It wasn't racially motivated unless your race is "dumb"

The BBQ Pit
101

Are you dying or something while trying to type this out? Communicate, man! What the crappity crap are you trying to say? You can’t mean what I think you mean, so you must be coming through all garbled. Plash your hands across the keyboard harder, you’ll get it.

You know what, the guy was a fucking racist, and you’re a fucking racist, and I don’t even care if it’s not true because you’re apologizing for casual oh, I didn’t mean ‘kill all the Jews’, I was just having a bad day racism and it makes me frankly fucking hate you without needing to know anything else.

White guy goes to the store, carefully explains to black cashier not to put the bug spray in with the food. Cashier puts the bug spray in with the food…and the white guy grabs it and sprays the black guy with it while possibly screaming something like ‘you dumb nigger’.

Gee, are there no undercurrents of racism here before the n fucking word comes out of Mister Master Race’s mouth? Do you understand what racism is, what it means? It’s not how Joe Blow feels about the Vietnamese family that just moved in next door. It’s the systemic, entrenched, inherent fucking bias that makes Mister Blow tell his kids jokes about slanty eyes and words with lots of the letter ‘r’. He’s an effect, not a cause. And he doesn’t have to feel hate to be racist. He just has to be biased and have power. Mr. Blow doesn’t have a lot of power, so the little bit he can get, he holds onto tightly. His privilege is inherent in ways people like you like to pretend don’t matter or don’t exist.

Race and gender are complicated issues that can’t just be scorch-earthed into compliance with your little ‘if only everyone pretended to be colorblind’ scenario. The situation unfolded with race permeating every aspect of it. ‘Oh, he was just picking hurtful words,’ you say, well, would the criminal customer have called a white man a cracker? Why didn’t he call the cashier a stupid faggot, or an idiotic child molestor, or a retarded retard?

You know, I could see certain highly unlikely circumstances, generally involving my daughter, where I might spray another human being with poison. In not a single one of them would it ever occur to me to simultaneously hurl racial epithets at him. Anyone who would do that is a racist, even if they weren’t acting like a coked out Klansman to begin with. They are picking up the great big sword of racism and swinging it around, and then trying to disavow all knowledge, and now you’re shocked, shocked on their behalf that the dumb negro went and brought race into it.

Maybe the guy didn’t actually say anything racist. But Jebus Crust, what gets into people? ‘I think I’ll go stand up for a guy who sprays poison on people at their jobs. He’s not being charged with a hate crime or anything, but somebody suggested it was a racial thing, and I just can’t let them get away with that!’ Your first assumption is that somebody’s out to get one over, and it’s probably the black guy, and you’re going to warn everybody not to get fooled.

Well, it’s mighty white of you.

102

Ok I think most of us agree that the 19 year old did not deserve to be sprayed, for what amounted to an accident, which may have had bad, but unlikely consequences. I don’t think whether the attacker was racist or not is really important because the outcome is the same whether he is racist, or just a psycho. This is why hate crime legislation is so stupid. :smack:

103

This is a hijiack, but hate crime legislation is not stupid. We as a society have always recognized motive to both mitigate and exacerbate the circumstances of a crime and how we decide to punish a person for it. A man who kills his father can be seen as especially heinous or compassionate dutiful son depending on whether or not his motive was to say, profit financially from his father’s death or relieve his father from debilitating illness in assisted suicide. The result in both cases is a dead man, but the circumstances are completely different.

Somebody assaulting you because of your race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion deserves more vigorous prosecution. Perhaps you need to be a member of a protected class to fully understand this.

104

Well I thought it goes without saying but I did not mean in cases of self-defense or assisted suicide, which I believe is not morally wrong, but except for a few exceptions I belive motive is largely material. Should I spend extra 20 years behind bars because I assaulted a guy from being black that if I assault another white guy like myself, is the black victim more important than a white victim?

105

That is motive is largely immaterial.

106

So, you think there should be no difference between murder in the first degree, murder in the second, and manslaughter?

107

Somebody’s confusing “motive” with “intent”.

108

“the difference between first or second degree murder is intent, not motive.”

