Diversity’s Nightmare
By Emil Guillermo

The month of May has arrived! Do you know where your coconut half-shell bikini tops are? But of course you do. Someone’s probably already borrowed yours and is shaking away in a demonstration of the fine art of the hula at an Asian Pacific American Heritage Month celebration near you.

Yes, it’s that time of year. And on the mainland you’re likely to catch the traditional token appreciation of Asian-ness at some Asian American employee group luncheon. Perhaps the one at your local government centers. Someone brings the lumpias and the pancit. People come out. A politician gives a speech. And then the real entertainment kicks in. There’s nothing quite like watching a dancing pair of coconut half-shell bikini tops baffle the bureaucrats at another Asian Pacific American Month event.

Yes, I laugh at the “hokey-ness” of these things.

The events, that is. The coconut shells I revere. It’s a roots sort of thing.

I welcome Asian Pacific American Heritage month, as I do Black History month, or Hispanic American month, or any other ethnic celebration that reaches out to the general public for a month, a week, a day, or for just an extended noon hour.

But especially this year, and especially for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. Short of a trip to the most Asian part of our country-a vacation in Hawaii-stressed out non-Asian mainlanders need these things more than ever.

Case in point: Richard Scott Baumhammers. Who is he? A man deep in the mainland, sitting outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in Beaver County Jail.

Not exactly the “Pride of Beaver County,” he’s the latest to join a growing list of America’s hate crime suspects.

You may not have heard about him too much. Not compared to Marisleysis or the not so great Uncle Lazaro.

He didn’t get the kind of media coverage you’d expect for a man who’d just killed five people.

Perhaps if he’d killed ten, and if he’d used something other than a handgun, like deadly sharp press-on fingernails, maybe the media’s interest would be there. But a handgun and less than a half dozen?

Or if he’d been younger, say a first grader gunning down friends over a dispute about Digimon. That’s something for which the media would find extra satellite time.

No, unfortunately, Baumhammers is getting to be a typical story.

He’s somewhat older than a first grader, a 34-year-old attorney who went amok; but in a non-metaphorical way. He took his “amokness” literally, a bad thing for a guy who reportedly has been treated for delusional bouts and mental illness since 1993.

Last Friday, Baumhammers, need we say “a white male,” described by witnesses as “burly, bearded‚ dressed in black,” is alleged to have calmly stepped from his Jeep vehicle and taken aim at someone not like him.

At an Indian grocery store in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reports say Baumhammers shot through the opened door and killed a 30-year-old Indian man and wounded another.

Next stop, a Chinese restaurant. In Pennsylvania, Chinatowns are a few stores at the strip mall. At Ya Fei Chinese Cuisine, Baumhammers is alleged to have gunned down two Asian Americans, one of them 29 year old Tony Tsao.

From there, another stop at the C.S. Kim Karate School. Was he gunning for some high-kicking cocky Asian black belt to cut down to size with a trigger pull? Who knows? Police say Baumhammers shot and killed a Lee. But this victim was Gary Lee, a 29 year old African American.

When police put things together, they realized the whole thing was like the evolution of ethnic hate, beginning with anti-Semitism. Baumhammers’ activities are believed to have begun at noon that day, when he is alleged to have shot and killed a 63-year-old neighbor, then set her home on fire.

The neighbor, Anita Gordon, is reportedly a member of a nearby synagogue, one of two Baumhammers is believed to have riddled with bullet holes and applied his own decorative touches: a spray-painted a swastika and the word “Jew.”

It was sadly just a warm-up for the day’s rampage on diversity.

What can be said of Baumhammers? The guy’s an equal opportunity hate crime suspect.

Except he left out Latinos. Hard to imagine the guy couldn’t find a Taco Bell in Pittsburgh. If I were Latino, I’d consider a lawsuit.

We might forgive the suspect that omission, but it’s no wonder that of his victims he got more Asian Americans than not. We’re just about the fastest growing group, and the most visibly entrepreneurial in America. Even in Pittsburgh, Pa. For all its randomness, the targets were sadly predictable.

The odds of looking for “foreign looking” businesses at a strip mall, and then stumbling on Asian Americans are actually pretty good.

Little wonder too why Baumhammers was engaged in this kind of mission-a venting bout of illogic, a mixture of 1st and 2nd amendment zeal justified by white supremacy. In a search of the suspect’s home, police found a three page manifesto that Baumhammers signed as the “chairman” of his own Free Market Party, listed on the web as a bonafide far right group. It advocates the rights of European Americans and denounces Third World immigration.

Baumhammers, whose father was born in Latvia, complained other races are overrunning America.

Is there a better reason to have an Asian Pacific American month? A little education goes a long way. It could have helped a 34-year-old lawyer. He may have learned what to buy at an Indian grocery store.

And so, as if on cue, we’ve slid into the month of May.

But this year be forewarned. Your coconut half-shell bikini tops had better be bulletproof.