{"id":40406,"date":"2015-03-12T01:57:27","date_gmt":"2015-03-12T01:57:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=40406"},"modified":"2016-05-11T17:43:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T17:43:43","slug":"was-elliot-rodger-asian-american","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=40406","title":{"rendered":"Was Elliot Rodger Asian American?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was Elliot Rodger Asian American?<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Reappropriate.co<\/a>
\n2015-03-10<\/p>\n

Jenn Reappropriate<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

For weeks following the Isla Vista shooting<\/a>, killer Elliot Rodger was described in mainstream media as a young White man<\/a>. This was a convenient narrative: Rodger was seen as yet another example of the maligned young vengeance-seeking White male outcast (like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold<\/a> and Adam Lanza<\/a>): so twisted by violent first-person shooters and sexual-social frustration that he resorted to unthinkable violence.<\/p>\n

Yet, for Elliot Rodger<\/a>, this narrative is complicated by Rodger\u2019s own tangled and confusing relationship with his racial identity: one that defies simple categorization as Rodger being straightforwardly White, or otherwise.<\/p>\n

Biologically speaking, Elliot Rodger was biracially White and Asian American. Both Rodger\u2019s biological mother and his step-mother were Asian American, and in his lengthy manifesto, Rodger self-identified as a \u201cbeautiful Eurasian\u201d. Upon his death, Rodger was initially identified by law enforcement<\/a> as an unknown \u201cAsian male\u201d.<\/p>\n

Elliot Rodger also viewed his mixed race heritage as elevating him above those he termed as \u201clowly\u201d \u201cfull-blooded Asian\u201d men. In a lengthy 68-page report released last month by the Santa Barbara<\/a> sheriff\u2019s department, it is revealed<\/a> that Elliot Rodger frequently conducted Google searches on Adolf Hitler<\/a> and Naziism<\/a>. These search terms are consistent with Rodger\u2019s frequent racist web postings that espouse a clear belief in a racial hierarchy which positioned men of colour as sexually and socially inferior to Whites, and which further positioned White women as the most-coveted.<\/p>\n

In May of last year, Chauncey DeVega<\/a> wrote a highly-shared piece for Alternet<\/em> (\u201cYes, Elliot Rodger is \u2018White’: What the Santa Barbara Shooter Can Teach Us About Race and Masculinity<\/a>\u201d), where DeVega argues that racial identity is predominantly a performance, and that Whiteness is the specific performance of superiority over other people of colour. Both DeVega and Philip of You Offend Me You Offend My Family<\/em><\/a> reason that Rodger\u2019s rejection of his Asianness coupled with internalization of White supremacy was evidence of his Whiteness…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Was Elliot Rodger Asian American? Reappropriate.co 2015-03-10 Jenn Reappropriate For weeks following the Isla Vista shooting, killer Elliot Rodger was described in mainstream media as a young White man. This was a convenient narrative: Rodger was seen as yet another example of the maligned young vengeance-seeking White male outcast (like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,16,125,1467,8,20],"tags":[10174,19090,17378,19600,19601],"class_list":["post-40406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-asia","category-identitydevelopment","category-law","category-media-archive","category-usa","tag-chauncey-devega","tag-elliot-oliver-robertson-rodger","tag-elliot-rodger","tag-jenn-reappropriate","tag-reappropriate-co"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40406","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40406"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40406\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46925,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40406\/revisions\/46925"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}