(I originally found this story on Stephanie’s Journal.)
Two men, Dustin Evans and Jeremy Sweat, have been arrested in Clarendon county, South Carolina accused of a vicious attack on a 15 year old girl. Here is the story,
Investigators say inside the mobile home, the victim was choked and had her neck cut with a knife before she was repeatedly raped by the two men.
They then forced her into a shower, told her to turn around and began stabbing her. The teenager fell into the bathtub and played dead.
She played dead and overheard the men talking about getting some trash bags and dumping her body in a lake. That’s when her attackers left.
Then she ran away, climbing over the back fence to get help next door. Oather Webster tells what happened next, “I could hear somebody stumbling and banging on the wall as they were going down the porch.”
The girl was soaked in blood and pounding on Webster’s house, begging to be let in, “I had this blood-soaked figure come bolting in the house.” (WIS 10, Columbia, SC)
It is rather amazing that this young woman had the presence of mind to get away from these guys given the severity of the attack. Further interviews with the suspects also lead authorities to connect them to another attack on a 45 year old Black woman, and after the publicity of the case some local Black women came forward and said that had been approached as well.
The local authorities believe that the crime was a hate crime,
Jeremy Sweat, 24, who is white, told officers two days after the July 3 incident that the victim, a black female, was “someone society wouldn’t care about, wouldn’t be missed,” said Lt. Tommy Burgess of the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Department.
Sweat and another suspect also are charged in connection with the June 20 kidnapping and rape of a 45-year-old Summerton woman who is black.
Burgess said the department has classified both sexual assaults as hate crimes, according to criteria set up under the National Incident-Based Reporting System, a voluntary national crime database.
However, the hate crime charge will carry no legal consequence because South Carolina does not have a hate crime statute.
You can read more about this case at Clarendon Today..
Pingback: Creative Destruction
Pingback: Stephanie's Journal
Pingback: Steve Sailer Sucks
I don’t think she’s remarkable. I think fifteen-year-old girls are a lot more intelligent and resourceful than the culture paints them as. As a matter of fact, when guys whine about how they get portrayed in the media, they have nothing to complain about when compared to how teenage girls get slammed as slutty, shallow, illiterate, vain, stupid, and vicious. They’re not granted any innocence or intelligence. That said, she was faced with a terrorist situation, and she came out alive. She deserves a frickin’ medal.
What boggles my mind about this story is the absence of acknowledgment that ALL male-female (and some male-male) rapes are hate crimes – not just when the rapist is white and the victim is black (or part of another oppressed group). Rape is a powerful tool of patriarchy used for centuries to perpetuate male supremacy through terrorising half the world’s population. Patriarchy makes for unequal relationships of power between men and women, and rape and the fear of rape is a tool to ensure male dominance. What woman hasn’t been taught to fear rape? What woman hasn’t actually had an experience where, even for a moment, she has been afraid of actually being raped? Rape and racism combine, to be sure, as evidenced in the increasing use of rape as a means of genocide in wartorn areas. But really, male-female rape is about perpetuating the dominance of men over women. Rape is always a tool of gender oppression, and although it can also be a tool of race oppression, disability oppression, homosexual/bisexual oppression, etc., we should not neglect understanding that male-female rape where the rapist and the victim are of the same race is also a hate crime.
Because hating women isn’t considered hating women; it’s considered their just desserts for their sins.
Thinking Girl said, “Rape is a powerful tool of patriarchy used for centuries to perpetuate male supremacy through terrorising half the world’s population. Patriarchy makes for unequal relationships of power between men and women, and rape and the fear of rape is a tool to ensure male dominance.”
I agree with that. Unfortunately, there is not a state in the union that considers rape a hate crime.
On another note, the rape is not considered a hate crime because it was interracial. The police/district attorney has to proof that the motive for the rape was bias, but South Carolina doesn’t have ANY hate crimes statutes
The laws are different in different states. In mine, hate crimes are considered enhancements to other crimes, and add an additional 10 years to the sentence per count if found by a jury to be true.
Most of the cases in my county which carry hate crime enhancements are actually gang shootings between Black and Latino gangs, whether it is gang members of those races that are killed or injured or (mostly) other non-gang members. Gang shootings in my area involve racial animosity much much more than turf, business enterprise or animosity between individual gangs. If a Latino gang member shoots a Black gang member or non-gang member and kills them, they might be charged with murder with enhancements involving gangs, firearms and hate crimes.
They don’t do nearly enough aggressive prosecution of hate crimes by White Supremacists, which in my region are still referred to as “groups” not gangs even though they fit the legal criteria for being a gang.
No, of course there is not a legal recognition of rape as a hate crime (not in Canada, where I live, either). Most rapists spend less than 10 years in jail! I remember in my history class in junior high that rape used to be a capital offense (at least in Canada; we didn’t learn any US history so I can’t speak to that). Interesting how at the time when women were considered to be the property of men – either father or husband – rape was taken much more seriously. It was considered to be a crime not against the woman, but against her father/husband. And notice the difference between historical Western ideas about rape and the model still applied in parts of the less-developed world where the woman is the one blamed for a sexual violation, and honour killings still take place because men who rape are so untouchable.
