While this story might support my suspicion that “hate crimes” (at least as luridly imagined by urgent advocates for special hate crimes laws) are vanishingly rare, as witness the front page treatment that even a completely fake one can elicit, that’s not my premise here, for the moment.
My modest proposal, rather, is that any claim of a hate crime in which the ‘victim’ reports that the brutal assault and hateful battery consisted, in principal part, of having epithets or swastikas scrawled on him or her in magic marker shall be presumptively deemed non-meritorious. It seems to be a real pattern – Tawana Brawley, Morton Downey Jr., and now this woman. Real race-hating assailants would not, I suggest, content themselves with the lame-o “violence” that is a magic marker assault (well, maybe if it’s indelible ink that makes it a bit more horrific).
Something in the selfish attention- and pity-seeking personality that gravitates toward wanting to become a hate crime martyr must also militate against inflicting any real harm on oneself, hence the need for “violence” that is visible but not painful. (I’m currently trying to track down the hilarious story I seem to recall of the guy who puzzled the police by showing up with backwards swastikas on him after a “hate attack,” only to admit later that he’d drawn them on himself while looking in the mirror).
Next up is a proposed rule that “hate crimes” against people “perceived as” Jewish or black or whatever, but who actually aren’t, are presumptively bogus. It happened in the Paris case, and also the recent Claremont fiasco (http://da.co.la.ca.us/mr/042604a.htm). Something of a growth industry – now you don’t even have to actually be a minority to get in on the victim bandwagon (though I guess Downey was a pioneer in this regard).
Even if we accept that this a common problem, wouldn’t your proposal give license to everyone to go ahead and use this exact tactic against those that they attack? I’m no fan of hate crime laws, but your suggestion really doesn’t make sense.
So 3 or 4 outrageous claims within the context of more than 350 million people and all the attendant assaults they experience over the course of a year or two and you think this is a major issue? :dubious:
Somehow I don’t think that real racists bent on hate attacks
(1) read these boards, or anything at all, so as to catch on; and
(2) care about whether their “hate crime” is regarded as real or fake. In fact, given that they’re trying to intimidate and send a message, I would think that any game-theory-indulging hate crimer would refrain from anything would detract from the menace of his attack, including making the attack look like a hoax. Not the best way to drive the minorities out of town.
It’s a common enough problem that I can think offhand of three fake hate crimes with magic marker scrawlings and no “real” hate crimes involving such (trivial) defacement. My point is that rather than have the Premier of France and the chattering classes making this front page news and wringing hands about the crisis of French anti-Semitism, we could use the magic marker test to weed out, or at the very least proceed with caution, in facially dubious cases.
If you’re going to fake a hate crime (and apparently a number of people are really interested in doing so), at least pull out the knife and go for the gusto like this chick. Flesh wound or higher to open the bidding.
I’m not sure what the 350 million refers to – but it’s a major enough issue that the head of the French government wasted his time, and the public’s attention, on the never-very-credible story of an attention-starved hoaxer.
I read your OP to mean that your were suggesting a legal change, not just a change in how people on this board react to any given hate crime report. Even still, taking a prejudiced stance on anything doesn’t make sense on a MB devoted to “fighting ignorance”. Perhaps you’d have more success with this thread in the Pit, where specific nitwits who do this can be dumped on with gusto.
Hey you pulled the claims out. All I did was roughly add up the population of the US, Canada and France (270+30+60=360 million). That is a whack load of rowdy, free agents running around no? Each one able to pull a “hate crime stunt”. Now how many assaults do you think happen here? Well from StatsCanada there are roughly 960/100,000 violent crimes in Canada per year . That’s roughly 1 violent crime per 100 people. Let’s extend that to the countries I mention above.
1% of 350 million would give 3.5 million victims of violent assault. That’s 3.5 million potential cases for your perceived hate crime stunt. Now say you can only recall a dozen such stunts in 1 year. That would be a rate of 0.00034%. Why worry about it?
Prejudiced stance? My view is I’m prejudiced against nitwits who trivialize violence (and racism) by hogging the spotlight for their own selfish ends, and that accepting all hate crime reports (or crime reports, period) at face value (as CNN and the French Premier did here) is also a form of ignorance, but YMMV.
I appreciate Grey clarification on the math point/350 million/incidence of violent crime. Violent crime is the real issue here, and it’s deplorable in whatever form, which is why false reports that distract and dilute attention for real violent crimes are deplorable and ought to be punished. I don’t agree with applying heightened scrutiny or punishment to “hate crimes,” because it’s the violence, not the hate, that is sanctionable and wrong. But if the world’s going to apply heightened scrutiny to and punishment for actual “hate crimes,” I don’t see anything wrong with applying heightened skepticism to those who make a report of such crime with an eye toward getting the enhanced attention and remedies that they think hate crime victimhood offers.
In case it wasn’t clear, by “nitwits” in my first paragraph, I meant hoaxers. A woman who really was attacked and scrawled on, however unlikely the scrawling seems to me, obviously has every right to complain and get the attention of the state and see her assailants punished.
I think I understand your point a bit better now. You’re concerned that “hate crimes” will draw more attention than regular violent crimes and so dilute the political/police response to all violent crime. I’m not sure how though.
So in 1995 Canada had an estimated minimum of 60,000 hate motivated crimes. Let’s disregard all the love motivated crimes that took place. That gives a rate of 1 hate crime per 500 citizens. I have no idea how applicable this number would be in France or the US, but for this argument’s sake, let’s assume it’s extendable.
For 350 million people you would have roughly 700,000 hate crimes per year. Note that in the above quote they tripled the reported number to take into account unreported crimes. Even if we take 1/3 of 700,000 we have 233,000 hate crimes. A dozen hoaxes is a drop in the bucket.
In my view the political response to these hoaxes is heavily dependant on social tension in the country in question. The political response would naturally be to appear deeply concerned, but I doubt major changes ever take place.