109

Aren’t “motive” and “intent” essentially the same, or is there some legal nuance I’m missing?

110

It’s me, isn’t it?

111

No, he’s right. Intent is the difference between wanting to beat the shit out of someone, and wanting to kill them. Motive is the difference between wanting to kill someone for his money, and wanting to kill someone for his wife. My bad for mixing them up.

112

Well the next time I kill someone i’ll make sure they’re the same race as me as clearly someone of a different race’s life is worth more. :rolleyes:

113

Isn’t the point of hate crime legislation to penalize the crimes where the intent is not merely to harm the victim, but to terrorize a segment of society to which the victim belongs? It seems reasonable to me to recognize the difference between beating the hell out of some guy because you don’t like his face, and beating the hell out of some guy so all the niggers will know to stay out of your part of town. The second seems to be a much worse crime than the first.

114

I agree with this. But, it can get a little muddy. Take the case being discussed here, for example. Clearly, the motivation for the assault was the clerk’s failure to honor the customer’s request. Equally clearly, his intent was to punish him for it. It’s possible that his anger was greater because the clerk was black, and that the assault was more violent than it would have if the clerk was white. But is this really germane? In either case, the crime was the result of one person pissing off another, and getting attacked for it. Does it really matter in this case why the man was as pissed off as he was? I don’t think so.

I think the classification of “hate crime” can be useful in its intended role, but it is far too overused to be meaningful anymore, IMO.

115

I definitly agree that this crime isn’t a hate crime. At the very least, I think hate crimes ought to be premeditated. Clearly, this guy didn’t leave the house intending to spray insecticide in some black guy’s face.

116

Fuck yes. Double yes. Obviously.

It’s germaine from the standpoint of the victim. Not only do you get physically assaulted for a minor infraction (I notice no one here has agreed with me the clerk may well have bagged the pesticides with canned foods), you have to deal with some one else’s bullshit racial anger. Yeah, it matters why the man was pissed off. The bagger did nothing to warrant or possibly even provoke a physical attack. If the 48-year old has a history of assaulting everybody, that’s one thing. If he has a history assaulting black people, that’s another.

Assuming the 48-year old was white and the 19-year old was black. It can easily be the other way around or different ethnicities altogether. Doesn’t matter. People are making assumptions based on the article, but plenty black people commit hate crimes, too.

Miller. It seems to me that only the most expansive examples of hate crimes are directed at entire communities. Most of the time, it’s just one lone gay man in the wrong place at the wrong time, one white dude in the wrong place at the wrong time, one black dude in the wrong place at the wrong time. You have to recognize the small, personal instances as well as the larger ones. Hate crimes are not overused. They’re just that tragically common.

Many violent crimes are crimes of opportunity. Premeditation only compounds guilt. It doesn’t have anything to do with motive, just intent. Surely it’s not impossible to beat the shit out of a fag on the spur of the moment?

117

I need to add that I’M not saying this is definitely a hate crime, either. I’m just not prepared to dismiss the possibility it might be without someone looking into it more.

118

You certainly should study up on the law since you don’t seem to have any understanding of what you’re discussing. I saw that episode of South Park too, but contrary to what they claimed, hate crime legislation certainly does not apply to any crime committed by a white person against a black person.

Hate crime legislation is a recognition of the nature and effect of hate crimes. A hate crime is an attack on a member of a particular disadvantaged group, one that is done to terrify other members of that group and ensure that they aren’t comfortable in the community. The impact of a racially-motivated murder has a broad social effect; it affects a community far more than, for instance, a bar fight that ends badly. The impact of a hate crime upon other members of the targeted community is the reason that a hate crime is often punished more severely than a comparable crime resulting from other motives. Further, hatred for a specific group is far from the only factor that influences sentencing. The apparent thought process of a criminal is always taken into account in sentencing - that’s why, for instance, a premeditated murder is punished more harshly than one committed in the heat of passion. So the familiar refrain that hate crime laws punish similar acts differently is a non-starter: punishing similar acts differently depending on motivation and purpose is one of the most basic facts about our legal system. That’s why judges have a degree of discretion in setting sentences.

