The Forward and Hate Crimes
This week’s Forward had an editorial supporting expanded hate-crimes legislation. The Forward is usually responsible about noting the reasons why people differ from their editorial position, but they omitted the most important one as to why some of us do not support hate-crimes legislation, and in fact, prefer it be repealed, and perhaps replaced with extra sentencing for unprovoked attacks.
I do not support hate-crimes legislation because there are serious concerns over implementation on a fair and consistent level. I believe it is just as bad if someone harms a person because he is a white Christian as it is to harm a person because he is black or gay. Now, I have no doubt that the Forward believes the same thing.
So I am disappointed that the Forward did not even discuss this issue. Because there is a real concern that hate-crimes are being selectively enforced to protect only “minorities,� and are not being enforced the same way for the assailants of whites that are targeted by those who, well, hate white people.
And perhaps, this is the problem with special legislation protecting minorities in the first place. It suggests that hatred towards regular white people isn’t as bad somehow.
It’s just as bad, it most certainly happens, and it may be happening more than we would like to publicly admit. And there certainly appears to be reluctance to prosecute it as such.
1 comment
I’ve felt similarly for a while.
I thought you might be interested in reading this:
http://www.jonathanrauch.com/j.....index.html
“Consider two crimes. In each, I am beaten brutally; in each, my jaw is smashed and my skull is split in just the same way. However, in the first crime my assailant calls me an “asshole”; in the second he calls me a “queer.” In most states, in many localities, and, as of September 1994, in federal cases, these two crimes are treated differently: the crime motivated by bias–or deemed to be so motivated by prosecutors and juries–gets a stiffer punishment. “Longer prison terms for bigots,” shrilled Brooklyn Democratic Congressman Charles Schumer, who introduced the federal hate-crimes legislation, and those are what the law now provides. Evidence that the assailant holds prejudiced beliefs, even if he doesn’t actually express them while committing an offense, can serve to elevate the crime. Defendants in hate-crimes cases may be grilled on how many black friends they have and whether they have told racist jokes. To increase a prison sentence only because of the defendant’s “prejudice” (as gauged by prosecutor and jury) is, of course, to try minds and punish beliefs. Purists say, Well, they are dangerous minds and poisonous beliefs.”
Leave a Comment