homogenizing structures.
The writer (sangsonam@gmail.com) is a retired architect/engineer.