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| Subject: hate crime is a hoax - realities of adjustment |
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I posted an earlier thread on this subject. I was hearted by this editorial in todays paper. Thought I would share it with you. sorry it is so long.
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A Sikh dilemma: A young man´s cry of ´wolf´ illustrates the chasm in his society; but understanding is being shown
Daphne Bramham
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, June 11, 2005
In every culture, there is a cautionary tale about lying and the consequences of raising false alarms.
Best known is Aesop´s fable of the shepherd boy from sometime between 620 and 560 BC in which a naughty boy, bored with tending his sheep, cries wolf. Villagers run to his aid. Although they are angry with him when they discover there is no wolf, he laughs.
He does it again. No wolf. They´re angry. He laughs.
Finally, when a wolf does appear, he cries for help and no one comes.
Millennia later, Aesop´s lesson remains relevant and helpful in trying to sort out just what punishment is due a 17-year-old Sikh from Richmond who claimed he´d been assaulted, called names, his turban ripped off and his unshorn hair cut off.
The attack, which we learned this week was a hoax, raised fears that it had been a hate crime. It raised the spectre of retaliation. It set off a chain of soul-searching about what kind of a community we live in where a young man is not safe wearing a turban while he plays basketball at a local schoolyard.
Aesop´s tale does not bear the shadings and complexities of this case. Behind this hoax is something unknown to Aesop and his villagers with their shared culture and traditions.
From what little we know of this unnamed young Sikh, there is nothing to suggest that he raised the alarm because he was bored and just wanted to see what happened.
It doesn´t appear that he had done anything similar before. However, he´s certainly not the first young Sikh to nearly set a community on fire with a hoax involving a longed-for haircut.
Unshorn hair for baptized Sikhs is so important that Kwantlen College professor Shinder Purewal told The Vancouver Sun that "cutting the hair would be equivalent to chopping off a body part."
In New Jersey just a few months before the Richmond incident, there was a similar hoax. Two years ago, an 18-year-old Sikh in Surrey alleged he´d had his hair chopped off in an assault by skinheads.
These don´t appear to just be naughty, attention-seeking boys. It seems these are teenagers torn over which culture they want to fit into -- mainstream Canadian or the traditions and culture of their parents´ homeland.
Some Sikh leaders have said the parents are blameless.
But they are not, if their son was so afraid to tell them that he wanted to cut his hair and discard his turban that it led him to do something spectacularly stupid.
The pressures on all teens to conform are enormous. They live in a sub-society where the law of conformity is so stringent that someone can be shunned, beaten up -- and in rare cases, killed -- for something as simple as wearing the wrong jeans or sneakers.
In a report released by the federal government last year on Indo-Canadian gangs, it suggested that among the root causes are the absence of parental supervision and a lack of communication between parents and sons.
It isn´t just that parents aren´t listening; the kids don´t seem to be telling, either. All kids have a sub-culture of secrecy, but that is exacerbated in immigrant families where children and parents may truly speak different languages and have separate cultures.
And it has resulted in too many tragedies.
Three months ago, Rajinder Atwal was emotionless when he was convicted of stabbing his 17-year-old daughter Amandeep to death. She had disobeyed his order that she could not date. She carried on a secret romance and eventually ran away with her Caucasian boyfriend.
In yet another case, Gurmit Sangha told police that she knew everything about her daughter, Sandeep, who went missing one night, that they had no secrets. Her daughter´s body was found a few days later in the Fraser River.
Sandeep had committed suicide by jumping off the Knight Street Bridge in her teddy-bear pyjamas. She´d sneaked out of her parents´ home and fought with the boyfriend they didn´t know anything about.
Some Sikh community leaders want the Richmond boy charged, convicted and punished for the hoax.
Certainly that´s what police did in New Jersey in two similar cases where the boys were charged with filing false police reports.
Local Sikh leaders want him punished not only for the crime, but for embarrassing his community and rejecting the very religious symbols that many have battled so hard to have accepted and respected in Canada.
But most importantly, some want him punished because they feel more vulnerable now. They fear if there is a hate crime now, police -- like Aesop´s villagers -- will not respond as they did this time.
Their desire for criminal charges in understandable: There is no excuse for this boy or any others to waste the time, energy and resources of the police, and to potentially inflame racial tensions in our society.
But let´s return to the ancient wisdom of Aesop and the fable that ends with the sheep scattered and the villagers all dispersed again, save the boy and an old man.
The old man metes out the boy´s punishment -- "Nobody believes a liar . . . even when he´s telling the truth." But he only does so after putting his arm around the boy and telling him not to worry, that the villagers will help him find his sheep in the morning.
Lying brings its own punishment is the moral of the story. But hidden in there is also reconciliation, the offer of help.
And that is what the RCMP has sought in this case -- restorative justice. Instead of court, the boy, his parents and members of the community will attempt to understand what happened. They will agree on what the boy must do to pay for his mistake.
From that understanding, perhaps the family and the community will also at last begin a conversation about how to bridge the chasm between traditional Indo-Canadian parents and their Canadian children.
dbramham@png.canwest.com
[11-06-2005,17:41]
[***.20.170.23]
sharon |
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(in reply to: hate crime is a hoax - realities of adjustment)
We as an immigrant sometimes should not take thing like verbal dispute as a hate crime or racism. Don??t take too personally.
Like me, when I was driving in Lower Mainland, at least I experienced 4??5 times people shout at me, finger or even call me ass-hole. Because we are from Island, too slow and don??t cut people. We never drive aggressive. I found out that road rage is so popular in Lower Mainland, I simply don??t need jump off the car and kick back, unless somebody call me Chink.
And not every problem is related to white or non-white.
[13-06-2005,05:15]
[**.66.78.44]
departure bay |
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