Sick of "Hate Crime" Being Used
 

All crime is a hate crime.
Racism does not make one crime worse than another.
It makes the murder of someone who was not called a name less of a crime?
How stupid is this!?
The reason does not matter, that a crime was committed; assault, battery, theft, it does not matter as long as it is punished the same regardless of what was said during the crime.
It should not be a crime to be a racist, only to act upon it.
This is a free country and needs to remain so.
We need to use a little reason and get rid of this ignorance... the ignorance of hate crime law.

The facts of the crime should be the only determinant of punishment.
Saying that punching someone is a felony because you were wearing a hood tells family B who's father was mugged and was not called a name that the government cares less about him and his family than family A because of their minority status... THAT is a crime.

I agree with you on this one rzen ... "hate crime" is a term without meaning.

Has any non-white person been charged with a hate crime, either of a white person or of someone of another racial group than their own?

I'm thinking that this is a "no," despite there having been several cases in which it was clearly indicated.

yuppers..by which I mean, none classified that way as far as I know. then again, we are the 'white devil' and the cause of all wrongs on the planet. .don't you remember? geez.

no no.. really the whole 'hate crime legislation' thing is as I see it a way to make people 'feel more secure' and that their government is 'doing something' about making this a better world to live in rather than just as a talking point. it's bullshit, just like the banning of the N word.. removing the word or outlawing it doesn't remove the sentiment behind it, if anything like a rebellious teenager it will only end up giving the word and the ideals behind it more power. and aside from that.. if one more person tells me I don't know what it's like to live in the ghetto (and I'll go on a tirade about this at some point.. in this neck of the woods and the general socio-economic 'bracket' most of these people live in... fuck that! they've never gone to bed hungry.. ) anywhoo! I'll have to regail them with the tales of why my Polish ancestors fled poland and the real ghettos. don't see anyone walling you in.. don't see anyone shooting you if you try to leave.. anyway.. kind of a sore point. and aside from that I have lived in some shitty shitty neighborhoods that make the bulk of these peoples 'ghettos' look like mansions.

The very idea of hate crime, in my ignorant opinion, is a violation of the constitutional guarantee of equal protection under the law.

When you establish a protected class by making a crime against a member of that class a more severe crime than the exact same act perpetrated against a person not a member of that class then you have granted that class greater protection under the law.

This will end up in the Supreme Court someday and it will not pass constitutional muster.

At this rate, midget tossing will soon become a hate crime and that is something we simply cannot allow.

Gee, I wonder if when they catch that black mugger who is all over CNN now, who targets only lil' ol' white women, if he will get charged with hate crimes....
I bet I know the answer!
Hate crime legislation is politics and not about true protection against racism.
Justice should NEVER be about politics, just the law.
Assault is assault is assault, end of story.

What makes me mad is that it gets bandied around so often. Just because the target HAPPENED to be of one race or another doesnt AUTOMATICALLY mean it was racially motivated.

"Hate Crime" is to "Assault" (or whatever) as "Terrorism" is to "Bombing" (or whatever).

Just because the left and the right agree on the desirability of prosecuting thought crime or motive doesn't make it right.

To answer Wolf's question, yes.

This reminds me of that South Park episode where Token's dad educates the kids on "Hate Crimes: A Savage Hypocrisy."

At the same time, if I target someone as a crime victim just because of their race/ethnicity, why shouldn't I be punished more harshly? To me, it's like a person assaulting a child...you should be punished more severely if you do some stupid shit like that.

Not all crime is hate crime. If I steal a loaf of bread from KwikiMart because my child is starving--is that a hate crime?

Also--If BillyBob is kewl with his bro's spittin' terbaccy in the lane but kills Abdul for spittin' terbaccy in the lane--just think. If his name wasn't Adbul--would BillyBob have iced him?

Another hypothetical: Billy Bob is very jealous and posessive of his wife. He sees another man, of his same racial identity, talking to her outside the grocery store, and becomes enraged! He beats the dude to death. Is that "better" or "worse" than your example? What if Billy Bob shoots somebody for looking at him wrong? Is it a more acceptable murder if he shoots another white guy for no reason?

