Hate Crimes

I can see where your coming from.  A crime is a crime and putting the word hate in front of it is kind of redundant at times.  As much as i feel that we are all individuals as people we still belong to certain groups that are oppressed and oppressors because of our gender, race, religion, sexuality, etc.  And in order to identify those issues we need to identify those groups that are opressed and the oppressors.  Often times we like to skip over that fact.  But i think we dont call it what it is we would be missing a large part of the issue and then creating solutions so that these crimes wouldnt happen.

Well glorifying our differences either positively or negatively only reinforce the behavior. Nothing positve will ever come of it. So far it has only seemed to intensify the issue by causing it to become camoflauged. As (I think) I said before it is much like illicit drugs, we glorify them and give them a mystique which interests people and reinforces the behaviors involved with the materials.

Ask a bunch of people who the most oppressed group in the US is. Women will say women, african-americans will say african-americans, white males will say while males... whatever. There is no objective view to oppression. The best way to remove oppression and prejudice from our government is to stop using terms like "white" "black" "male" "female" etcetera. A crime is no more vile if carried out against a white woman than a black man or any other mix of genders and ethnicities or lifestyles.

What "hate crimes" do is shelter people for their choice. Just because a black person has more melanin in his skin that tacks on 2 years to the dumbass bigot who beat him up? That doesn't make sense. What "hate crime" legislature does is to perpetuate taboo and specifically treat differently people who are asking not to be treated differently. If you want to stop prejudice and end stereotypes, you DON'T go and shelter the people being prejudiced against. All that does is perpetuate that those people are different and need to be protected, which is stupid and false.

So let me get this right,

You are saying that in order for hate crimes to dissapear, we should erase our own identities?  Think about how that would effect the individualist nature of this country, would you like to be called just "that one"?  I know I wouldn't like it at all.  Not to mention the massive amount of cultural heritage that each and every one of us would lose in the process.  Sure, maybe hate crimes should have their names changed to "hypocrisy crimes".  However, hate crimes are named after the action taken toward a person of a particular race, ethnic idenity etc...  Take a look at the Oklahoma City Bombing, did anyone deem that as a "hate crime"?  The group that planned it and carried it out did so because they hated the American system, they also happened to be fascist, and white, but I digress.  No one called that action a hate crime.  The issue at stake here is a human life, if someone's life, their identity if you will, is threatened or there is taken action against it, the crime is deemed "hateful" towards that individual.  Taking the tags that government and the English language uses off of our vernacular will only erase all of our cultural heritage, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, economic status, and family history.  People are still going to hate others for being "different", it doesn't matter if that rhetoric is tagged on to it.  In America, the Individualist nature of this country would never let every single person just become a "person", let alone change the rules we made up to classify these distinct groups.

As a disclaimer, I am NOT saying that any group is more or less anything than the other, nor am I stating that we should necessarily "celebrate our differences".  I am saying simply that we are from different backgrounds and histories, and it is important to keep that American cultural heritage (or other heritage if your's is different).

We aren't necessarily saying that people need to lose their cultural heritage if it's important to them. The main issue with hate crimes is that people are being given harsher punishments because their victim happened to be a different race, ethnicity, gender, or other type of group. I think the action is more important than the motivation, when someone murders someone else the punishment should be pretty similar whether they genuienly hated the individual, hated their race, or whatever their reason. A crime is a crime no matter who does it to whom.

I think that the situation that we see here is the justification acts against a group of people for simply being acts and nothing more.  It is easy to try and view ourselves trying to be in a nirvana society; but that's only done when we cover our eyes.  Hate crimes aren't justified in our legal system just because the background of those involved are different.  Our legal system may be faulty sometimes, but even in this area there is a process/investigation that has to occur in order to justify a crime as that or a hate crime.  People wish that it would be as simple as justifying it as "Just because a black person has more melanin in his skin..."  There is a great difference between a robbery and hanging a noose on a professors office door http://chronicle.com/news/article/3205/noose-discovered-on-office-door-of-black-professor-at-columbia-u.  One doesn't just commit a crime when you commit a hate crime, you really are sending a message of your thoughts/beliefs/reflection on society/etc.  It is those messages that people are trying to "put on a pedestal" because we don't wish to see them as not being a danger in our society.  If you disagree with this then please read what just recently happened and tell me what you think http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/uselection2008/barackobama/32...

"It is much akin to the anger I feel when someone is labeled insane after murdering someone, do people earnestly think that murder is a symptom of sanity?"

