Posted on 09/19/2005 1:08:16 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
The guilty verdict against a Hmong man who shot and killed six white deer hunters in northwestern Wisconsin has not eased racial tensions in the area, residents and church leaders said.
At the St. Paul Hmong Alliance Church in Maplewood, Minn., church members told senior Pastor Nha Long Yang that they see it in glares from white neighbors or hear it from Hmong children who have been told by white classmates that they can no longer play together.
The Hmong man, Chai Soua Vang, a 36-year-old truck driver from St. Paul, Minn., was convicted Friday by an all-white jury of six counts of first-degree intentional homicide and three counts of attempted homicide.
The killings occurred in November after the hunters confronted Vang and accused him of trespassing. The jury rejected his claims he shot in self-defense after he said one hunter used racial slurs and another fired at him.
The slayings exposed racial tension between the predominantly white North Woods and Hmong immigrants to the region.
"I feel it; we all feel that the Hmong are being treated differently now," said the Rev. Yang. "Why is that? Why has something that happened in a hunting field become a racial issue?"
In Rice Lake, where the friends and families of the slain hunters live, waitress Judy Borton said accusations of racism in Vang's trial did not help.
"I'm afraid this will just bring more contempt," she said.
At Wesleyan Church in Hayward, Wis., senior pastor Mark Wilson has told congregation members who have asked that the Vang trial "isn't a matter of race."
"It's a matter of somebody who killed six other people," Wilson said. "Chai Vang happens to be Hmong. The hunters who were killed were Caucasian. It's what Chai Vang did, not who he is."
But Hmong immigrants believed the entire community was put on trial, said Ilean Her, executive director of the State Council on Asian-Pacific Minnesotans.
She said the Hmong community is now working hard to show that it is anything but violent and that it is part of the American landscape "even if we must explain why we prefer rice to potatoes, or why we're here in this country."
"The communities should be talking about reaching out to each other," Her said.
The Vang trial could be a starting point to building relations between the Hmong and white communities, said Lee Pao Xiong, director of the Center for Hmong Studies at Concordia University in St. Paul.
"In moving forward, we need to learn to respect one another," Xiong said. "In Chai Soua's testimony he said, 'If we treat each other with respect, none of this would have happened.'"
"Maybe if he wasn't verbally abused, as he says he was, nobody would have died. Maybe if Chai Soua respected life, he wouldn't have killed, either."
And what "backlash?" A few imagined "dirty looks" from Whitey? I haven't seen any Hmong shot in the streets. I haven't heard of any Hmong run out of town on a rail.
Please bear in mind; it was the defendent who introduced the racial slant to this case, not the prosecution (as much as I hate defending Peg "The Keg" Lautenschlager.)
Dontcha know....dirty looks are a hate crime.
I suppose it is impossible for the races to live together in harmony. At least one would guess so from the MSM's reporting.
susie
Gosh, maybe things are "different" because Whitey, Honky, Chuck, The Man, Cracker is tired of being wrongly accused of being racist.
It was a race issue when Vang was being tried. Now that a few people are being rude to the Hmong it is just one of those things.
Vang's family made it a racial issue too after they denounced the verdict and proclaimed that Vang shot the hunters in self defense after they called him racial slurs.
Exposed it? Or caused it?
And assuming the answer to either is "yes," why is it Whitey's duty to minimize the tension?
Anyone....anyone....anyone who kills six people because of an insult is a monster.
Verbal abuse is now an excuse for self-defense?
"In moving forward, we need to learn to respect one another," Xiong said. "In Chai Soua's testimony he said, 'If we treat each other with respect, none of this would have happened.'"
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It's not racism, it's "civilizationism". I don't care what color you are, if you don't have any decent morals, culture, etc. I won't let my kids play with your kids.
For example the murderer in question has 6 or 7 children and has trouble providing for them all. Why would anyone want their kids near someone who can't control his own urges?
To all you "victims" of racism: Hmong, Bong, black, brown, purple, green, etc. -- the solution is simple. Adapt the AMERICAN way of life which entails working hard, being honest, taking care of your families, and the "racism" will disappear.
The solution is NOT for us to learn about your culture and "respect" it, blah, blah, blah. You immigrating here to America proves your culture failed you, so leave it in the backwaters from whence you came. If there are any good or interesting elements of your culture, don't worry -- they will be absorbed into the mainstream. Just as they have for the generations of immigrants' before you.
Does "pigmentally challenged" work for you?
Bravo, and well said. I am not a racist. I am a culturist.
Thanks! I am just getting so sick of all this, I feel like I have to let it out somewhere. Thank goodness for FR!
Damn right you are! :D
Should be a fun hunting season in the north woods of Wisconsin this coming season!
Not really. That just sounds like I'm unlikely to easily digest pork products.
"Maybe if he wasn't verbally abused, as he says he was, nobody would have died
See. It's Whitey's fault.
This combination of history and anthropology provides a wealth of information about this little-known Asiatic culture. Emphasis is divided between an account of the workings of Hmong society, such as its shamanistic practices, and their 20th-century history, particularly the participation in U.S.-backed fighting against communist forces in Laos and subsequent flight from Laos to, among other countries, Thailand and the United States. But the Hmong have a long history of refusing to assimilate into any of the dominant cultures of the region.
This has resulted in a nomadic existence throughout Indochina and occasionally, as the gripping first-chapter account of battles between Hmong and Chinese imperial forces reveals, in outright combat. Keith Quincy brings the reader to a closer understanding of why a culture whose people make up less than .01 percent of the world's population would put up such a fierce struggle to preserve their cultural autonomy.
This seems to support your view.
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