Graffiti is hate crime and an 'assault on our eyes'

WEDNESDAY, DEC. 14: ‘KKKatie’ made headlines in San Francisco in the summer of 2010.

Katie Dunbar’s crime was tagging parts of that great city with graffiti featuring swastikas and the initials of the white supremacist group Ku Klux Klan.

Her spree was estimated to cost more than $10,000 in clean up fees and repairs. Let alone the deep offence her graffiti caused to those forced to witness it on their way through the city.

And Bermuda has had its own version of KKKatie over recent months with particular vitriol aimed at Filipino guest workers.

It prompted the then Public Works Minister, Walter Roban, to urge “whoever is responsible for these reprehensible acts to read some history of the struggles of some of those they have insulted, offended and made threats against.”

OBA leader, Craig Cannonier, has also raised the concerns of international business representatives about xenophobic graffiti which has appeared around the island.

That’s the trouble with graffiti especially when it contains material which amounts to a hate crime.

It forces all of us to engage with the message — a literal assault on our eyes and brains.

Not only is it offensive to look at but it is saying to the wider community “this is my view of the world and stuff the rest of you.”

Of course you could say that graffiti has been with us from time immemorial whether it is simple written words or elaborate wall paintings.

There are historical examples dating back to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. Only recently graffiti was found scrawled on the wall of a London building used by punk group icons The Sex Pistols during their heyday in the late 1970s.

The images, mostly by front man Johnny Rotten, have even led to top archaeologists debating whether the graffiti should be preserved as a work of historical importance.

But leaving aside the debate about whether pictorial graffiti is really urban ‘art’ or wanton vandalism, the abhorrent written messages that have been seen on walls and bus stops across the island aren’t what Bermuda is about.

The vast majority of locals and visitors certainly do not want to “feel the hate.” 

Then there is the gang tag graffiti which marks territory and acts as a warning for others to keep away.

In the US this gang related tagging has prompted the police to use ‘tracker’ databases — these identify and keep track of an offender’s moniker or tag.

When an offender is caught putting up graffiti they are not just charged with one count of vandalism but can also be held responsible for other cumulative damage they have caused.

So if their tag is plastered across a five-mile stretch of a town they will be called to account for that as well.

Some US cities even offer a reward for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of suspects for tagging or graffiti related vandalism.

Certainly, as far as Bermuda is concerned, pressures on jobs and the economy in general make it easy to target particular groups and to make them scapegoats.

Hence the anti Filipino graffiti and a deliberate act of arson aimed at a group of guest workers who had a bike set on fire at their residence.

Fortunately no one was injured but it is all too easy to imagine the terrible consequences if the fire had spread to the main building.

Already over 11 million people worldwide have viewed on YouTube the demonic racist rants of a woman called Emma West as she travelled on a London tram.

And that’s the real concern about hate fuelled graffiti. As the saying goes, “sticks and stones can break my bones” — but in these cases words certainly can harm you too.

Incitement to violence via words or slogans can all too often lead to action and that’s exactly why this sort of graffiti should be seen for what it is.

A hate crime pure and simple.

Maggie Fogarty is a Royal Television Society award winning TV producer and journalist currently living in Bermuda.