It's a matter of degree, flint.

If the "degrees" are a unit of measure, what exactly do they measure?

Plus--you aren't being serious.

not ALL crime is a hate crime.

It's a crime to loiter and live in Dumpsters--i've admitted more than a few who were dislodged from dumpsters. Was their Dumpster Living a Crime? In the eyes of the law-yes. In my eyes-no.

Read some more and let me know

Okay, I'll read some more.

I'm reading Mad Magazine, but there's nothing in here about "what-the-hell-Brianna-meant-when-she-made-a-vague-statement-and-refused-to-clarify-it" ... maybe that's in the next issue? How about if I Google "direct-questions-that-people-couldn't-or-wouldn't-answer" ...

*sigh*

Who cares? Billybob kills Abdul. Joe kills Omar. Jose kills Fredrick. Rastus kills Luigi. What's the difference? Not a damn thing, in all cases one human killed another human, and should be punished.

Our legal system has a built in way of dealing with mitigating circumstances. Not everyone that takes another life should receive the same punishment. Remember the kid getting ten years for receiving blow job? So, they add hate crime to the books as a more serious, more heinous act, alerting the judge and jury that this one gets no sympathy or lenience.

The fly in the ointment, at least until the flies get organized and that expression goes the way of the nigger in the woodpile, is the DA gets to decide if it's a hate crime or not. Now you've taken away the judge and jury, the core of our legal system, and put a (wo)man's fate at the whim of the DA.
The DA not only doesn't have to prove it, he doesn't even have to say why, even if he's badgered by curious reporters.

So there are pros and cons to the existence of hate crime as attachment to another crime, but to me, anything that bypasses the legal system and makes one man(DA) the sole arbiter of your intentions, sucks.

Sucks = Illegal, Immoral and Unconstitutional.:mad:

You are kidding right? You really cannot think for yourself enough to understand that I was talking about human on human crime since it is the paradigm of the type of crime defined by hate crimes?
Then, I'm sorry I did not spell that out for you.

Worse than the term "hate crime" being used/ overused, is the fact that people still commit crimes against others just because of race/ethnicity.

Maybe she didn't realize that's what you meant rkz. Not everyone has a great understanding of laws and the definitions of them and nor should they need to. That's what we have lawyers for. The ones who spend years learning about laws.

Spex, I agree with what you say, but when it all comes down to it, human beings are tribal creatures. It's just one tribe against another.

I suppose that since families are breaking down and more people are choosing to disassociate themselves from society to greater or lesser extents, perhaps this 'tribal nature' might slowly die out.

I've read enough of her posts to get an idea of when she is baiting.
Perhaps I was wrong, but I doubt it.
If I am I'll apologize.

Isn't Billybob killing Abdul a human on human crime, and likely to be called a hate crime if the DA feels Billybob did it because of racial hatred rather than for spitting tobacco? Now you've got me confused. :confused:

hmm. Not all crime is a hate crime, as has been pointed out. Crimes committed for personal gain, for example, are a big category of non-hate crimes. Motive and mental intention have always been factors in determining the nature, severity, and punishment in criminal law.

a murder without name calling can be less of a crime, yes. Knocking off someone by accident in a convenience-store robbery can be less of a crime than a systematic campaign of bias-motivated violence, for example. Remember that crimes are wrongs against society, not individuals.

Yeah, I agree that the term is over used. Personally, I'd rather see the attitude and acts that lead to the term being used, eliminated, rather than grousing about semantics.

What if BillyBob loves Abdul? Does that make it a love crime?
And what if BillyBob is a mormon and Abdul is gay? Since mormons love the sinner but hate the sin, is this a love/hate crime?
And then, what if BillyBob kills the lead singer from the group Hole?
Would that make this a love/hate/love crime?

gettin' dizzy here.:joint:

Wasn't obvious to me either and I believe I am able to think for myself.

