Indiana is my home. I wear the name Hoosier like a shining badge on my chest, even when politicians like Mike Pence put our state to shame. I’ve had Hoosier Hospitality drilled into me since I could invite over my first house guest - and I know many of my friends feel the same way.
I unpin the gay pride pins from my bag when I walk alone. I hold my keys too tightly between my fingers, and I wish they were claws instead. I press my thumb to the trigger of the pepper spray. I pray that no one gets close enough to smell the sapphic violets on my breath — I hope that no sign, no mannerism gives me away when I walk alone. I know many of my friends, sadly, do the same.
In February, a Chinese exchange student in Nashville, Ind. was attacked by a man with a hatchet who later told investigators that he had intended to “perpetrate an ethnic cleansing” by attacking the girl. Even though he admitted that he had attacked the girl because of her race, the attacker could not have been given the heavier sentence brought on by a hate crime designation, because, legally, in Indiana, that designation doesn’t exist.
Indiana is one of only five states that does not differentiate consequences for crime based on whether or not it was inspired by hate or bias against an identity. And it’s not for lack of trying — one state representative, Gregory Porter, has been trying for at least 15 years.
Some Hoosiers believe that precisely because of our hospitality and our reputation for kindness, we do not need the protections and promises granted by hate crime laws — they don’t believe it happens here.
But it does.
The hatchet attack was not an isolated incident in the slightest — last October, an IU student screamed “white power!” as he attacked a Muslim woman and tried to remove her hijab. In 2014, a 17 year old burned a cross in a black family’s yard. The stories, unfortunately, do not end here.
Hate crimes broadcast a loud message that some people — people who already tend to be marginalized — are worth less than others. A hate crime bill, allowing for these prejudice-motivated crimes to be named as such, sends a message back: you will not get away with your prejudice.
Until hate crime laws are passed in Indiana, our lack of such basic legislation joins a loud chorus that our state has unfortunately been hosting: while Hoosier Hospitality is in our blood, some people simply aren’t as welcomed here as others.
And we need to sing back to them, that ALL, not simply some, are welcome.
Until legislation is passed, though, I’ll still put away my pins when I’m unsure.
I’ll still hold my keys tight.
I’ll still hope that I do not end up the next Matthew Shepard, tangled in a fence because I was too easy to see, too easy of a target with nothing saying otherwise.
I still love my state like no other — but, God forbid, if something happens, it doesn’t love me back.