This is interesting, though, what Radfem says. If there is a precedent legally that hate crimes can be prosecuted as tag-ons to other crimes, it could be argued that hate crimes could be applied to rape. I wonder if some brave feminist lawyer might be willing to give that a go one day if given the chance.
As for hate crimes being tagged to other crimes, with or without a state statute, I believe the answer is yes. The accused can be tried and convicted separately in federal court.
I knew a former skinhead (whose prison term quite cured him of that mental illness) who had, as a young man, committed a racially-motivated crime: he’d beaten up a guy who had committed the offense of being Jewish, causing permanent injury.
He served a sentence in the state prison for the aggravated battery. He then served another couple of years in a federal prison for, as he put, “violating the rights of a citizen.” That is, a civil rights violation, also known as a hate crime.
Whether to charge these guys separately is, I assume, up to the discretion of the federal prosecutor, who may need to wait for a state conviction before proceeding. I’m no lawyer, but this seems likely to me.
It also seems, given the broad description of “violating the rights of citizens” charge, that some US Attorney could make that charge in any rape case. I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for such a charge under the current DoJ leadership.
Preface: This is an EXPLANATION. Not a POSITION.
The reason that rape is not considered a “hate crime” is that a crimes are different from each other. So if every rape is a hate crime, then there’s no need to legallybother with the “hate crime” stuff–you can simply amend the existing sentences/procedures for rape. That doesn’t mean it’s not a crime of hate. It just means that you don’t need a separate charge.
I think, BTW, that you may be getting confused by the difference between a common lingo and the legal term. “hate crime” isn’t as simple as “committing a crime against someone you hate.” It usually involves proof that the hatred was motivated by a specifically barred set of factors (e.g. racial hatred). I’m not sure if
Hate crime tagons are most often used when the underlying issue is less serious than rape. For example, assault might not get you much jail time, so they supplement it with a hate crime. You’re screwed if you get found guilty of murder, so (depending on how the statute is written) it may not be “worth it” to go for a hate crime add-on.
I think a feminist D.A. could possibly go for a hate crime rape conviction if the statutes allowed it.
Personally, I find hate crime statutes pretty distasteful. They seem to enable the worst kind of selective enforcement of the ‘majority view’ and use criminal sanctions to do them. I’m also quite uncomfortable with some other legal aspects of hate crimes.
For those who are interested, here is an example of some selected Masachussets statutes on hate crimes, conveniently copied from Westlaw:
“Whoever commits an assault or a battery upon a person or damages the real or personal property of a person with the intent to intimidate such person because of such person’s race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or disability…”
“”Hate crime”, any criminal act coupled with overt actions motivated by bigotry and bias including, but not limited to, a threatened, attempted or completed overt act motivated at least in part by racial, religious, ethnic, handicap, gender or sexual orientation prejudice, or which otherwise deprives another person of his constitutional rights by threats, intimidation or coercion, or which seek to interfere with or disrupt a person’s exercise of constitutional rights through harassment or intimidation. Hate crime shall also include, but not be limited to, acts that constitute violations of sections thirty-seven and thirty-nine of chapter two hundred and sixty-five, section one hundred and twenty-seven A of chapter two hundred and sixty-six and chapter two hundred and seventy-two.”
Christ, Sailorman, why don’t you vague that up a bit?
A hate crime is directed at that part of an individual which they cannot change, and upon which numerous stereotypes by the majority are based. So your idea that hate crime legislation is somehow the tyranny of the majority is exactly wrong: it’s the minority fighting back against the unjust biases of the majority. I mean, where’s the concern about the gay panic defense, where a straight guy gets to whine that he feels so horrible upon being hit on by a gay guy that he loses his mind and kills? It’s not an excuse allowed to women by en.
A hate crime is directed at that part of an individual which they cannot change
Like their religion, or their anatomical gender…
I think your definition doesn’t work.
“Jeremy Sweat, 24, who is white, told officers two days after the July 3 incident, that the victim, a black (15-year-old girl) female, was “someone society wouldn’t care about, wouldn’t be missed”, said Lt. Tommy Burgess of the Clarendon County Sheriff’s Department.”
That this thing that walks upright and calls it self a man, this raper of a 15-year-old minor, would say this, says alot about many people’s views on the value and worth of black women in this country, or lack thereof. This devaluation of the worth of black women, this racist thought of thinking did not occur in a vacuum. It started when black women were brought to this country against their will, with the rapes of black women on slave ships, the rapes of black women during slavery, the rapes of black women during Jim Crow segregation, all the way up to the 1970s.
Raped and impregnated by white masters, the master’s sons, the white overseers, and any white man who came to the plantation, sex for black women became something to dread and hate. White men began their lies of myth and distortion of the black woman’s sexuallity, lies they told over and over again to assuage their guilt for debasing an entire race of women. After centuries of raping black women,white proclaimed to the world that black women, they the victims of excess sexual abuse, were the promiscuous and wanton whores. That black women were inherently sexually aggressive and morally unchaste. That black women were morally lax and hyper-sexual. With these lies building generation after generation, how could they, the white men who started these hated lies about the sexual morals of black women, be faulted if they raped a black woman? How could any white man be blamed for raping a sexually wanton species of former property? These beliefs put down strong and deep roots. Over eighty years after the end of slavery, the white anti-lynching activist Jesse Daniel Ames would remark on the continuing influence exerted by the mythology of black female lasciviousness:
“White men have said over and over…that not only was there no such thing as a chaste Negro woman–but that a Negro woman could not be assaulted, that it was never against her will.”
