Hate-Crime-Laws-Miss-the-Point
Source: LewRockwell.com
Hate Crime Laws Miss the Point
by Jared Taylor | September 29, 2000
The federal government is at it again, inventing new crimes and taking over police functions the Constitution reserves for the states. The Senate has already passed a new hate crimes bill and the House appears determined to do the same. Language Edward Kennedy and Orrin Hatch slipped into a defense appropriations bill, of all things, would make it easier than ever for the Justice Department to bully the states in the name of “civil rights.” It says the feds can move in whenever they decide a state hasn?t done enough to catch and punish haters. Even if the states are sufficiently zealous, if juries don?t behave the way Janet Reno says they should or if a state judge doesn?t hand down a long enough sentence, Justice can try someone all over again for the same crime – in clear violation of the Constitutional prohibition of double jeopardy. The feds have been doing this for years, of course, but the new law would make it official, easy, and much more common – and it adds homosexuals to the list of protected classes.
Hate crime laws are an abominable, late-20th century invention and federal hate crime laws are even worse. What?s more, if their intent is to promote “tolerance” they completely miss the mark.
First, every single act the proposed bill makes into a federal crime – murder, assault, arson, rape – is already illegal under state law. Forty-eight of the 50 states even have “hate crime” laws of their own. Furthermore, although the justice system has a long and legitimate tradition of adjusting punishment according to intent (did I kill him deliberately or was it an accident?), to punish according to motive is to argue that the thought behind the crime makes it more or less blameworthy.
If I punch someone in the nose because he is black do I deserve more jail time than if I punch someone because he is fat or because he stepped on my shoe? Traditional jurisprudence has always refused to draw distinctions of this kind, and the one famous exception, which permitted lighter punishment for a man who killed his wife if he caught her committing adultery, is now out of fashion. Motive, as opposed to the act itself, is treacherous grounds on which to base punishment, and the current spate of hate crimes legislation at the state level is nothing more than politically correct obeisance to classes of fashionable victims.
To make a federal case out of a hate crime is political correctness on stilts. The federal government should have no interest in whether I punch someone in the nose. Congress is now proposing to give Janet Reno the right to bring the FBI crashing down on me if I punch someone in the nose – though only if I have certain thoughts when I punch him. The thought, not the act, makes it a federal crime.
Finally, although the proponents of hate crimes legislation may think they are battling for civil rights and tolerance, as far as race relations are concerned, hate crimes are nothing compared to the unsung and much grimmer menace of plain old interracial violence.
In 1998, the police reported 9,235 offenses “motivated in whole or in part by bias.” Of this number 6,279 were crimes of racial or ethnic bias. Only 2,117 of these were actual violence – mostly assaults; the rest were what the FBI calls “intimidation.”
These 2,117 crimes were reprehensible and no doubt caused much pain to the victims, but how do they stack up against ordinary interracial violence? We have to go back to 1994 to get good statistics, which come from a massive study called the National Crime Victimization Survey carried out by the Justice Department. In that year the American public reported no fewer than 783,388 completed acts of interracial violence. Of that number 460,266 were multiple-offender crimes, that is, a group of thugs of one race raped, assaulted, robbed or murdered someone of a different race.
What motivated all this violence? For a crime to be classified as hate, it has to be “motivated in whole or in part by bias” and the perpetrator has to make his motive known, usually by using racial slurs. But how many of the 783,388 interracial crimes committed in 1994 were “motivated in whole or in part by bias” but the perpetrators simply said nothing?
Violence is intimate business. You cannot be beaten up or raped from a distance. Given the realities of race in America would it be unreasonable for a person attacked by someone of a different race to wonder whether race had something to do with it? Such suspicions are even more likely in the 490,266 cases of group violence that crossed racial lines. What is the psychological effect on a black man cornered and beaten by whites or on a white woman gang-raped by blacks? Which did more damage to society: the 2,117 violent acts officially labeled as hate crimes or the 783,388 ordinary interracial violent crimes that went essentially unreported? Which should we be more concerned about? If Congress wants to punish crimes that make race relations worse, why not impose greater penalties on all violent crimes that cross racial lines, no matter what the motive?
Whatever the merits of such a proposal, Congress is unlikely even to consider it. That is because blacks commit almost all the interracial crime. No fewer than 93 percent of those nearly 800,000 acts of interracial violence were black-on-white crimes. Given that there are only about one sixth as many blacks as whites in the United States, this means the average black is more than 50 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white than vice versa. This cannot be explained by saying blacks mug whites because they have more money. Only about 45 percent of black-on-white crimes are robberies; the rest are rapes and assaults without monetary motive.
Hate crimes get a lot of attention but it is the far more common but unpublicized ordinary interracial crimes that corrode relations between the races. If these crimes were committed mostly by whites Congress would be after them in full cry. Because the perpetrators are black Congress prefers not to notice.
Jared Taylor is president of New Century Foundation and writes frequently on crime and crime rates.
