angry white men.

hate crimes rock columbia's campus

the opening line reads, "two columbia university students were arrested december 2 in the school’s ruggles hall for allegedly committing a hate crime in which they drew graffiti of swastikas, racial epithets, and homophobic symbols on the walls of a suite." it continues, "sophomore stephen searles told police that he and junior matthew brown used red and purple markers to deface the walls of a ruggles suite, according to reports in the columbia spectator and in the bozeman daily chronicle. searles attended high school in bozeman, montana. the alleged perpetrators said, "we were drunk and we wrote anti-Semitic graffiti on the walls in our friend’s dorm suite.”

this event strikes close to home because one of the victims, daphne, is my allison's best friend from high school. in particular, upside down triangles--the mark used to brand homosexual men during the holocaust--were scrawled across daphne's dorm room door. i'm saddened by the irresponsible & ignorant acts of a few. and quite frankly, what is funny about "jesus isn't king, the white men is?" scribbled across a wall in purple marker. take away the academic incubator & these boys are little more than hate-mongers.

that said, i am infuriated by the crimson column today written by john hastrup entitled lovin' hate crimes. to put it kindly, hastrup is a self-righteous conservative who finds a way to muddle the facts in the most insidious of ways. self-righteous in the sense that we do not live in a tit for tat world: a black student student association is not equal to a white student association, a civil union is not the same as marriage, and race fuckin' matters. yes, damn right, it matters all the time, wherever you go--that is, if you're non-white. to understand our world in any other way is short-sided and naive.

first, the graffiting of walls no matter how drunk is deliberate & calculated, not simply a "tasteless" mistake as hastrup considers it. hastrup argues that the admitted perpetrators should be given a slap on the wrist because they attempted to cover up their actions. if anything, a near cover-up is a tacit admission of wrongdoing. the boys knew their actions were out of step with the sentiments at columbia.

i was particularly offended that hastrup called daphne's comments incoherent musings. he writes:

daphne, offered incoherent musings about broad-based intolerance. “i also don’t want people to think that [the vandalism] is what racism is,” she said. “racism is much more subtle.”

clearly, daphne's remarks were not in response to the event themselves but an answer a question about the future of racism both inside and outside of columbia's gates. read carefully, that's the only way this could even begin to make sense. it appears that hastrup has tacked together an argument that hinges upon the non-sensical attributing of words. flaky journalism, at best.

hastrup ends with the following:

hate crimes are terrible acts of ignorance that hurt the entire communities of the victims involved. but if this label is too quickly attached or used toward other ends, it is stripped of all meaning and all moral authority on the subject is lost.

wise words or just another insidious way of to trivialize the experiences of "the other?" let's be frank, the power structures that be make it such that i, as a black woman, cannot be speak out without SCREAMING.

i'm done for the moment but would like to end on this note. hastrup calls the event in which gallo garcia '05 was punched and sent to UHS after leaving a bgltsa party a "minor altercation." as i recall, garcia received stitches and spent part of the night in the hospital. at the very least, what happened to garcia was battery. you can't punch a man in the street for being gay much like you can't slap a ho in the club for stealing your man.

i'm infuriated, though not surprised.