Where does one draw the line between "human on human" crime and other crime? Theft and burglary are not necessarily violent crimes, but they are crimes against people and there are gangs/individuals who will pick the store they shoplift or house they burgle by the race of the owners, so that would surely make those thefts "hate crime"? Don't people instinctively feel those people need to be punished more harshly than the hungry guy who steals food from the store because he needs to eat? Of course the crimes are the same, but the motives are different. Is motive really so irrelevant? Wouldn't the shopkeeper feel more violated in one case than in the other?

Just thinking aloud, really.....

If a bullet violates my body, it violates my body... the reason was the person chose to pull the trigger, end of story.

well . . . the fact that a bullet "violates" your body isn't enough to make a crime, according to the law. The common law of US/UK culture always takes motivation into account and has for centuries.

So, if I set a machine up to randomly shoot because I like the sound and it happens to kill someone, no crime. Cool.

Well, it might not be, depending on your motivation and your understanding of the cause and effect. If you truly did not understand the consequences of your actions, you might be found to be an incapacitated person who could not be charged with a crime. Or, if you thought it was just a prank, and didn't actually mean to injure or kill people, there might be a less severe punishment. The law acknowledges and provides for different degrees of malice and intent.

You said that the reason for a crime does not matter. Maybe it shouldn't, to you. However, our legal system has evolved to take motivations into account, both in crimes and in tort.

But if you intend to kill someone for cash and picked them because they are old or black, you still murdered them for equally stupid reasons and deserve to go away for the rest of your life, equally.
If you mugged them for the same reasons you deserve the same sentence. They are equally reprehensible reasons to harm someone and their hurt is equal.
Justice is not vengeance and never should be.

Lizzie Borden took and axe
Gave her mother 40 whacks,
When she saw what she had done
She gave her father 41.

But lizzie walked away scott free
She was not hung from any tree,
It's hard to say at this late date
But I think because she didn't hate.

:D

If you shoot a person trying to rape your wife or kid, is it murder?

Sure. It may be that a jury acquits you because it's justifiable, but it's murder.

If you're acquitted, legally it wasn't murder.

...would you feel it wrong if you were sentenced to death/life imprisonment?

How about if you littered by disposing of a dog's head on the owner's front porch in a gift wrapped box? Should you get a ticket for littering, or is that a more serious crime because of your intent to terrorize them?

Word games. Is killing in war murder? How about political assassination? Capital punishment, abortion, euthanasia, vehicular homicide?

Justifiable homicide is murder - the jury merely felt ok with your murdering ways.

Exactly. Motive counts.

I think she did RK. For Bri's example she used names like 'Billybob' and 'Abdul'.
I think that speak volumes about stereotypes.



(Thinking out loud. *Anyone who names their kid Billybob should be charged with a hate crime*:P)

State sanctioned murder is absolutely murder, strapping someone to a chair or bed and killing them is murder.
"Capitol Punishment" is just a nice way of putting it. It is murder.
There is nothing about it that can be sanely interpreted as self-defense.

Dar true, but doesn't mean it's not justified and/or acceptable to a reasonable society. ;)

I think it means exactly that.
Murdering a murderer makes you one. Reason, states that clearly.

Should murder be taught in school as a bad thing? Granted this type of issue has been seen as a parental responsibility for quite some time I'm guessing it hasn't quite worked out very well.

I say if people can't/wont think for themselves anymore, why should they? I suppose you've got the right to be stupid, there's no crime against idoicy only the results of it.

Welcome to the Cellar, Demalo:D Always room for another Mainiac.

But the results of your reason doesn't jibe with the results of mine. So I guess that murders reason, as something to hide our bias behind.:eyebrow:

How bout if you put a burning cross on someone's lawn?

The term 'hate crime' may or may not be overused, but it's important to remember why it was invented: what it was invented to cover. Yes, if someone puts a bullet in my head, it makes no difference to me if they do it because they hate my race, hate me personally, despise my sex, or accidentally pulled the trigger....But it matters to society. It matters to the rest of society if a person kills out of racist hate, because of what it says about us as a people and what it says about our world. It matters because of the spectrum of possible thoughts and actions on which that murder sits.