At the beginning of and all the way through the middle of the last century, the rape of a black woman carried with it none of the harshness or punitive legislation that the rape of a white woman by a black man carried. And white men knew this and raped black women with impunity, knowing that they would not be given and public or legal condemnations for it:
“Southern whites saw to it that blacks had no alternative to the brutal reality of sharecropping. Their control extended to every area of life; white rape of black women was endemic, like heat and humidity, and victims had no recourse to the justice system. Winson Hudson, a movement leader born in Harmony, Mississippi, in the 1920s, recalls:
“Back then, white boys would rape you and then come and destroy the family if you said anything about it. You would just have to accept it. They were liable to come in and run the whole family off. I couldn’t walk the roads at anytime alone for fear I might meet some white man or boy. I couldn’t walk the street without some white man winking his eye or making some sort of sound. It made me so angry because I had five brothers, and I heard my father almost daily warn them against walking near a white girl or looking at them or going near a house unless they knew that white men were there too.”
“The End of Blackness”, by Debra Dickerson.
Rape of little black girls was not unheard of either:
“I shall never forget this, and this is something nobody ever knew because we don’t tell it. I wouldn’t tell it now because it’s painful, it will be painful even to tell it, but with what you are doing, I’ll tell it. Some Sunday mornings we would get a mule and five or six of us would get the wagon…and go about six miles away to see my Uncle Chilton. Like I said, my sister was about nine or ten. Of course, I was driving, and she was sitting in the wagon. So we went by this house where these white guys were out there playing ball. I guess it was eight guys probably about 18, 19, 20 something like that.
“One of those white guys ran and jumped on the wagon. He said, “I’m going to ride with you, I’m going to ride.” We were going by this house …and he got on the back of the wagon, and he was riding with us. When we got to the house, he took the mule from me and stopped the mule at the house, took the wagon from me and tied the mule to a tree in the yard. Then he made my sister get out and go in the house with him.
“He raped my sister.
“Like I said, she was about nine at that time.”
Stine George and her little brother ran away and hid in the woods. Afterwards, they saw their sister driving the wagon by the wooded area they had hid in. She tells the rest of the incident that transpired:
“So about the time we got halfway back to Gum Branch, almost back where we could see the house, we heard the wagon going back down that road, running. See, what he had done, after he raped my sister, he told her to get into the wagon and go home. So she was driving the wagon and she went on home. She went by the house where my dad was, and all of them got out…They were alarmed. So finally they (the parents) had her…They finally called the sheriff, and of course, he didn’t do nothing. He did arrest this guy. We finally came out of the woods, and then we went back down to the house, and we didn’t have anymore trouble out of them, but they never didn’t, never do nothing to that guy for what he did.”
“Remembering Jim Crow: African-Americans Tell About Life in the Segregated South”, by William Chafe, et. al.
Rape was a daily assault upon black women and with the racist myths proclaimed by white men, and with the widespread societal devaluation of black women in American society, the idea of this man making this statement is of no surprise to me.
When, and if these two women even see this come to trial, it would not surprise me if the defense tears them apart on the witness stand. It would not surprise me if they are made out to be the ones who somehow brought this all on themselves.
After all, America’s degrading disrespect towards black women in a society that disregards their beauty and intrinsic worth would probably not give these two women their day of justice in court.
It very well may prove me wrong.
But, I remain in serious doubt that these two women will get the justice they deserve.
After all, they are just black women.
Hate crime tag ons are distinct from federal civil rights violation prosecutions. To the extent that all rapes might reasonably be considered hate crimes, an add on doesn’t makes sense, since the hate crime aspect should simply be rolled into the general penalty. To the extent that different rapes have different motives, and some are more explicitly and directly motivated by hatred towards women, it would make sense to use add ons. Add ons or not, it would make sense to prosecute rapists for the federal crime of “violating the rights of a citizen” as well as for the state crime of rape.
And Sailorman, I agree with Ginmar, that was the vaguest explaination of why you don’t like hate crime laws that you could possibly give, short of “I don’t like them cause their bad.”
Hate crime laws make the harassment and intimidation of the group to which the victim belongs that is an aspect of the motivation of hate crimes an explicitly punishable offense. A violent crime that is intended to intimidate all black people, or women or jews is a worse crime (in that it inflicts and addtional harm on a large group of people, and that it inflicts additional harm on the specific victims) than a personally or economically motivated crime. While their actual application may end up being arbitrary or backwards, the basic concept certainly seems like a good one (to the extent that any aspect of our brutal criminal justice system, which values only punishment and the hope of deterence and cares almost nothing for reform, can).
