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Like most people I am shocked and horrified by the recent Virginia Tech massacre perpetrated by Seung-Hui Cho. What Cho did to those 32 innocent victims was horrific and inexcusable.

But that’s not to say his actions were random or even “senseless” as his sister would later declare in an apology to the victims’ families. The killings were meticulously planned and executed with stunning success.

I must admit that I see a bit of myself in Seung-Hui Cho since, like Cho, I am a Asian immigrant who came to the U.S. at the age of nine. Like Cho I grew up in environments with relatively few other Asians. My brother and I were constantly harrassed by Blacks, Whites and Hispanics. We experienced much of the same pain and anger that led to Cho’s final outburst.

I turn on the TV and see a parade of pundits, including psychologists and criminologists, talking about the various reasons that might have led this young man to his rampage. Not too surprisingly, not one was an Asian immigrant who experienced much of the same struggles that Cho had endured throughout his life in the U.S. As the whole world is trying to figure out what it was that led to this terrible tragedy, they’ll never get it if they do not talk to those who get it on an experiential level.

Seung-Hui Cho was not dumb, and despite his previous run-ins with the shrinks, he was not crazy. What happened on April 17, 2007, did not develop overnight or even over the course of one or two years. Rather, I believe that it was the culmination of years of racial abuse that began the day Cho and his family set foot in America.

One day in English class at Westfield High School, Cho looked down and refused to speak when called upon. After his teacher threatened to give him an “F” for not participating, Cho began reading in an awkward, deep voice that sounded “like he had something in his mouth,” a classmate recalled. The whole class started laughing and pointing at Cho. “Go back to China!” they taunted him (Cho was Korean). This was just a typical day in the nightmarish life of Seung-Hui Cho.

Sun-Kyung Cho, Cho’s older sister, went on to distance her family from her troubled brother, “I feel like I don’t know this person (emphasis mine)…We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence.”

Perhaps if his family had known “this person” a little better, they might have prevented the whole tragedy. Had his parents understood what he had to put up with at school, perhaps they’d move to another city with a larger Asian population, an environment where he’d have an easier time fitting in. Cho himself said, “You had a hundred billion chances to have avoided today.” Apparently, not even one of these chances was taken up on to set things right.

Cho felt that he was backed into a corner whose only escape was to lash out against the whole world. Most of us would not even consider such a twisted and gruesome option.

Hate and anger are negative forces in our lives, but they need not lead to destruction. Throughout my life I have learned to harness these negative energies and channel them toward positive outcomes.

That’s not to say that a person does not need positive energies in his life. There is only so much frustration that one could take before he snaps. Some positive forces, including love, acceptance and encouragement, are all needed to counterbalance the negative ones. Apparently, Cho had very little of these growing up.

I think there is a positive lesson for the Cambodian American community to learn from the Virginia Tech tragedy. I suspect that many young Cambodian immigrants are going through what I had gone through during my childhood, and I am not sure that all of them will be able to handle adversity the way I had.

If you’re a first-generation immigrant whose children had spent at least a few years of their childhoods abroad, I suggest raising them in a more Asian-friendly community, i.e., one with a large Cambodian or Asian population. It’s not enough to raise your kid in an ethnically diverse community with respect to Black, Hispanic and White representations– you need one with a good Asian, preferably Khmer, representation. While many of us probably cannot afford to move to Hawaii or Southern California, living in a community with just 4% Asian is a lot better than one with only 0.1%.

Having your Khmer child growing up around other Khmer children is essential to the development of their self-esteem and their cultural identity. If an Asian kid lacks positive Asian peers and role models, his view of Asians will be based on the negative stereotypes of Asians he sees on TV, e.g., violent gansters, Hopsing the servile Chinese waiter, William Hung the retarded American Idol reject, whores and prostitutes, and so on.

The lack of exposure to other Asians could breed in a Asian child anger, self-hate, insecurity, and a host of other personality complexes, the worst of which manifesting in Seung-Hui Cho’s outburst. Even if a Cambodian child is able to endure a lifetime of racial abuse, he will not be able to achieve the happiest and most successful life free of personal issues.

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