Hate Crime = Hard Time, or, You > Me

Since it has been a while since my last post, why not make this one serious? Yeah, I know but sometimes I simply feel the need. This topic is something I've talked about with family and close friends about several times over the years, and it came up on Easter during a talk and I thought I'd share my thoughts on a larger stage. It's very possible that I'll come across as racist or homophobic or something along those lines. I guess there's not getting around that, but take my word that I am not ignorant and I do not hate faceless masses of people simply because they belong to a certain social or ethnic group. I've printed my disclaimer, now I'll get on with it. The topic in question is a law, or laws, commonly referred to as Hate Crimes.

For those who don't read newspapers or watch the NEWS, allow me to define Hate Crime. A hate crime, aka bias motivated crime, is a crime which is specifically targeted at an individual or individuals of a certain social group. Furthermore the perpetrators of these crimes are seeking not only to harm an individual, but also to instill fear and intimidation to other members of the group. There, a concise definition to work with.

Now, the laws associated with Hate Crimes first seek to define malice in the act towards the victim and then to appropriately punish the offender who committed not only a crime, but a crime which is "thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm" (Chief Justice Rehnquist). At this point you may be wondering if I'm about to make the argument for or against this classification of criminal activity. Well for those who read this blog regularly, you could probably guess that it's not going to be for. For the rest, allow me to state my view in no uncertain terms: These laws are un-American and place the rights, and even lives, of certain individuals on a higher plane than others.

Some people will go no further than the adjective un-American and say, "Oh here we go, another gun toting, NASCAR watching, Budweiser swilling redneck from the south trying to get his narrow mind around a much bigger issue." If you're one of those people, good for you. I don't own a gun, I despise NASCAR (check my second ever post on here for more on that), I don't mind Bud Light but I don't like Bud Heavy (as we up here call it) and I'm a New Englander whose mind is far from narrow, fuck you very much. Now that I've got that rebuke out of the way, allow me to continue.

As to the first part of this law, deciding if it was a hate crime or not, it's clear that the only prerequisite would be for the victim to be a minority, gay, or of the opposite gender from the accused. Yeah, I said it. For the second part, the punishment, this is where the un-American comes into play. Essentially, it's like Double Jeopardy. A buzzer goes off, music is played for dramatic effect and a whole new board full of increased penalties take the place of the previous penalties which would have been fine if the guy had only beat on a "normie" like me, but he didn't. The system is, for all intents and purposes, simply a penalty enhancement for people convicted of specifically targeted crimes. If you get in a bar fight with me (a WASP) and call me white trash or cracker or trailer trash, something like this, you're going to go to jail for 16 months. Because you were tougher than me and handed me a beating I may very well have deserved. If you get into a bar fight with a latin immigrant and call him a dirty Mexican, it was a racially motivate beating and you're going to prison for 3-5 years. Because you were tougher than him and handed him a beating her may very well have deserved. I'm making this up but you can see how it works.

So the two major problems I have are these: 1) Any crime committed against someone of an ethnic or sexual minority can easily fall into the Hate Crime category. 2) Why is it worse to beat up or insult or kill a minority than a white boy or girl or anyone NOT covered by the statute?

Example time. A girl is having drinks in a bar with friends and a drunk asshole walks by and grabs her ass. She tells him to cut it out and he grabs it again. She slaps him across the face and then knees him in the groin. What are people going to say? 'Atta girl, way to teach that prick a lesson he won't soon forget. And I wholeheartedly agree, she did the right thing and she should be given a pat on the back and I'd buy her a drink for it. But lets say it was a guy out with buddies having drinks, and a gay guy walks by and grabs his ass. Why would he do that? Maybe he thought the guy was also gay. Maybe it was an accident. Or maybe, he just wanted to fuck with the guy because he thought he could. So the guy tells him to cut it out or he'll kick his ass. The gay guy thinks he's lying, so he grabs his ass again and maybe pulls him towards himself. At this point the straight gentleman makes good on his promise and hands him a solid beating. I say good for him, this was no less an example of sexual harassment than the man grabbing the girl. I'll also say this: if a dude starts touching me and getting all up in my shit, I don't care how gay/straight/big/weak he is, I'm gonna do my best to kick his ass. Ignorant and violent? Maybe. But it's undeniable that few things teach you a quicker, more effective lesson than getting your ass kicked. I promise you that and if you don't believe me go try it. A man can walk around with any explanation he wants, but if your face is bruised and your knuckles aren't, your battle scars will sing the song of your defeat 24/7 until you're humbled or they're gone. Anyway, I say the guy did the right thing to teach a guy walking around conducting himself inappropriately a lesson, the courts say his actions were motivated by a deep seeded hatred and extreme intolerance. Or, maybe he doesn't like guys grabbing his ass.

But of course, the bigger issue here is why certain groups are given what are frequently termed as "special rights". You can argue all you want, but that fact of the matter remains that under Hate Crime jurisdiction, my life may not warrant the same level of reprimand, if taken, as a homosexual, or a black person, or a Jew, etc. The funny thing is, I remember reading a document somewhere that was supposed to be important, and it stated "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal." Not, all men are created equal except men who like other men. Not, all men are created equal unless their ancestors are from a different country. Contradictions of slavery aside (at the time of that document I mean), this country was founded to be a level playing field for all men. I don't care about rich vs poor or any of that bleeding heart shit, not for this argument. What I'm saying here is that our laws are serving to uphold and even strengthen racism, sexism, and every other ism by granting exclusive rights to these individuals. Laws can't make people think a certain way, they can't change biases or prejudices. They can enforce them, which is what I believe Hate Crime laws succeed at doing. But you can't tell a man or woman, Think like this, and expect it to work.

