On December 21, 2011, the U.S. Army charged eight soldiers in relation to the October 3 suicide of Pvt. Daniel Chen. Private Chen killed himself under the pressure of intense bullying. The charges against these soldiers range from dereliction of duty to negligent homicide and involuntary manslaughter.

Though the army has not released many details regarding the case, news reports note that Chen had been repeatedly taunted for being Chinese. Despite being American-born, Chen was repeatedly teased for being a foreigner. After his battalion was sent to Afghanistan, the hazing began. According to reports drawn from his journal entries and other accounts, he was dragged across the floor, stoned, and hung upside down with liquid in his mouth. Shortly after these events, he was found in a guardhouse with a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Some community groups applaud the pace with which the military is proceeding with the case. Pentagon spokesperson Navy Capt. John Kirby has stated that hazing is not tolerated and there is "a justice system to deal with it" when it does happen.

And while I am pleased to see the army is taking this case seriously, the military’s description of what happened as an example of "illegal hazing" seems to skirt around the issue of race and racism. Hazing has been described by Eugene Fidell, a co-founder of the National Institute of Military Justice, as endemic in military culture and therefore suggests that Pvt. Chen was not singled out because of his race.

Calling what happened a case of "illegal hazing" does not really address why Pvt. Chen was targeted and why racial epithets were a part of the torment. What this case needs is to be understood in terms of a violation of civil rights and as a hate crime.

By linking hazing to hate crime, what happened to Pvt. Chen becomes visible as an induction into a fraternity that is predicated on a notion of white brotherhood, something to which Pvt. Chen could never really belong. And in his journal entries, he wrote that he was running out of comebacks to the taunts.

"To a degree, there’s a reflection of the challenges we see in society," said Tom Hayashi, the interim executive director of OCA, a national organization dedicated to advancing the social, economic, and political wellbeing of Asian Pacific Americans. "We see the hate crimes that we normally see in the community normally play out in the military."

Throughout most of the 20th century, with U.S. wars in the Philippines, the Pacific during World War II, Korea, and Southeast Asia, Asians have been persistently figured into the national imagination as foreigners, if not the enemy. Asian Americans in the military are not only invisible, but their patriotism and service are colored by this history of suspicion.

According to media reports, Asian Americans only make up about one to four percent of military recruits. In recent years, however, there has been a rise in the number of Asian Americans enlisting, and military culture has not yet figured out how to address its changing demographics.

There are a few notable Asian Americans in military leadership, such as Veterans Affairs Secretary Erik Shinseki, a retired general, and Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation into Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse. There have also been recent outspoken Asian Americans who have challenged the military system, such as Lt. Ehren Watada, who refused deployment to Iraq on the premise that it was an illegal war, and Lt. Dan Choi, a leading spokesperson against the military’s former "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" policy.

The absence of both representation and information on Asians in the military may also reinforce the stereotypes about emasculated Asian-American men. In addition, the entrenchment of the model minority stereotype means there is little representational space for those who do not fit the stereotype. Unless the investigation into the death of Pvt. Daniel Chen foregrounds racial discrimination and the violation of his civil rights, then what happened to him will be consistently dismissed as part of an "equal-opportunity hazing" as opposed to a military culture shaped by racialization.