NY Mag: The Life and Death of Pvt. Danny Chen, 1992-2011
[TRIGGER WARNING FOR RACISM, HATE CRIMES]
Pvt. Chen’s death has torn me up since I first read about it and this article has pushed me to the point of tears. I’ve been disappointed by the lack of coverage about this, and I’ve been especially disappointed by the lack of coverage by self-identified social justice bloggers both on Tumblr and elsewhere. I’ve always said that Asians get a lot of “soft” racism, that model minority stereotypes prevent people from understanding the total bullshit Asians continue to endure. The perpetual foreigner shit is pretty tiresome and it is dangerous:
Four weeks later, the Asian jokes hadn’t stopped. “They ask if I’m from China like a few times day,” he wrote. “They also call out my name (chen) in a goat like voice sometimes for no reason. No idea how it started but now it’s just best to ignore it. I still respond though to amuse them. People crack jokes about Chinese people all the time, I’m running out of jokes to come back at them.”
“Can you tell Danny’s parents that Danny died?” Danny had been on guard duty, the soldier told his aunt, and had been found with a gunshot to his head. “He’s dead,” he said. “Can you tell his mother that?”
Melissa turned to her husband. “What am I supposed to say?”
“Just say whatever you heard.”
So she did, telling Danny’s mother, “They said he died. He had a gunshot to his head.”
At first, Danny’s mother did not seem to understand. “Okay,” she said. “He has a gunshot to his head. Is he okay?”
“No,” Melissa said. “He’s dead.”
Slowly, the news sunk in. In Staten Island, on the other end of the phone line, Su Zhen’s relatives could hear the sound of a long, tortured scream.