Hate Crimes are a failure of bureaucracy, a weak attempt to bring down walls of division and lessen these barriers by creating laws to point out differences between people. It hasn't worked, it doesn't work, and it never will work. To look at a murder and say, you deserve extra punishment because you did it for the wrong reasons is preposterous. Violent crimes are violent crimes. Of course there was malice, of course there was hatred, of course there was evil at work. These are inherent in the nature of violent crime, why should we classify the act by breaking down the motivations? Is a man dead? It was murder. Premeditated or not, a dead person is dead because of another person's actions. It's completely redundant to say the person was killed because the killer hated them. This is obvious, people do not murder people they don't have any problem with.

Whether you agree or disagree, I invite you to think about the unfair nature of Hate Crime laws. You can claim they're necessary to battle ingorance, but I'd contend that you're ignorant to think this is an effective weapon for that battle. How about this, here's an exercise to test your resolve on this matter. Think of someone you know who would never be considered a victim of a hate crime. Perhaps a young, white, straight, male from a middle class background. Someone close to you. I'll think of myself or a member of my family. Now imagine someone murdering them for any reason at all. They catch the person who murdered them and now you're in court waiting for the verdict. But before it is reached another case has to be concluded. In this case a white man killed a black homosexual man and robbed him. The case had been declared a horrible Hate Crime and the man is sentenced to 35 years to life in a maximum security prison. You feel excited watching this, because you believe your killer will be equally punished, and deservedly so. Then the time comes that they announce his guilt and sentence him, for killing your loved one, to 200 months in prison with the possibility of parole. That's about 16.6 years. But why would his life be deemed only worth of 16 or 17 years if the man just before this one had been given twice that much time for the same offense? Well, to put it frankly, he was in the wrong social group at the wrong time. I'd be very interested to hear a convincing argument that this a fair and valid way to run our legal system.

The Soundtrack of our Lives

So a couple nights ago on my way home from work (commute of about 40 mins) it occurred to me that maybe it was time for a new CD. I've had the same 6 in my changer for months now. Actually...in a strange twist of fate this idea came about because I was listening to a new CD. Allow me to explain.

On Friday night a few of my friends and I went to Hooters. For the food, of course; they make a mean buffalo chicken sandwich. Nah, I'm kidding, we went to see if there were any hot new waitresses because we hadn't been in a while. But we told the girls we went with that we were going because they make a mean buffalo chicken sandwich. Anyway, there was a local radio station doing giveaways at the restaurant. And because I'm a winner, I won. Also...pretty much everyone else at Hooters won too. There was a large assortment of useless items and under a t-shirt I saw a CD. Since I'm not in the habit of wearing sweet one size fits all shirts with radio station logos on them, I grabbed it. Anyway, I was psyched because it was a band I'd actually heard of and I really liked some of their stuff.

I'm going to make a long story short here and say that I put the disc in my player in my car and listened to the entire thing. Perhaps suffered through is a more appropriate way to phrase it. Knowing that a lot of times it takes me a couple of times to really like a new CD, I even listened to the whole thing a second time. After the final song came to an end for the second time I realized why that CD had been on the table to give away. It sucks. A lot. A really, really lot. I'm not going to say who the band was (Silverchair) or what the CD was called (Young Modern), but if you somehow know which one I'm talking about, avoid it like the plague.

After being dismayed at the incredible shitfest that my new CD turned out to be, I thought maybe I should just make one of my own for the first time in a while. So I got online, made a tentative list of songs I'd like to have on my disc, and got to work narrowing it down and putting the songs in order so that it flowed properly. Oh, and then I illegally downloaded every last one of them. Go to hell Lars Ulrich. Pleased with myself, I put the CD in my car the next morning and drove to work. I was completely unprepared for the aural orgasm I was about to experience. And experience it I did. Such was magical, musical journey, that by the time I got to work I was actually excited to be there. Excited to start my day. At this point I feel it pertinent to explain that I am not a morning person and it takes me a good 20 minutes to warm up after showing up at work. After those 20 minutes pass, you are welcome to talk to me. Just don't expect too much, because I'm probably still not in a great mood.

So I got to work excited, but it faded throughout the day and just as I thought I would fall asleep it was lunchtime. So I hopped in my car to go grab a bite and much to my delight, my CD was still raging. So I listened to it on the way to the store and then listened to it on the way back and I'll be damned if I wasn't just as psyched about life getting back to work as I had been in the morning. This was no mere CD, it was a soundtrack crafted by the music gods.

I have since listened to the CD a couple more times and each time I get out of my car looking like I just banged Jessica Alba. Alright, the CD's not THAT good. But maybe...like I'd just banged Ashley Simpson. She's not drop dead gorgeous, and you know you aren't planting a flag, but still, she's famous enough to make it exciting. I'm not sure how long the magic will last, but I'll enjoy it while it does. When it does fade, I'll still have a damn good mixed CD that works equally well for long drives by myself or rocking out with a group of friends. I'm sure a lot of people consider this a trivial matter, one not worth noting. But it's the little things that get us through the days and weeks, small victories. Music is a huge part of my life because it provides me with a soundtrack to live by. Few things can incite fits of nostalgia like a song you haven't heard in a decade. They bring you right back. And if I managed to create a soundtrack out of thin air (so to speak) for this point in my life that also has the power to uplift me, maybe that isn't such a small victory after all.

Quick Announcement

Just a quick post here to announce that I'm now listed on VerveEarth. I was contacted by a member of the team for the website and after checking it out I was impressed with what I saw. Basically its a site that is attempting to create a map of the internet by listing interesting sites by location on a map of the world. I recommend checking it out, there's a link to the right on this page.