Did the media wilfully ignore race as a factor in Reena Virk's 1997 murder?
Yes. Or so suggests a just-published collection of essays: Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives on a Canadian Murder.
The book also contends (rather kookily in my view) that Virk's killing can be defined, at least metaphorically, as a "Canadian lynching." More on that later.
Unlike Rebecca Godfrey's 2005 book on the murder, Under the Bridge, this Canadian Scholars Press edition is a scholarly effort. Edited by academics Sheila Batacharya and Mythili Rajiva, it's a challenging read certainly not aimed at a mass audience. Sample line: "The dichotomy of good versus bad girls produced through the construction of hegemonic femininity is the discursive backdrop that allows for these kinds of contradictions to coexist."
This is the kind of literary style that rankles journalists, who traditionally hold a skeptical view of academic writing (a feeling that is, no doubt, mutual). And, as far as the Virk race issue goes, reporters dislike being informed they have a fundamental bias. We are, after all, supposed to be objective.
Yet for stout-hearted readers and future students assigned this tome as a text, Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives does offer intelligent, wide-reaching -- and occasionally provocative -- observations on one of Canada's most notorious murders.
The circumstances are familiar to most Canadians. Virk, a 14-year-old South Asian girl, was attacked by a gang, mostly female, underneath a bridge in Saanich. Two of the teens, Warren Glowatski and Kelly Ellard, were subsequently convicted of Virk's murder.
Like most, my image of Reena Virk was sculpted by media reports. She was portrayed as a social outsider often picked on by classmates. Her death was a result of so-called "girl violence," a North American trend -- or so the media told us. In this case, the bad girls (and a boy) went off the rails. It seemed, to me, an aberration.
Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives suggests this portrait of a murder is a distortion -- a wrong-headed simplification of a highly complex situation. The writers suggest the media persistently ignored the race issue, instead, embracing girl violence as an easy explanation.
I phoned the co-editor, Batacharya, a PhD in adult education and community development, who teaches at the University of Toronto's Victoria College. Batacharya, who lived in Victoria briefly in the 1990s, says the media's categorization of Virk's murder as girl violence is symptomatic of "moral panic." When a person or group threatens societal order, as with the Virk killing, a knee-jerk response is prompted.
Batacharya said, rather than focusing on the girl-violence explanation or the killers' individual motives, Virk's death ought to be considered in a broader context. Her murder can be viewed as being symptomatic of Canadian society grappling with problems related to racism, gender, social class and our colonialist history.
Batacharya said Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives does not argue that Glowatski or Ellard killed solely because they are white and Virk was South Asian. Rather, the book merely suggests their motives were influenced by social inequalities in Canadian society. In other words, their way of viewing the world -- like those of any Canadian -- was coloured by prevailing cultural attitudes.
"It's the lens we use, the way we look at each other and the way we interact with each other," Batacharya said.
I was particularly interested in the book's leitmotif -- that the media, in reporting on the crime and subsequent trials, consistently disregarded race as a factor.
Writer Yasmin Jiwani, for instance, suggests the national media ignored the fact Glowatski (inventing an explanation for his dishevelled appearance following the murder) said he had picked a fight with a First Nations man. The implication was that this excuse was socially acceptable. Glowatski also spoke about Virk's supposedly excessive body hair, which Jiwani says is "a significant racialized trope evoking a chain of connotation of animalistic connections and savagery."
Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives scrutinized a newspaper database containing almost 3,000 articles on "Reena Virk." Only a few stories mentioned race at all.
There appears to have been -- rightly or wrongly -- a prevailing notion among reporters that the crime was not racially motivated. There appears to be some basis for this. For example, I found a newspaper article in which Virk's father is quoted as saying "race didn't play that much [of a] role in my daughter's killing." And in sentencing Ellard in 2000, the judge stated: "The motive was not racism."
Let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that the media did downplay race as a factor in Virk's murder. Why would this be? I suspect one reason is reporters' general wariness in approaching a hot-button issue. These days, identifying individuals in stories by ethnicity -- for any reason -- is deemed to be racist.
Attitudes have changed. When reporting on a crime in the past, a journalist might have described an apprehended person in terms of race, for example, "First Nations" or "Afro-Canadian." This is no longer current practice.
In Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives, things get considerably wilder when essayist Tess Chakkalakal suggests Virk's murder was a "Canadian lynching."
She attempts to make a case for this designation by invoking the Clarence Thomas sexual harassment hearings (Thomas said an implicit racism behind the proceedings was tantamount to a "lynching") and a 1986 novel by Ishmael Reed, Reckless Eyeballing.
Chakkalakal is not at all convincing. What might sound cutting-edge in university courses on feminist post-structuralist theory sounds, outside the classroom, merely hysterical and silly.
Yet overall, Reena Virk: Critical Perspectives is helpful in considering Reena Virk's tragic situation and cases like it. Batacharya says the book's primary aim is to encourage readers to think critically. We must consider -- in addition to the message -- who the messengers are. Noam Chomsky and others have encouraged a similar analytical, long-view approach. It's nothing new. Still, it's something we must not forget.
Written By: Adrian Chamberlain, Times Colonist
This article first appeared HERE.
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