Well, Robert, that settles it, you have issued your pronouncement from On High. I realize guys like to whine that ‘U feminists all hate us because we have penises!” but the fact is, women get attacked just for being women.
Ann, your comment was stunning except for one phrase: to assuage the guilt they felt. I don’t believe for one damned minute they felt guilt. I think they feel outrage that they’re inconvenianced on behalf of women they regard as subhuman. They only feel guilt if they hurt a white person. To them a black woman is a dumb animal, some(thing) one to be consumed and dismissed, and she is impertinant if she expects anything better. Guilt? They spread these lies for their own conveniance and that of other men, to weave a web that is utterly inescapeable. Once that foundation is in space, it’s not enough to fight on behalf of individual women, but to destroy utterly the whole structure. Every lie about every rape of every raped women is a plank in that construction, a strand of the web, a block in the foundation. Some lies are more accepted than others about some women, but all women are lied about, and the most pernicious lie comes when women tell the simple truth: that it’s male projection to say that women lie as a whole, when men’s lies prop up their world.
ginmar/charles:
Please understand that as a lawyer I tend to view these things from a legal theory perspective. There’s a fair bit of debate in the legal community as to whether hate crime addons are a good thing or a bad thing; I come down on the “bad thing” side but I’m well aware the other position is an extremely strong one. I cannot link here to Westlaw papers or most journals (I don’t think the link will work for you) but if you are interested in the legal arguments for and against things I could probably put together a few cites for you.
In extremely simple terms: The argument for hate crime addons is primarily that they provide society a way to gauge immorality, and punish/deter behavior which it finds most immoral or repugnant. This in theory, “worse” behavior gets a greater punishment.
The argument against hate crimes does not really dispute the statement above. Rather, it focuses mostly on the process by which hate crime must be enforced. It is more difficult to summarize this position concisely, and I cannot easily to do here. The protests are made in a variety of areas including predictability, bias, evidentiary issues, rights and power of the judiciary vs. the prosecution, etc.
My personal belief is that the ‘process problems’ currently outweigh the benefits. Like many similar subjects which are debated, the “correct” answer derives primarily from the value which you place on each of the multiple factors which are helped/harmed by the existence of hate crime statutes.
Hope that answers your question…
Sailorman, I don’t care. I don’t care about theory I care about how anybody could disconnect themselves from this case and talk about theory. Oh, wait, that’s right. Your chances of getting raped in any way, shape or form are minimal, so of course it’s a theory to you.
No, ginmar, I’ve issued my pronouncement from down low. You’re the one who made a “pronouncement” about what hate crimes are; I’m just pointing out that your definition isn’t consistent with the facts.
Yes, women get attacked just for being women. That’s part of the problem of hate crime – not the whole of it. Your oppression is real; it also isn’t the universe. Deal.
Robert, the day I take you seriously is the day after that lobotomy. You don’t get to tell me to do any damned thing at all.
Ginmar:
1) It’s hardly an anti-feminist perspective to think theory is important. See, for instance, MacKinnon’s defense of theory in her most recent book. The connection you suggest – that only men, who are unlikely to be raped, could ever have an interest in theory – is nonsensical, and also an ad hom.
2) Are you trying to make Robert look good? Because that’s certainly the impact when Robert makes a perfectly sensible argument – such as his argument in #10 – and you respond by insulting him rather than discussing the issue.
3) Please try harder to attack other people’s arguments, not other people, when posting on “Alas.”
It’s close, admittedly, but I don’t see where this can be clearly labelled a racist crime. Yes, the attackers said “the victim, a black female, was ‘someone society wouldn’t care about, wouldn’t be missed,’”. But why did they think she was someone that society wouldn’t care about? Her race could be one factor, but then so could her income (I’m presuming they were a low-income family since they lived in a mobile home), or a perception of her and her family’s social station, or other factors. If they’d made a specifically racist statement, I’d be on board. But I haven’t seen one cited above. And I could imagine a black rapist making the same comment about her.
I’m a death penalty opponent, but this kind of thing strains my principles.
I come down on the “bad thing” side on hate crimes, myself. As stated above, it’s damn hard to establish a state of mind regarding such crimes, and in any case I think the best solution is to increase the punishment for the crime regardless of the motivation for it.
I do find thinking girls position that all rapes are based on hate something worth thinking about. I’m going to roll it around some and see where I come out.
Thinking Girl said:
(and some male-male) rapes are hate crimes
Now, why would all male rapes of females be hate crimes, but only some male rapes of males hate crimes?
Presumably for a similar reason that “I could imagine a black rapist making the same comment about her” is, in your view, somehow a situation that would exclude racism. Just as you implied that it’s impossible for a black rapist to use racism against a black victim, the comment you’re responding to implies that male rapists do not use hatred of men against male victims.
In both cases, I think the argument is mistaken.
Also, I think the implicit standard endorsed in your “racism? what racism?” post – that our default assumption should be that racism isn’t present unless there’s irrefutable evidence to the contrary – is a formula that would lead to sweeping a lot of racism under the rug, rather than addressing it.
You’re missing my point, Amp, and I notice you didn’t tell Robert to not tell me what to do.