In one country hate crime may mean a man targetting and killing innocent people because of their colour or sexuality...in another country that same drive, that same motivation might lead to ethnic cleansing, or genocide.

Thanks for the welcome Bruce :) I'd like to think a Mainiac or two (or more) is good in every society.

Saying hate crime is much easier than saying "A crime that was the result of a feud/misunderstanding/'fill in other horrifc act upon said persons "people"' that's been raging for years/decades/centuries/millennia etc. etc."

Good thread. I agree with the OP. Is killing someone because they're a different race really worse than killing someone because you hate them for another reason? It's all murder. Also, if you're the kind of person who sees fit to kill someone just because they're a different race than you, then surely you would have no qualms about killing someone of your own race if they did something that you feel warranted it. I'm guessing that for people who have killed someone because of their race, that there would be other things that would drive them to kill also; a racist murderer may well have ended up a murderer even if he never met any other races.

If some idiot rapes women, serial rapist. He hates women right?
Hate crime?
How stupid is that? You know that it fits the definition, but will not happen. So, let's be serious here. A black man that attacks whites only on a mugging spree? No, not gonna' get charged even if he travels out of his area to specifically target whites.
It was created only to charge whites, not to truly fit the profile of what a hate crime truly is... even though if it were I would still be against it.
This just makes it that much worse and that much more hypocritical, which is really hard to do.

Correct. But many murders are not premeditated. A hate crime is a premeditated crime - that's 1st degree murder.

Not always premeditated. Someone involved in a fender bender or other minor altercation, might become enraged to the point of violence, discovering the offender is of a certain race or doesn't speak English. :cool:

It seems to me that hate crime is used to denote when the reason for the crime is solely because of "hatred", and is often used to protect a minority, since the minority doesn't always have the same protection that the majority enjoys.

A black man mugs only whute people. His reason is to get money. It's very different than some white guys choosing a random black guy to drag behind their pick-uo truck. Black people in the south in 1930 were not publically lynching white people. Ask yourself why.

IMHO, minorities should be charged with hate crime, when appropriate.

Doesn't have the same protection?
If you go into minority neighborhoods you will find more cops than in other neighborhoods.
The reason he mugs is to get money, the reason he only mugs whites is because he is a racists, hate crime.
No one should be charged with it.

Debating someone in another site and really am sick of all this hate crime legislation crap.
It is the worst, basest, compulsion when approaching justice.
It is not justice, justice is blind, motivation should never be part of the penalty issue, that is nuts.
Yes, I am disgusted by these acts and the thoughts that precede them, but assault is assault, battery is battery, murder is murder.
Separating them states that one person's suffering is worth more to the state than another's.
It is not protection, it is after the fact.
It is not punitive, justice does not work that way.
It is not a deterrent, we know that sentencing does not work that way or the murdering of killers would stop killing and it never has. In fact states that murder more killers have more killers, it creates and air of blood-lust that translates to the populace. It has never worked as a deterrent.
It is bigotry instead of fighting it, "those poor people need special help and laws since they are so weak and defenseless".
This crap does more harm to civil rights than anything in the last two decades.
It is an insult to anyone who believes in freedom, justice, rule of law, truth, civil rights and attempting to work toward equality.

Most rapes are hate crimes, why are they not prosecuted as such?

Under the law, they absolutely have the same protection.

I'm curious, how is life in prison under a hate crime different than life in prison under blind justice, other than the hate crime stating that the black man is "different" setting back civil rights fifty-years?

Hate crime legislation is harmful, in all ways, nothing it does helps anyone in any way.

I learned 80% of black crime is targeted toward black people and around 70% of white crimes is targeted to white people.
Just throwing it out there.
<<run>>

What was the point of that?

Don't really know much about the legislation, so thought I could present a factoid? Sorry, dude, continue on thread.