When Hate Happens Here

Today, we watched an episode from KQED's Not In Our Town series called When Hate Happens Here. It gave us a closer look at the ways in which racism based on a person’s sexual orientation was affecting Northern California residents even in the year 2000. So I found myself thinking more about how unfairly those who differ from the status quo are treated as the series went from one series of hate crimes to the next. One of the crimes dealt with the murder of a transgendered teen in Newerk. This happened because they were not forth coming with their original sex before engaging in sexual actives with a couple of guys. And that upset those young men to the point of killing the transgendered individual as their deceit greatly conflicted with the young men’s sexual identities. So what we should learn from this is that one should not hide who they are from others. Lying about your sexuality will only lead to individuals getting angry. This in turn could lead them to do things they would not do ordinarily such as killing another person because somebody has tricked you into having sex with someone that they never would have otherwise. So if the transgendered individual had been up front in stating that they were biologically male they would have not had any sexual activities with those men and still be alive. I think that the efforts that the Newerk community put into spreading awareness about the way that those who do not follow the sexual status quo are treated by those in their communities was a good thing. And that’s because it gave people a chance to see things from the point of view of someone who is not a part of the status quo.  So people will start to think about the vocabulary they use in their day to day life and be wary of saying things like “That’s so gay”  that does not seem like much of a big deal to them is actually a big deal to gay people as they are using the word gay in a derogatory manner.

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