Theory is theory to these guys because they don’t live it. They can play devil’s advocate and talk about abstractions and all that crap, but they don’t live it. They can get vague and brush off the reality of centuries of hatred and whether THIS form of penetration or THAT form of violation meets the definition of expressed hatred, because lacking those orofices or that low place on the social stepladder it’s all just a theory to them.
A fifteen-year-old black girl got raped by white guys in a country with more of a history of slavery than it does of freedom, and the vast majority of those slaveowners were white men. Now we’ve got guys talking about theory and why, really, this particular case doesn’t demonstrate hatred aptly enough, it’s got to come with a signed confession or some such shit.
If rape isn’t hatred, I don’t know what is. These guys made it clear. Waht’s also clear is that there are supposedly decent guys who just don’t want to look at rape as a act of hatred, so they make it abstract. Well, it’s not abstract to women.
Your point again?
gilmar,
if you want to be pissed, go right ahead. But it seems that you’re misinterpreting things here, which suggests that the person you’re pissed at doesn’t actually exist. SO maybe there’s not a need to get annoyed at all…
Nobody here is saying rape isn’t an act of hatred in general. Some people are merely debating whether the evidence we have seeon on this rape means we can conclude BEYOND a reasonable doubt (remember this is a criminal case) that the hatred was motivated by her race.
And personally, it gets old to have people ripping on theory. You know one way that really, really, bad laws get passed? You know–the kinds of laws people hate later? A lot of the time, they get passed by a bunch of self-righteous folks who think that considering the wider view of theory is too “intellectual” or too “living for the moment” to interfere with their pet cause. Good laws take thought. And theory.
Actually, since South Carolina doesn’t have a hate crime law (and because none of us are actually sitting in a jury hearing this case) beyond a reasonable doubt is a completely irrelevant standard to this discussion. Furthermore, it is completely unjustified to assume that the entirety of the evidence on which it was judged to be a hate crime is included in this post. So the argument that we shouldn’t view this as a racist hate crime because we just don’t know enough to conclude beyond a reasonable doubt that the crime was motivated by racist hatred is very much a “racism what racism” argument.
On the question of hate crime laws, I can accept that your view (Sailorman) is that hate crime laws are sufficiently badly designed and arbitrarily enforced (which is what I take you to be saying) that they are worse than useless, but it seems to me that if you are unable to explain to a lay audience why you feel this to be the case, then your opinion on the subject is not very interesting. “Well, I’m a lawyer, so I know lots more than you do about this,” may be true, but it is not a useful or interesting argument (and my ghod, the things people claiming to be experts on the law have claimed on Alas gives us little reason to trust that the statement is true).
I could explain it. But (as I said) it will be quite long, and reasonably complex, which is why I offered journal cites if people were actually interested. There’s no need for me to laboriously type paragraphs when you can take 20 seconds and find some stuff through Google. Not to mention that some people here (gilmar, for example) are apparently annoyed by theory anway, so why subject them to great analysis?
Google “arguments against hate crime statutes” and read a few papers if you’re interested. Then email me if you want to argue some more. But I don’t feel like retyping them here.
And sailorman, it gets old that every thread you enter into, which are dealing with real lives and real experiences, you want to turn into a hypothetical or a theory driven diatribe. Get over yourself already. Your hard-on for theory doesn’t get to trump the facts of this case/situation.
It’s scary how you can turn every real experience by a woman into a theory. Talk about disembodiment!
You’ve set a precedent here with your posts, don’t try to be coy and dodge the bullets heading your way. If you want to be respected here, try not to derail every thread into a “but what about Sailorman!” drivel fest.
IOW, neither Ginmar nor I mind theory.
What we mind is men using theory to erase facts and hide them behind useless discourse and ego massaging.
Sailerman, this contradicts your earlier claim that you didn’t think the stuff you’re referring to is available for free to the general public: “I cannot link here to Westlaw papers or most journals (I don’t think the link will work for you)…”
Furthermore, googling for arguments against hate crime laws will mostly result in thousands of repeats of the same basic arguments RonF outlined in post #20.
It’s not our job to find links and citations to support your position, and no one has asked you to “retype” anything. If you have such links – or if they’re as easy to google as you’re now implying, contrary to your earlier claim – then post the links here.
If you’re not willing to do that, then you can cease to defend your position at this time, in this thread. There’s no rule that says you have to argue, after all; if you feel that defending your position takes too much time and trouble, then don’t defend your position, but don’t complain about our unwillingness to do your work for you, either.
I ain’t a lawyer, but I don’t think we should have laws about hate crimes. It is the act of the crime that is reprehensible, not whether the crime occurred because of prejudice, stupidity, whatever. Judges and juries have been weighing the motives of criminals for a long time, and they should be able to keep doing it without legislation that makes some _thoughts_ more criminal than others.
Essentially, I think hate crime laws are a violation of the First Amendment. They take something that is not criminal: hating a certain minority/class/etc and then using that to compound criminal sentencing. It is not illegal to hate women. It is illegal to rape women. If a person is on trial for raping a woman, it should not matter that he hated all women. He should be punished for the one illegal act, not his legal thoughts.