Of course, hate crime laws piss a lot of people off. Those folks are like dodos - they pretend that by hiding our heads in the sand and refusing to see racism when it exists, it will magically disappear. Because it’s not like racism was a problem before there was affirmative action and hate crime legislation, right?

Learn what the fuck you’re talking about before you advance another argument. Thoughtlessly repeating messages you’ve heard before just makes you look stupid to those of us who learn about and consider matters before we pass judgment about them. I know there’s a lot of propaganda out there telling us how we should feel about hate crime laws, but you don’t have to buy into it.

You know, when I see someone post a ridiculous straw man like this, it just increases my conviction that they simply have no knowledge or understanding of what they’re talking about.

But feel free to have opinions anyway. Repeating what you hear on TV shows instead of learning the facts is a great way to fit in with the American public.

But again, you think this without being able to share any evidence, and I doubt you have any, either. Sorta like with tort reform. We hear so much about frivolous lawsuits that we start to believe it, even though the actual facts don’t support the claims that are made.

It’s completely ridiculous for you to bring up the merits of hate crime legislation in this case, as this is not being prosecuted as a hate crime. Obviously the fact that this doesn’t fit the definition of a hate crime very well is immaterial, since it is not being prosecuted that way anyway. This case isn’t bank robbery, either. By your logic, that’s evidence that bank robbery laws are a bad idea.

However, trying to claim that this case didn’t involve a racial element even though it involved someone screaming racial slurs at another person requires a generous stretching of reality. Obviously, not all crimes that involve racial matters are automatically hate crimes. Duh.

119

What’s Colin Ferguson got to do with hate crimes? I know he tried to defend himself by portraying himself as a victim of racism, but I didn’t know there was an actual racist element to the crime itself. I thought it was just a random slaughter. Regardless, from everything I’ve seen about the trial, the man should never have been in a courtroom. There’s no way that poor son of a bitch was competent to stand trial.

Anyway, what I meant by a “crime against a community” wasn’t necessarily a large scale crime. Going out and killing a Jew so the Jews know they aren’t welcome is a hate crime, even though there’s only one physical victim: the intent is to threaten the entire community. On the other hand, going out a specifically robbing a Jew because “everyone knows Jews are rich,” wouldn’t be a hate crime. It’s racially based, but the intent is just to get as much money as possible, not to assault the entire Jewish community.

The parallel here is Matthew Shepherd. Now, I think Matthew Shepherd was the victim of a hate crime, but that’s because I don’t accept his attacker’s stated motivations. However, if they had been telling the truth, that they attacked Shepherd because they wanted someone weak, and they equated gay people with weakness, then it wouldn’t have been a hate crime. It would have been a crime committed by bigots, whose target was chosen on the basis of bigotted preconceptions, but whose ultimate intent was simply to get money. If that were true, I would argue that shouldn’t be a hate crime. However, I don’t think that’s true: I think they were out there expressly looking to teach some little faggot a lesson, and getting his wallet was just a bonus.

The other two examples are clearly hate crimes. Both attacks were clearly meant as examples to other people of the victim’s races.

I don’t think premeditation necessarily means, “Let’s kill Joe Smith at 2:00 PM with this spork.” If it does, than I’ve been misusing my legal terms again. Going out with the intent of beating up some homos would be a hate crime. Freaking out because a gay guy hit on you wouldn’t.

And I recognize that most hate crime legislation is probably a lot broader than what I’m describing. I’m arguing for what I think hate crime legislation ought to be.

120

How about attacking the arguments instead of people making them

Well you and Congress seem to differ on how you define it, no mention of it being done to terrify other members of that group and make them uncomfortable in that community being necessary
The U.S. Congress defined in 1992 a hate crime as a crime in which “the defendant’s conduct was motivated by hatred, bias, or prejudice, based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity of another individual or group of individuals”

From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime

We talked about this earlier its intent that people ought to be punished for, not motivation as is the case with hate crimes.

Yes it is very ridiculous that whether someone is racist makes their victims life more valuable compared to the life of someone with a similar social background