Yes. People do.

Are you saying you've never wanted to kill someone? You certainly seem angry enough.

I've always understood hate crimes to not be about the individuals involved (and what their identity is) but about the symbolism and the message it sends to others who hold that identity. What I mean to say is that if someone is targeted because of who they are and not because of their individual actions, it sends a message of hate and fear to all of the members of that community.

Therefore, I don't agree that all crimes involvong two people of differing identities are hate crimes. If crimes are committed exclusively on a personal level and are not intended to send a message of fear and hate to everyone else that identifies the same way, then I don't see it as a hate crime.

From what it sounds like, you are arguning that the terminology is redundant, correct? If so, I understand where you are coming from. Although I would like to add that classifying what the kind of hateful crime is important to the study of human sociology. In order to deeply analyze our mentality as a group, particularly American citizens, we must give some title to crimes motivated by hate directed towards particular groups. I say this becuase the motivation behind a crime should also give it a different title. For instance rape is a for of sexual assault motivated by hate in many, if not all instances.. In my opinion, hate is not simply hate. The type and degree of hate make a lot of difference. Stealing is a crime. A young man who plans to assasinate 88 black youth, and kill Obama, is a hate crime. Religious figures selling rights to heaven on a paper slip is a religious crime and the classifications go on for days.

Beyond that, hate crimes are also not just a crime enacted against one individual.  It is a crime perpetuated against that individual because of his/her membership to a certain group.  Therefore, it is also a crime perpetuated against all members of that group.  Hate crimes serve the purpose of instilling fear in all members of the targeted group as well as perpetuating and attempting to enforce the idea of one group's dominance or superiority over the other.

If your understanding is not as I have stated, I am sorry that you feel this way. It seems your frustration comes from a place of misunderstanding. You have merely begun to understand hate motivated crimes if your base understanding is that of Wikipedia and South Park. Without the proper context, this word combination is meaningless. This can be frustrating if you do not know what to do with such a loaded phrase. So before you go ranting about your dislike for a word that holds so much for so many different groups, you would do well to learn about the hate crimes committed to people of varying social identities. The past two hundred years in the US will give you but a fraction of what hate crime really means. It is much more than individual acts. Outside of the technical/legal definition of "hate crime", the phrase holds historical significance for individuals and groups. "Hate crime" also encompasses institutionalized acts of hate (not only refering to race), cimes enacted by smaller groups, and the acceptance of such acts based on societal tolerence. And it surprises me that, for someone who put so much energy into noting the redundency of the word itself, you could not see how this phrase is not only necessary in our time, but deeply rooted in our societies history. 

"Hate crime" signifies much more than this text book definition you have discovered on the internet. Please be more considerate of the profundity of the words with which you become frustrated.

Botler & Tran

In response to Galvanm:

Say it like it is! 

- Botler and Tran

I love South Park as much as anyone, and it does have its profound moments, but I don't recommend it as an infallible source of wisdom.

Consider burning a cross in someone's yard. This should be treated like a death threat, but in the absense of a legally-recognized hate-crime concept, it would be treated it as a petty prank or vandalism, a civil matter where maybe the perpetrator would be held responsible for the cost of removing the debris and fixing the divot in the victim's lawn. That's not right.

And as others have pointed out, hate crimes are not only perpetrated against the immediate victim, but cast a pall of fear and intimidation over an entire minority community. That elevates them from a private matter to one that threatens the stability and safety of society as a whole.

So for both of those reasons, I'd say they do deserve a distinct legal status.

Then there should be a law defining it as a death threat. There's no need for any Hate Crime nomenclature from the point of view of the law. For example, it would be illegal for you to call in a bomb threat to a school. There's no "Hate Crime" distinction necessary in making bomb threats illegal, just like there shouldn't be for a threat with historical context.

Furthermore, burning a cross on a white person's yard should yield the same punishment as burning a cross on a black person's yard. They should both be seen as a death threat, regardless of the race of the victim and without racial prejudice being imposed by the law.

Why should we ignore historical context of hate crimes?  They're extreme and visible manifestations of the white supremacy that saturates the United States and target entire groups of people.  It's not like the criminal justice system has an interest in protecting people of color; it's the institutional descendant of slavery designed to incarcerate the poor and in particular black and brown people.  A "raceblind" approach to punishing hate crimes would unfairly incarcerate people of color and ignore the pillar of white supremacy supporting hate crimes.

