Beyond Tolerance: Moving Ahead Together
A Community-wide Conference Organized by the Santa Barbara School Districts
June 28, 1997
Dr. Diane C. Fujino, UCSB Faculty, Asian American Studies Scholar
Media Images and the Criminalization of Youth of Color: A Look at the Dos Pueblos High School Shooting
I’m sure all of you heard about the tragic killing of Southwest Vang across from Dos Pueblos High School on May 8 (Thursday). There is no question that this is a very sad and shocking event. Southwest was 17-years-old, soon to graduate from high school. I know the students at DP and the Hmong community went into mourning over this senseless loss.
But what isn’t discussed is that this is a double tragedy. The three men implicated in Southwest’s murder were as young as he was. They’ve been in jail since early May. If convicted, the alleged killer, Mihn Huynh, faces the death penalty; the other two in the car, Alex Leung and Erwin Mindow, face long sentences. Their lives will never be the same.
What aggravates this double tragedy is how the local media have framed this case. The media have created images of these three Asian youth as "gang-bangers" and "criminals" who deserve the worst punishment.
The story in the Santa Barbara News-Press the day after the shooting already claimed gang activity. What was the evidence? It appears that Southwest and Mihn had a history of "hostilities" and conflicts. Does this make them gang-members? Hardly. As of June 22, the local police indicated they are still not clear whether this event is gang-related.
The News-Press story that ran two days after the shooting labeled the tragedy as a "drive-by." So now most readers, who have little knowledge about gang activity, hold an image in their minds of gangs and drive-bys. But was it really a drive-by? What kind of guns are typically used in drive-bys? Because if one’s shooting from a moving car, it’s important to use guns that require low levels of accuracy – guns like automatics, semi-automatics, and shotguns. Why did Mihn allegedly use – a .22 caliber pistol? Not a good gun to bring to a drive-by. Also, in a drive-by, all three cars would have been shooting, not just one car.
I kept reading in the newspaper that the cars "cruised by slowly;" that there was enough time for a verbal altercation to occur and enough time for Southwest to bring a large knife out from his grandparent’s home, which, by the way, indicates he thought there might be hand-to-hand fighting but he wasn’t concerned about a drive-by. In one newspaper article, I even read that the car had stopped. Also, Alex, Mihn, and Erwin did not go to find Southwest; they were going to pick up Erwin’s girlfriend. This was not a drive-by.
I would further argue that the media’s criminalization of these youth is racialized. Take, for example, a recent article in the Los Angeles Times about the tagger who spray-painted "OZIE" on various structures and plunged 100 feet, fracturing his spine. How did the story frame the tagger? The article states: The 19-year-old tagger, Daniel Supple, had attended preparatory school in Tarzana; his friend said Daniel is "intelligent" and "an outgoing athlete;" and the director of his prep school calls Daniel "a smart and energetic youth who was on the basketball team and loved art, especially fancy lettering with colorful pictures – they didn’t look like the kinds of graffiti you usually see." Though the article also noted that Daniel had been arrested on graffiti vandalism charges as a youth, he was not convicted. But note how the article frames Daniel’s tagging activity. "He left his spray-painted calling card in numerous locations over the last year" – creates the image of an artistic, energetic, creative youth engaging in mischief. Moreover, he "had become stranded on the top of a concrete pylon" over a freeway overpass. He had become stranded? He climbed up there to graffiti and his buddy ditched him. Notice how the article paints the picture of a good kid, who engages in some mischievous activity, and creates the image of a tragedy. What was Daniel’s racial background? Not surprisingly, he’s White. Had he been Black or Chicano, there’s no doubt in my mind that the newspaper story would have painted the picture of a gangbanging criminal. Aren’t graffiti gang markings?
The people who know Mihn, Alex, or Erwin say these youth are not in a gang. They say that Alex and Erwin, the driver and passenger in the car, had no idea that Mihn was carrying a gun. Now Alex and Erwin are charged with conspiracy to commit murder and being accessories to murder – as if the killing was planned in advance and Alex was the driver of a getaway car. Because this is framed as a drive-by, Mihn faces the death penalty. Had the youth been White, I believe the newspaper would have framed this as a double tragedy – the tragedy of the youth who died, and the tragedy of teenage conflict gone astray.
I’d like to draw three lessons from this case to add to our discussion today about race and racism.
I believe that Mihn, Alex, and Erwin deserve a fair trial, one that does not criminalize them based on the color of their skin. If any of them is guilty, then his sentencing should also be just. We need to reduce and eliminate institutional racism in all our social institutions. In the media, we should demand fair and accurate reporting. I believe the criminalization of these Asian youth is based on their racial identity and racialized stereotypes that some in the mainstream media hold about young men of color. In the schools, we should implement a curriculum that represents the experiences of all our students, Hmong, Vietnamese, all people of color, and Whites. We should establish ethnic studies, women’s studies, and gay and lesbian studies courses in our schools. We need to increase our awareness of the subtle ways racism operates. At the very least, our minds don’t have to be controlled by how the media frames and racializes an issue. Then, in our interactions with students, and in how students interact with one another, we need to become keenly aware of race, racial stereotypes, and subtle racism, and not interact with one another based on racial stereotypes.