I overheard a conversation in a restaurant last night. Two guys were talking about hate crime legislation, interracial violence, etc. One guy’s main contention was that most media was heavily biased against blacks being anything other than victims in this regard, despite the fact that they were the perpetrators of violence in interracial incidents much more often than not. He brought up one incident that I had never heard of-- supposedly, a white soldier was home on leave, and was at a bar or some party dancing with his wife, who was black. Some black football players beat the guy up because they saw him as “messing with one of their women”!
The guy claimed that the football players were never charged with a hate crime and actually got off with pretty light sentences. He thought that, if the races had been reversed (black guy dances with white woman, gets beaten by whites), a huge big stink would have been raised and this incident would have been reported much more widely. Now, I never heard of this thing happening, and was wondering if he made it up. I think he implied that it happened within the last year or so. Does any one recall this story?
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- I never heard of it.
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- Honestly though it does appear that every time a news story mentions “hate crime”, it’s a white attacker and a usually black victim. And never the other way around. I’d love to see some actual figures on these incidents, but I don’t know that the US federal gov’t has a standard for reporting or collecting them.
- And WTF is a “hate crime” anyway? If it involves physically assaulting someone it’s already covered under some other already-existing law anyway. If it’s not covered under some other law, then it would seem to fall under “freedom of speech”, simply being an asshole still not illegal last time I checked.
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That story has UL feel to it.
It also sounds a bit like the plot of Con Air.
Making the victim a US Soldier on leave is just a classic 'button pushing" UL plot device.
This happened in Oregon; I’ll look for a link. In terms of black people being more involved in inter-racial incidents, I think mathematically that a minority is more likely to be involved in a majority/minority incident than a member of the majority. For example:
A & B are one group
C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J another group.
In the combinations:
AB, AC, AD, … AJ
BC, BD, … BJ
CD, … CJ
DE, … DJ
EF, … EJ
FG, … FJ
GH, … GI
HI, HJ
of the pairing involving the minority (A and B) all except one pairing is minority majority.
It was hard to find a “neutral” cite. Apparently this has become a cause celebre for nut cases. This is from USA Today
The funnier story is this.
I used to have the same view, but was convinced otherwise. If you’re sentencing someone who was convicted of assault, you will take into consideration the person’s intent. For example, if the victim had been sleeping with the attacker’s wife, or if the attacker merely thought that the victim had been sleeping with his wife and didn’t bother to check it out, or if the attacker intended to rob the victim, all these would probably get different penalties.
Our society has decided that if the intent that causes the crime is simply racial hatred, that’s particularly egregious, and there should be a choice of more severe penalties for it. This seems pretty reasonable to me.
I don’t pretend to know all the details, and I am not going to read through months of the newspaper’s online archives, but there was an incident in the county jail where a bunch of black guys beat up a white guy, basically for being white and they got charged with the hate crime.
I once had someone point out that the ‘hate crime’ attachment was usually used as a tool to force a plea. For example, you beat up someone because they were Muslim. You get arrested and charged with assault as a hate crime. The DA says you can plead to the assault and they will drop the hate crime or you can go to trial for the assault and the hate crime. Without the hate crime attachment, they might get to plead to harassment or something more minor than what they actually did.
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- The problem however is that (in the USA) while a judge does have some leeway in sentencing, the charge of “violating civil rights” is an entirely separate charge, and there is a serious question if it is applied in all interracial assault cases.
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- The problem however is that (in the USA) while a judge does have some leeway in sentencing, the charge of “violating civil rights” is an entirely separate charge, and there is a serious question if it is applied in all interracial assault cases.
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Those are motives, not intent. Intent is what you purposefully did. Motive is why you had that intent. Completely different things. (Though I’m still fuzzy on whether self-defense is an intent or a motive.)
Of course hate crime charges are brought when then they’re indicated.
This horrific hate crime got a fair amount of press a couple of years ago.
“But, your honor, I really like the guy I beat up. It wasn’t a hate crime, he’s a great guy, everybody loves him.”
I understand the concept of hate crime, but sometimes it seems a little absurd.
IANAA but my sister is.
Of course you might not like someone you strike, but if you strike them solely on the fact of race that is a little different than striking them because they are stealing your property regardless of race.
Seems clear to me.
Well, I think the phrase “hate crime” is a poor choice to describe it. I’ll keep as neutral as possible here, because this isn’t about starting a debate, but the usual justification for hate crime laws in my experience is this: crimes motivated by bigotry have the deliberate effect of frightening others in the group in question - if you beat up a black person, or a queer person, or whatever, it’s done in part to “send a message” that this town or neighborhood or bar or whatever is off-limits to the group. It has a chilling effect on the rest of the population moreso than a normal crime, and that’s intentional. So a hate crime, if you agree with this, is worse than other crimes, because it terrifies a large group of people.
Doesn’t a mugger, serial killer, rapist, etc. on the loose terrify a large group of people just the same? I don’t see why someone who beats up an old woman because he gets a kick out of it should get any less of a sentence of someone who beats someone up because he’s black.
Larry Mudd, the case you cited in White Plains hardly got any press at all. I also wonder if it would have gotten more press if was a white person who said he is fighting a race war and stabbed a black person in the chest. The race issue almost seemed like a side issue in the article. You think that would have been part of the headline.
this is a link to the incident
http://www.post-gazette.com/sports_headlines/20000516casey2.asp
it was a penn state football player, the person attacked was an off duty police officer, it happened in may of 2000.