Guilty is guilty
Recently you printed a letter written by Huan-Tai Hsu, an employee of Sanjiv Bhatia, the man convicted of “gay-bashing” a local citizen on the Downtown Mall [Mailbag, December 28]. This letter makes claims concerning Bhatia’s moral character and inability to have committed the assault and battery/misdemeanor charges brought against him.
In what proves to be an exercise in poor logic, the argument is made that because Bhatia himself is an ethnic minority and has felt the sting of discrimination, he therefore would not discriminate against others. Wrong. Having endured discrimination does not prevent Bhatia from “contribut[ing] to another feeling such humiliating degradation,” but it certainly gives him no excuse.
Hsu expresses frustration with C-VILLE for reporting Bhatia’s conviction, citing an appeal in process. While I am no law student, I seem to recall that we are required by law to presume innocence until guilt may be determined. Bhatia has been found guilty; he was convicted of a crime. That is no fallacy.
Additionally Hsu’s letter cites the potential damage that Bhatia’s three young daughters might suffer as a result of
C-VILLE’s allegedly fallacious reporting. Perhaps Bhatia might take advantage of this excellent opportunity to have a good long talk with his daughters about the dangers of bigotry in all its forms.
Thank you, C-VILLE, for your coverage. You continue to be a refreshing voice that I enjoy every Tuesday.
Ben Hines
Albemarle County
Government mules
I was sorry to see C-VILLE reinforce the flawed notion that the perceived unresponsiveness of Charlottesville government can be explained by charting officials’ origins on a geographic grid [“Democracy inaction,” The Week, January 11]. And the fact that you did that charting over the last 44 years was particularly unhelpful. The Charlottesville of 1960 was very different from the Charlottesville of today. For instance, the Charlottesville of 1960 featured an array of institutions racially segregated by still-standing law and/or long-standing custom.
Please note that for the eight years ending in July 2004, two of City Council’s five members lived on the supposedly unrepresented south side of town. Further, for the last four of those years, one of those City southerners, a Tonsler Park voter, was mayor, while the other, a Jefferson Park Avenue voter, was vice-mayor. And, of course, one of those two was female while the other was black—which is to say, they personally embodied diversity. Nevertheless, during recent public hearings, a pair of Tonsler voters were among the most earnest pleaders for a ward system as cure-all for the profound neglect they feel.
The fact that so many Charlottesville citizens feel as though their government is unresponsive to their needs has nothing to do with where representatives live or how their election was organized. It has to do with the agendas they take to Council or adopt once they arrive. If there’s a trend worth charting over the last 44 years, it’s the continental drift away from local representatives who took as their first priority the practical matters that make daily city life livable—practical matters of which an adequate system of maintained sidewalks is by far the item most often cited by those who complain of neglect—and toward representatives more and more focused on grand schemes and personal “visions” that profit nonresident developers and potential residents rather than those whose lives are already invested here now.
Antoinette W. Roades
Charlottesville
CORRECTION
In last week’s Get Out Now calendar we printed the incorrect date for the New Green Mountain Church’s Martin Luther King Day Commemoration. The correct date was Sunday, January 16.