Black belts can't fight bullets

Remembering Kyu Cho

Front row left is Kyu Cho next to me in the blue uniform. Kyu and his family was killed in the mass shooting in Allen, Texas on Saturday.

When most people see what I do for a living now, working as an independent storyteller, filmmaker, and activist they usually ask if I went to film school. It was a bit surprising to them when they learned why I chose to go to a school without a dedicated film degree. I knew what I wanted to do for half my life at the point of applying to schools, I knew I would have enough professional experience to get to where I needed to go. What I wanted was a well-rounded college that gave me the experiences I wouldn’t get on a film set. I wanted to learn in a community that was well-rounded, so I chose to go with the less competitive school that had more experiences to offer me other than just simply keeping my eye on a camera. I ended up attending the University of Massachusetts in Amherst for my undergraduate degree.

In my freshman year, I quite quickly dropped myself into very varied educational and extracurricular groups. My primary major was a BA in Theater design, specifically lighting spending long hours backstage and working off my introduction classes through hanging lights for others’ designs until I could design a show one day. I wanted a social sphere, so I literally knocked on the door of the nearest sorority and asked how I could join. And for four years that took up most of my social sphere.

Finally, I needed to keep myself engaged in athletics and it so happened my school had a Tae Kwon Do team - the one sport I really excelled at.

I am a second-degree black belt, and with the title of a black belt usually comes the responsibility of instructing others, leading the classes, and assisting in belt tests. It is usually the highest rank that leads this and the lower-ranked black belts support. When I arrived, there was an outgoing instructor who was a graduate student and about to leave the school. In the class, I met a kind, patient, first-degree black belt named Kyu. We had an understanding, he was meant to take on and lead the group and I was happy to support him at every opportunity I could.

He was a natural leader, what people expect and need when they reach the level of black belt. Our group grew quite quickly, not with so many more black belts at first but it became a family as most martial arts groups do.

Our first tournament took place in my second year at Yale. I usually avoided fighting in tournaments because I never felt I was the best fighter but in this one, we had to sign up as a team and fight different weight classes as a team. The other black belt on my team was the same weight class as me, and as the higher ranking belt, the responsibility fell to me to either lose 15 pounds or fight 15 pounds above my weight class or neither of us would compete at all. With Kyu’s confidence in me, we competed and I was in the higher weight class.

I was paired against a West Point Army Cadet, who was significantly taller and heavier than me. It did not take long for me to be outmatched, and I took a kick to the head that had me seeing stars. When I could refocus I saw Kyu standing over me, helping me up, and helping me bow out. He believed in me, and appreciated what I had done so we could compete, but also cared more for me than the competition. He wouldn’t let me rest, afraid I had a concussion (which I later learned I did), and kept me laughing and made sure I was fed and got home safely afterward.

I might have joined a sorority to feel the friendship of a family, but looking back I got so much of that with my tae kwon do team, and so much of that was because of Kyu. He was the kind of friend you could not see for 16 years but if you bumped into him on the street you’d pick up right where you left off.

Me left in blue uniform and Kyu was the last from the end on the right at a belt test.

I’ll never know what it’s like to bump into Kyu on the street, because a hateful person and an automatic weapon made that impossible last weekend.

I’ve never supported the need for guns, It’s something that makes me anxious whenever I return to visit the US. It never affected my circle of people until now, and now I am grieving and I am angry. Kyu and his family were shopping in a mall in Allen, Texas when a man opened fire killing him, his wife, and his youngest son. His oldest son was the only one to survive. A friend and his family were killed because someone had access to an automatic weapon and was angry, filled with hatred, and most likely targeted Kyu and his family for being Asian American.

I’d say there are no words, but that’s not accurate. There are a lot of words, just a lot that people may not want to hear.

We need to end two things in the short and long term.

In the short term, we need to end access to automatic weapons. There’s simply no reason for them to be accessible to the public. If you need to defend yourself, I’d suggest in Kyu’s memory taking up tae kwon do or any martial arts. A black belt may not be able to fight bullets, but if there are no bullets to fight then what you learn with your hands and feet will give you the weapons you need to feel safe. I know it has done that for me.

The President has already agreed to sign a bill banning them if Congress sends him a bill. THIS NEEDS TO HAPPEN NOW.

In the long term, we need to combat the racial discrimination that currently exists and is allowed to perpetuate. It means admitting to ourselves a lot of what we have done wrong in the past and present - every time we stopped listening to someone’s broken English, made assumptions, marginalised or ignored a person, took out our own frustrations on a person because of their race or ethnicity, or worse stood by and witnessed any of the above. Call it out when you see this happening, if you’re uncomfortable say you’re uncomfortable with the way you see someone treating a person.

This will take time, but it’s the time Kyu and his family never had the chance to have together. End discrimination and access to automatic weapons because it may be your circle of friends and family who are next affected.