As far as I know, the only crosses burned on the lawns of white folks have been against Jews.  Anti-Semitism and racism are linked.  If, hypothetically, a cross-burned were burned on a white person's lawn, it wouldn't be an attack against the white race.

The problem is the disparity in society. Specifically, look at this list: http://www.as.wwu.edu/clubs/categorical/?type=CULT Now, imagine the uproar if I started a club called "White Pride". You might blow it off and say that you'd be fine with it and everyone would be fine with it, but inside you all know that it's culturally unacceptable for a white person to express their pride in their heritage.

You say that "the system" is trying to put black people in prison. I argue that the system is far more color-blind than you'd like to admit. For example, do you think that the Department of Justice fabricated these statistics in order to make black people "scarier"? http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/race.htm

Here are some quotes if you don't want to read it yourself:

Now, is it the "white supremacy that saturates the United States" that is causing black people to kill more often than white people?

Daniel makes a good point; what Ariel fails to mention in his post is de jure discrimination versus de facto discrimination.  While there may be examples of the law discriminating against people of color, it's hardly an unspoken national policy, and we need to understand that racism in the U.S. is more a product of certain parts of our culture than of the legal system.

Yes, and one of my points from earlier is that we should first remove the de jure discrimination because it has no bearing in a fair governmental system. Laws distinguishing groups of people from other groups can only prolong the de facto discrimination practiced by members subscribing to that culture.

While it's true that 'hate' crimes (as they currently exist) result in a somewhat hypocritical ideal, you can't just abandon their idea, because they do serve a purpose in law, and, necessarily, in society.

The purpose, if I may be so bold, is to target individuals with special consideration to the motivationn of the particular crime.  It exists in various degrees already in prosecution of homicide.  Self defense, manslaughter vs. murder, various degrees in both murder and manslaughter.

Perpetrator X commits a homicide.  The circumstances of that homicide dictate the severity of the charge, and the elements of the crime that must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt.  In this case, 'hate' against an individuals affiliation with a specific group IS an element of the crime and should have special consideration in the charge, burden of proof, and sentencing.  This way, we (as a society) are saying that our legal system has a special intolerance for crimes intended to harm groups of individuals within our society.

The term 'hate' is just an easy pejorative to encapsulate what hate crime laws are supposed to exist to prevent.

My issue with 'hate' crime laws is their ultimately narrow (and therefore desriminatory) definition.  There are hate crime laws in many states that cover minorities and women, but don't cover other groups that are often subject to 'hate'.  I would say that any language used to define 'hate' crime groups should be absolutely generic.  Any crime committed due to any with an identifiable group should qualify, so long as the victims inclusion or participation in said group was the motivation for the crime.  With this is mind a member of the KKK, or a person killed because they were the member of a book club would be just as entitled to societal 'hate' crime protection as would any minority, religion, or gender.  It might not sound good to some people, protecting those who some think aren't deserving, but those are the realities of a fair and equal system.

I would just like to introduce the concept of White Privilege into this discourse. Essentially White Privilege is exactly what it sounds like: White people benefit from being white. White people have access to better education, better jobs, better housing, media that reflects their identity, etc. Because of America's history of racial polarity and hierarchies many, many factors contribute to the benefits of whiteness and the disadvantage of non whites.

I feel that White Privilege addresses both of the quotes above;

Starting a club called "White Pride" is not socially acceptable because white pride has ruled our country for far too long. There is nothing for whites to reclaim or triumph over- we are already at the top. If, however, you'd like to start a club that is actually based on heritage and not race, such as the Italian-American club or the Irish-American club I think you'd be met with a much different reaction.

Additionally, perhaps the crime rates or disproportionate numbers of Black males in jail stems from white privilege and the fact that, more often than not (as I said above), nonwhites have less opportunity for education, housing, jobs, media that promotes a positive image of nonwhites. Not to mention how racial profiling may contribute to more convicted blacks. Perhaps these factors and many more contribute to the actions and the convictions of nonwhites in America.

White privilege affords whites the opportunity to pull up statistics and take them at face value without a second thought to the history of our country that has shaped how every American lives today.

I'm not a man.  What's de jure discrimination vs. de facto discrimination?

And Tori: word.  Thanks for defining white privilege.  If folks don't believe white privilege exists at Western, they might take the time to watch White Privilege (What's That?) - Investigating the Invisible by WWU grads Becky Renfrow and Erica Mercker.  They interviewed Western students and professors about white privilege a few years ago and made a documentary.