Editor,
This is in response to Arun Ahuja’s letter, which was published Friday.
Ahuja claims that it is Dharun Ravi, and not Tyler Clementi, who is the victim of a hate crime.
He makes this argument by placing this case against a longer history of racism directed against South Asians living in the New Jersey area. But what goes unaddressed in Ahuja’s letter is the institutionalized and societal acceptance of homophobia and transphobia that I believe is at the heart of this incident. Let me elaborate.
Clementi’s suicide and Ravi’s prosecution should be understood as the result of a contradiction evident in the state’s ambiguous relationship to homosexuality. While the state claims to be committed to ensuring equality for all its people irrespective of their sexual, gender, class, or racial position in society, it accepts and even encourages discrimination against those who do not conform to expected sexual and gender orientations.
In other words, the same state that is eager to prosecute those accused of hate crimes, including those against sexual minorities, also actively prohibits marriage and other rights for gay people.
Hence, the state actively encourages homophobia and transphobia and even models it through its own behavior even as it positions itself as the ultimate guarantor of equality and protection for minorities. This is indeed a deep contradiction.
It is this institutionalized acceptance of homophobia that is at the heart of this incident, which Ahuja’s letter fails to acknowledge. Anyone who has followed this case will know that Ravi and his friends bonded over their mutual disgust for homophobia. Their implied heterosexuality, which cannot speak its own name, had to mark itself by demonizing Clementi’s homosexuality.
The importance of heterosexuality for the immigrant cannot be underestimated. Historically, heterosexuality is one of the few practices through which immigrants have tried to gain entry into the mainstream. Speaking differently, heterosexuality makes the immigrant appear less racially other. I suspect that Ravi felt compelled to participate in the demonization of Clementi’s homosexuality because of this reason.
Finally, how many times have we not heard guys address each other as “fags”? This is another instance of institutionalized and societal acceptance of homophobia. In such cases, no action can be taken as the person uttering such a slur is understood to be exercising the rights guaranteed to him under the First Amendment.
As the cultural theorist Trinh T. Minh-ha asks us, “Is it not, indeed, always in the name of freedom that my freedom hastens to stamp out those of others?” In other words, the rights of gay people will be acknowledged by the state only as long as it does not conflict with the rights of dominant groups. Add to this the cultural, social and religious intolerance of homosexuality and it is not surprising that gay, lesbian and trans youth have an unbelievably high suicide rate.
I share Ahuja’s concern about the ramifications of this incident for the South Asian community. But a bigger concern for me is how Ravi’s sentencing could take attention away from the fact that it is the institutional and societal acceptance of homophobia that fosters such incidents.
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Furthermore, while there is a clear racial dimension in this case, using it to deny the homophobia that is at the heart of this case is to ignore the obvious.
Santhosh Chandrashekar
UNM student
