The police are saying that NYU student John Broderick Hehman's killing wasn't a hate crime at all, and that calls of "Get the white boy!" and "Get whitey!" were just "gratutitous slurs." This prompted Eric Adams, one the founders of 100 Blacks in Law Enforcement Who Care, a fraternal organization for African American police officers, to say:
"When you look at the logic they are using to come to that conclusion, it's really troubling. If the Police Department is saying identifying the race of the victim is merely a description, Mr. Adams said, then "we have to rewrite the current law for bias crimes. The mere fact his race was interjected, the courts have to decide why that was. Our position is it should be out of the hands of the Police Department and in the hands of the courts.'
"All people should be protected under hate crimes legislation," Mr. Adams said. "A white guy can be as much a victim as a black guy."
Either these statutes apply to everyone or no one. As it's being applied now, some people are more equal than others; especially when the utterance of a "gratuitous slur" in the absence of any crime is enough to make to the newspapers these days -- if it's a slur that counts.
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The Mind Of Dare Wright Presents
Whatever, honky.
(is that word in use anywhere, anymore?)
Posted by: Bill from INDC at April 10, 2006 09:34 AMIt all shows the idiocy of hate crime laws - or, as Orwell called them - thought crimes.
Posted by: Juan Paxety at April 10, 2006 10:25 AMAnd Bill, honky is used in this post this very day
http://www.babalublog.com/archives/003179.html
Posted by: Juan Paxety at April 10, 2006 10:27 AMWell, there are reams of people with PhDs in sociology and the like who would absolutely disagree with the idea that beating up someone while yelling about their white skin had anything to do with hate. And not only that, blowing up the London tube is just a protest, not terrorism.
You see, once you concede that thinking that you have the right to do something nasty to someone on the basis of their skin color is wrong, then the need for "hate-crime" laws disappears. You only need "hate-crime" laws when you really don't believe that it's a bad thing for a poor oppressed minority member to conk a member of the oppressor class on the head.
And that's why I contend that people who support hate-crime laws are terrorists themselves. QED.
Posted by: MaxedOutMama at April 10, 2006 01:00 PMIn Canada a vocalization will get you fined for promoting hatred.
http://ottsun.canoe.ca/News/Columnists/Matthews_Geoff/2006/04/06/1522013.html
The only thing that counts is an actual crime, if someone hit somebody, robbed somebody. I could care less whether the perp was enlightened or not when he did it. But if they're going to add penalties and extra jail time for that kind of thing, then it has to be applied across the board.
Posted by: Donnah at April 10, 2006 07:32 PMjust remember, the guys who are carrying the 'reverse hate-crime issue' torch are generally regarded as white-supremist ..by proxy.
Seems like an equal amount of time is being spent
de-qualifying this as a hate crime, as is being
spent on qualifying Rep. McKinney's assailant as
a 'racially motivated' attack.
I think I got the message..but I got it a long time ago.
I wonder if its ok for me to write that 'country and western rap' tune called 'Kill Blackie' now ?
Posted by: csason at April 11, 2006 08:59 AMHe was just guilty of being a SWM in da 'hood. The 'yoots' were just reacting normally to what they percieved as an easy mark even if they were calling him names while he ran for his life... /sarc
Posted by: Gmac at April 11, 2006 10:24 AM