I was a victim of a hate crime four weeks ago while visiting my family in Cleveland, Ohio.
That is a powerful statement, so I'll let that soak in a moment. I also want you to know the even more powerful and incredibly disturbing fact that one of the 20 young men arrested in my attack is not being charged with a hate crime. He is charged with felonious assault and has pleaded not guilty. Now begins the arduous battle of depositions, trials, flights back to Cleveland, reliving memories, and the thought provoking question of why this young man has not been charged with a hate crime under the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act.
I'll run through the facts very quickly, as they have been documented and you can read them elsewhere:
I was walking to a gay bar in Cleveland when a group of 20 young men approached me from the opposite side of the street. They asked what was in my pockets, and when I explained I didn't have anything, one of them stated: "So you're one of those broke faggots, huh?"
They immediately beat me to the ground, not bothering to take turns to hit, instead consuming my body with their fists. I was able to break free only to be knocked down a second time, slurs of "faggot" or "queer" stinging as much as their fists. During the beating one of the young men asked me, "Do you want to die?" Rhetorical, I didn't think it begged an answer but instead a solution. I threw my cell phone, lying that there were two credit cards in the case, and ran for my life—literally.
The following morning I recorded a YouTube video explaining what happened and calling for a conversation around education. My attack raised a lot of questions: Why didn't the police respond to the four phone calls made by bar staff and patrons in the half-hour before I was attacked? Why did the police force me to stand on the street bleeding while they made their report? Where did these boys learn such vitriol and hate? And the last—and, I think, most important—question is: Why was I attacked?
Details coming forward suggest that this was a gang of young men known as the "Madison Madhouse." The gang is notorious for pillaging the west side of Cleveland and robbing whomever they choose, sometimes just for fun. This historical context has probably set prosecutors up for difficulty in charging a hate crime because the gang has not typically targeted LGBT people. The other counterargument is the language that was used. While I have claimed they used language such as faggot and queer, the wounding words live only in those moments where I was being attacked. No other witnesses exist beyond myself and the attackers.
And so I bring up a philosophical question: "If a tree falls in a forest and there is nobody around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Scientists have riddled this question and have long since asserted that, no, it does not make a sound. In fact, an 1884 issue of Scientific American asserted, "Sound is vibration, transmitted to our senses through the mechanism of the ear, and recognized as sound only at our nerve centers. The falling of the tree or any other disturbance will produce vibration of the air. If there be no ears to hear, there will be no sound."
But what if the tree fell and you came back just moments after, can you safely assume there was a sound? If there is a pattern of individuals witnessing trees fall and hearing sounds, would we say that this anomaly exists of one tree falling silently? And what do we do about all of these falling trees?
I have distilled and personified my case, this hate crime, into a philosophical argument because that is exactly what the police and society has done in the case. They have decided that there was no noise—no hate crime—that night because they ruled based off of what they could see in a video of my attack. What I see, though, is a group of young men—kids—in the hour before I was attacked trolling around a gay bar on Cleveland's west side. What I see are 20 men who were taught that it was okay to hate, hurling fists on one 26-year-old man who only wanted to grab a drink with friends. What I see are the bruises and bleeding in the photos taken by my parents in a hospital. And I see that laws like the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act mean nothing if they aren't enforced.
Jared Fox lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he works in educational technology and serves as the chair of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network's (GLSEN's) NYC chapter. A Cleveland native, he came to the Chicago area in 2005 to attend Lake Forest College, where he received a B.A. in community organizing/activism and politics.
He'll deliver a talk, "My Experience with Hate," on Thursday, Oct. 3, at 4 p.m. as part of the Lake Forest College Homecoming calendar. More details are at www.lakeforest.edu .
