Two men walk into a bar. They order drinks and turn around, scanning the crowd for an empty table. They eye a couple preparing to leave and hustle in their direction to lay claim to the table before anyone else has the opportunity. In their haste, one of the men elbows another bar patron in the back, spilling the man's gin and tonic. Words are exchanged, followed by a derogatory homophobic slur that elicits a clenched fist to the jaw.
Bar fight or hate crime? Was the punch thrown because someone was suspected of being homosexual, or was someone knocked cold because most of an expensive gin and tonic was now on the bar floor?
This is the gray area. Hate crimes happen, and happen more often than most would think. Like other crimes that humanity wages against itself, though, hate crimes do not register with uninvolved parties unless it's reported. For every ignorance-fueled brutality like the one that befell Matthew Shephard, there are too many Sakia Gunns: Comparable crimes of similar prejudice that go mostly unknown only for lack of popularity.
In 2003, Gunn was stabbed to death by two men when they learned she was a lesbian. Like Shephard, Gunn was of the lesbian, bisexual, gay and transgender community, but unlike the more prominently-known martyr from Laramie, Wyo., Gunn also was a racial minority - black - and young, just 15-years-old at the time of her death. We know more about Shephard, but less about Gunn, who paid just as highly for nothing more than being herself.
Hate crimes occur more than they are reported, and discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities is still an ugly side of reality. As if racism and homophobia weren't despicable enough, the tandem is even more vile.
Recognition of those who work to dissect that combination are worthy of our respect and wholly deserving of our gratitude. Consequently, we give our full support and commendation to LaJoya Johnson, an interdisciplinary students in health sciences senior, for proposing a scholarship to tangibly reward those in the trenches of the simultaneous fight of racism and homophobia.
Further appreciation is given to MSU's Office of Admissions and Scholarships for listening to Johnson's proposal. Beginning in spring of 2005, MSU will award scholarships to undergraduate students who demonstrate an activist agenda relevant to students of color within the LBGT community. It joins the few scholarships already awarded to LBGT students, and will be one of the scant in the country addressing minority affairs within the population.
To be sure, we believe the positive front of humanity is infinitely greater to the shadowed hate that some choose to inflict on others. Hate crime victims are innocents, guilty of nothing other than following their hearts, minds and souls. Extinguishing the hate that propels these crimes - many of which fall through the cracks of social conscience - is needed, and this scholarship is just one step in that journey.
