The Conundrum of Dharun Ravi

Last week Dharun Ravi was convicted of invasion of privacy for his role in setting up a webcam ostensibly to spy on his closeted gay roommate Tyler Clementi- but, on top of the invasion of privacy, he was also convincted of bias indimiation, a hate crime charge undoutedly motivated by Mr. Clementi's subsequent and tragic suicide.

But what makes a hate crime a hate crime? Can you really punish people for what they believe, however repellent? I would tend to say yes. I keep going back to the James Byrd Jr. case from 1998 where 3 white men were charged in his murder after they chained him to the back of a pick-up truck and dragged him for three miles. The perpetrators were alleged to be white supremacists. Now that, that I could define as a hate crime. Whether you can punish someone for having repellent, racist views is another question entirely-- I mean, is an extra ten years in prison really going to make them less racist? If you step back and really consider the question it becomes one of those nausea inducing question that you don't really want to think about too much.

However, let's leave that alone and just agree that some crimes are motivated by hate- whether of race, gender or sexual orientation some crimes are committed and motivated by reasons of hate, bias and prejudice.

But does what Mr. Ravi did rise to that level? This piece by Emily Bazelon in the New York Times disagrees saying:

The idea of shielding vulnerable groups is well intentioned. But with the nation on high alert over bullying — especially when it intersects with computer technology and the Internet — these civil rights statutes are being stretched to go after teenagers who acted meanly, but not violently. This isn’t what civil rights laws should be for.

I agree. Let's be clear: from all accounts, Mr. Ravi set up a web cam to spy on his roommate and took to the internet to say 'ha, ha this is kind of gross, look at this!' Is he guilty of being a homophobe? Probably. Is he guily of being a huge dick and a horrible human being? I'd say so. But a hate crime? That's where I get a little iffy about this whole thing.

For sure, Tyler Clementi's suicide was a tragedy and hopefully the conversation it sparked about bullying and anti-gay violence will continue and will produce good results. But as this interesting piece from Slate.com notes, it's not really Ravi that's guilty, it's the culture at large. And that's true. We live in a culture that vilifies what's different and glorifies conformity even though we supposedly spend many of our young, formative years trying not to fit in (ironically enough doing so by trying as hard as possible to be just like everyone else)- it's tailor made to encourage bullying.

Now, it's easy to say, well 'that's just growing up' and to a certain degree it is. Not everyone is going to be sunshine and rainbow and learning how to deal with that is part and parcel of growing up- but lately I've been wondering: when did kids get so mean? Sure, I had my share of torments and tormentors when I was in school but not to the point where I felt my worth was so low I didn't want to be here anymore. I've heard calls go out for suicidal 11 year olds for crying out loud- I could barely spell 'suicide' when I was 11, much less understood what it meant. Something is wrong in our culture when bullying goes to such extremes. Something is wrong when kids feel so hopeless, so alone that they feel that the only way out is suicide- whatever the reason.

And for the life of me, I don't know what the answer is. I think we're failing though- I think our education system is built on an antiquated model that treats kids like cattle and shuffles them from class to class over the course of the day- it's no wonder, or at least it shouldn't surprise us when they don't feel any worth at all. It's hard for me to hate the model too much though- it's what worked for me- but something's not working for the kids of today. The sooner we figure out what that is, the better of we all can be.

So that's the conundrum of Mr. Dharun Ravi: does spying on your roommate because he's gay and broadcasting it on the web so you can mock and torment him rise to the level of a hate crime? And what does it say about us as a society that said roommate felt so shamed and so much despair that he committed suicide as a result?