In order to prevent this thread from being digressed even further (even though I know I’ve been as guilty as anyone of digressing it!), I’ve created a new post for discussing hate crime statutes. That post is here.
Also, I think the implicit standard endorsed in your “racism? what racism?” post – that our default assumption should be that racism isn’t present unless there’s irrefutable evidence to the contrary – is a formula that would lead to sweeping a lot of racism under the rug, rather than addressing it.
There’s a difference between saying, “Racism might be involved here” and saying “Racism was involved here.” The former addresses the possibility of racism being involved. The latter presumes it’s involved. It seems sensible to me to consider that racism might be involved in this, but the headline seems to assert that it’s proven, which I dispute.
I’m not saying that the default assumption (in a moral sense, not a courtroom sense) should be that racism is not present unless it’s provable. I’m saying that in a situation where racism might be present there should be no default assumption at all.
Asserting racism as a fact when it actually turns out to be reasonably disputable does not further the cause of fighting racism, since it calls into question all assertions of racism by such people. If you say “Look at this rape; the rapist may well have been motivated by racism, this should be examined/investigated”, you don’t make an unprovable assertion, but you still bring into the open the question of racism. That’s not sweeping it under the rug.
If the headline was “15 year old survives possibly racist rape and attempted murder”, I’d have no problem with it at all. And it still raises the question of racism.
Jesus, what do you guys require? A signed confession? I swear to God, this is the kind of shit that makes me reluctant to post here. Let’s just give the theoretical benefit of the doubt to the racist scumbags who picked a fifteen year old after expressing racist sentiments. Hm, could there be a connection? I bet that you could prove racism and these guys would still argue that sexism isn’t proved by the fact of rape, like some racists aren’t sexist, either. Once these guys cross the pale and actively espouse racist sentiments and commit racist acts, they’re not trustworthy period.
I’ve seen the same hairs get split on semantics when a Black man gets threats and then wakes up to “Die N—–” spraypainted along with swastikas on the walls of his home and car. Or, when a Black man is chased by known members of a racist skinhead gang, suffering injuries from knives and bottles. White people are in denial about hate crimes because unless they are a victim of racism by proxy, they do not experience them first hand and are very often the perpetrators.
Listen to a victim of a hate crime if you can for five minutes without inserting the sanctimonious “I realize that but…” and you might get some idea about what they entail, and how they impact individuals and members of the target group, whether it be a race, religion, sexual orientation, etc.
There just seems to be this pervasive misunderstanding that hate crimes are thought crimes.
Ginmar, what were the racist sentiments that these animals expressed? “someone society wouldn’t care about, wouldn’t be missed”? There’s a lot of contexts for that comment that have nothing to do with race. Were there any comments at all, of any nature, where these guys mentioned race?
Radfem, I hope you’re not assuming I don’t know enough about the subject and need to “listen” more (and, it is assumed, adopt your viewpoint) merely because I disagree with you…
There just seems to be this pervasive misunderstanding that hate crimes are thought crimes.
There’s no definition of a “thought crime”. But this is pretty close:
For pretty much all crimes, there are only a few thoughts that matter.
1) Did you know what you were doing?
2) Did you intend to do it?
3) Did you know it was a crime? (often irrelevant; ignorance is not an excuse)
And even those aren’t always relevant–for some crimes, “did you do it?” is ALL that matters, thoughts be damned.
“Why did you do it?” is not usually relevant other than self-defense and some other assorted issues. It might be relevant for sentencing, if the judge thinks you’re unusually assholish. But it doesn’t define the CRIME ITSELF.
Hate statutes make you eligible for a new statute based on what you were thinking at the time of the underlying crime. The statutes criminalize the “why”. They make a very specific category of thoughts “more criminal” than other thoughts. That’s why some people call them “thought crimes.”
RonF, if you tried any harder, you’d be a fucking fossil. Why don’t you divert some of that energy toward the problem, rather than avoiding it?
I’m not your fuckin’ mommy. I’m not gonna draw pictures for you. Get a feckin’ clue. You’re an adult? Then start acting like one.
Please understand that as a lawyer I tend to view these things from a legal theory perspective.
With all due respect, it’s not a very *good* legal-theory perspective. The ‘some people consider them thought crimes’ is ridiculous, when you realize that we already criminalize certain ‘thoughts’, in the form of intent. You’re claiming that hate crime is different, because it goes to motive. I assume you’re aware that there are already crimes where we look to motive: the obvious example is assault, where the motive is to put another person in fear of harm. That’s separate from the intent. If I deliberately say “I’m going to kill you,” I intended to say that–but if I said it because it was a line in a play, that’s different than if I walked up to you on the street and intentionally said it with the motive of putting you in fear of your life.
Hate crimes would be ‘thought crimes’ if merely holding hateful opinions were criminal; it isn’t. The reason for hate crimes is the recognition that the harm done goes beyond the mere act, and is caused by the bad actor’s motive. A KKK member who burns a cross on a black family’s lawn is not simply polluting the air or damaging their lawn; the intent is to intimidate and frighten, and not just that family, but black people in general. The harm goes beyond some burned grass.
As for fear of selective prosecution, you’d really have to argue that, say, prosecutors would eagerly punish those who beat up Jews, but would turn their backs on a gang of Hispanics who beat up a white guy. Other than your gut feeling, I really don’t see any evidence that this would be the case. And if it were, the problem is not the hate-crime laws.
mythago, you are absolutely correct regarding the intent of cross-burning. As I’ve mentioned in another thread, however, I wonder whether under many circumstances building a fire of any size in someone’s yard might be construed as attempted (or negligence leading up to) arson or attempted murder/manslaughter. In other words, the threat to the safety of the people involved is in the act itself as well as any further acts it may symbolize.
Regarding selective prosecution; I cannot quote or give links to specific stories. But anecdotally based on my memory, there have been at least a few crimes of blacks against whites where the criminal has expressed racism connected with the crime, only to have the prosecutors refuse to bring hate crime charges.
As far as “the problem is not the hate crime laws” in such a scenario, I would tend to agree with you. But IIRC, one of the reasons the Supreme Court overturned all then-existing capital punishment statutes in the 70’s was not the content of the laws themselves, but the fact that they were being unjustly used. Proportionately far more death sentences were being handed out to minorities than to whites. So there is precedent for calling a law unconstitutional, at any rate, based on the pattern of it’s enforcement. This was overcome in those juristictions that now have capital punishment laws by including a mechanism for ensuring that they were fairly and evenly enforced. Something similar might be needed for hate crime charges.
You know, it’s weird that even with an interracial rape case you have people going, “But where’s the racism?” People just don’t want to see hate crimes, and the ones that don’t want to see hatred are the ones that don’t have to deal with it.
In other words, the threat to the safety of the people involved is in the act itself as well as any further acts it may symbolize.
I’m sorry, Ron, but you’re really reaching here. Arson is burning a building, not a cross; you’d have a hard time showing attempted murder if all you could prove was ‘they set fire to a cross to scare these people’. You’re also forgetting that the threat of hate crimes is not just to the intended target, but to people like them. When the KKK burned crosses, it wasn’t done merely to scare off one family; it was a threat to everyone like them and everyone who might have taken their side.
But anecdotally based on my memory, there have been at least a few crimes of blacks against whites where the criminal has expressed racism connected with the crime, only to have the prosecutors refuse to bring hate crime charges.
And since this is anecdote and based on your memory, we have no way of disproving your claim, and no way of checking whether the prosecutors refused to bring charges for some other reason–for example, lacking sufficient evidence, or the evidence of the racist intent being unreliable or inadmissible in court. Handy, that.
# mythago Writes:
With all due respect, it’s not a very *good* legal-theory perspective.
It is difficult to answer that within the constraints of the no-personal comments. but legal theory is fairly complex, and your inability to recognize it as “good” or “sensible” or “not good” is in all likelihood due to a lack of training and knowledge in the field, not due to the actual theory. You might not believe me–that much is obvious–but your comment is as silly as it would be if I attacked a branch of feminist or race theory based solely on a layman’s perspective of what they were saying.
You keep trying to simplify it–things “seem simple” to you apparently, but they’re really quite complex. Which isn’t really a problem, other that you don’t seem that interested in understanding HOW they’re complex, or WHY they’re complex.
I don’t mind explaining things to you, if you ask. but it gets pretty tiring, actually, to write a reasonably complex explanation (it is not that easy to simplify the topic) and have it dismissed as “ridiculous.” If you’re going to argue that your opponents stance is “ridiculous” it is helpful, usually, to have more backing than you appear to possess.
Sailor,
That was seriously condescending. You know Mythago is a lawyer too, yes?
Sailor, I have to agree. That was incredibly condescending, based on entirely unjustified assumptions about Mythago’s background, and an ad hom argument as well.
Yes, in retrospect I realize it was. i’d edit/delete it if I could, though that option is not available here.
Sorry, mythago: i was in an unusually bad mood for reasons unrelated to the blog, and it spilled over into my post.
Occam’s Razor:
William of Occam, c. 1837: A scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities,
OR
with all things being equal, the simplest explanation is the best explanation.
To those who obviously did not read Jeremy Sweat’s comments (“[she] was somebody society wouldn’t care about, wouldn’t be missed”), I consider that you re-read his comments, and try and apply Occam’s Razor to his comments.
There is an elephant in the room, and stepping all over it won’t make it go away.
HATE CRIME PROTOCOL
APPENDIX A.A. MODEL
CONCLUSION:
“Hate crime victims are usually targeted not because of anything they have said or done to the suspects or for financial gain, but because of who they are or what they believe in. As such, hate crimes violate the very basic tenets of our democracy by targeting the right of every resident to be himself or herself and live safely and freely.
“Perpetrators of hate crimes seek to send a message to the victim and his or her community that they are unwanted, that they do not belong, and that the community at large does not care about what happens to them.
“Although it is unrealistic to believe that we can eliminate all hate crimes, we in law enforcement can drastically diminish their impact by the approach we take when dealing with hate crimes.
“We can send an even stronger countermessage.
“We should communicate to the victim, the community and to the defendant that we will do everything we can to apprehend those who seek to terrorize any member of our community.”
This is a part of the hate crime protocol that law enforcement are to follow and adhere to when investigating hate crimes.
Ann, where’s that from?
I wonder whether under many circumstances building a fire of any size in someone’s yard might be construed as attempted (or negligence leading up to) arson or attempted murder/manslaughter. In other words, the threat to the safety of the people involved is in the act itself as well as any further acts it may symbolize.
Speaking of vagueness and the fear of prosecutorial abuse, “We’re going to construe that as a crime because something bad could have happened” hardly seems like a fair, thoughtful application of the law, does it? If your concern with hate crimes is that officials will invent crimes that weren’t, your concern is rather inconsistently applied.
As for context, you should read the whole newspaper story, which explains why law enforcement classified this crime as a hate crime. It wasn’t, as you suggest, simply because the men wanted to hurt somebody they thought beneath them.
hey –
I’ve been absent about much of this discussion about rape being a hate crime. Sorry I’m late getting back to it.
I’m not confused about what a hate crime is, I don’t think. Hate crimes are perpetrated by people who are members of one group against other people because they are members of another specific group. Hate crimes are about relations of power, same as oppression is about relations of power. Maybe I’m being a bit simplistic about that, but I think that is the general idea behind the legal theory. Am I wrong?
My position is most clearly that all male-female rape is a hate crime. Women are raped because they are women, members of an oppressed class. I also said that some male-male rape can also be considered a hate crime. When I originally made that comment, I was thinking of primarily prison situations in which rape is used as a tool for promoting power – particularly situations in which straight men rape homosexual/transsexual men as a means of domination. It depends on who has the power and why, I think. I’m still thinking about this one, so it’s not a complete theory, but I didn’t want to exclude the possibility that some male-male rape is also a hate crime.
So in short, this case seems most definitely a hate crime, because it is male-female rape, and also because it is a rape in which the white rapist actually stated his belief that his black victim was worthless. Double power differential. Whether it is legally recognized as such is of concern to me, of course, but my major point is that is certainly should be.
Mythago.
My apologies to everyone for not giving my link.
The above statement is an excerpt from the following:
A MODEL HATE CRIME PROTOCOL
SAN DIEGO COUNTY REGIONAL HATE CRIMES PROCEDURE MANUAL
OCTOBER, 1999
To get to the full procedure manual, follow my instructions:
1. Go to Alas’s thread “On Hate Crime Statutes”;
2. Scroll down until you see, “I agree with David at “Orcinus”; click on Orcinus;
3. You are now at http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/. Scroll down through Orcinus’s thread until you see, highlighted, the words “what steps law-enforcement professionals recommend”. Click on that.
4. You should now be at the website which gives examples of hate crimes and hate incidents to help the police (in this case, the San Diego Police Department) in gathering information and proper procedures to follow in investigating alledged hate crimes.
Hope that helps.
I used the Conclusion because it says very plainly what a hate crime is.
Nothing complex.
Nothing convoluted.
Just plainly stated in simple terms.
I am sure Occam would agree.
Ginmar:
You know, it’s weird that even with an interracial rape case you have people going, “But where’s the racism?”
Is it your contention that any crime that involves a victim of race different from that of the perpetrator is automatically a racist crime?
Thinking Girl:
I’m trying to figure out why you think all male-female rapes are hate crimes, but not all male-male rapes are.
OK, RonF, good question, because I haven’t been clear and I think I can be now. the idea I have about a situation where a male-male rape would be a hate crime is when a man rapes a man in order to wield power over the victim not just individually, but as a means of exerting control over him as a member of a group of oppressed people – for example, a white man raping a black man, or a straight man raping a homosexual man. However, not all male-male rape would qualify – say, a white homosexual man raping a white homosexual man of the same socio-economic class and level of ability, for example. The victim is not a member of any oppressed group that the rapist is not also a member of. The only power imbalance here is that of rapist over victim. The rape is still an atrocious violation of personal bodily integrity, but not a hate crime.
In the case of male-female rape, women are always members of an oppressed group. Hence, rape in this case is always a hate crime.
Is that more clear?
I think this same line of thought can be applied to the quesiton you asked of Ginmar. I don’t think that all crimes in which the perpetrator is a different race than the victim are racist crimes. I think – and I understand that this is completely contentious and many people don’t agree with me – that racism is oppression, and as such, involves relations of power. In my view, racist crimes are those in which the perpetrator is 1) in a position of racial power, and 2) targets the victim because he/she is of an oppressed racial category (which could be compounded by membership in another oppressed category). So, this rape is a gender- and race-based hate crime, because the perpetrator is a white male and the victim is a black female. (Ginmar, is this what you’re thinking? I’m not trying to put words in your mouth. By all means, please let us know your thoughts.)
RonF, I know what you’re thinking: what about a black man raping a white woman? My answer to this, and it might be bullet-biting, is that this is a gender-based hate crime but not racism – even if the victim is chosen based on her white skin. Because on my view racism is OPPRESSION – this is important – and oppression involves POWER that is built into social structures and institutions (much in the same way as patriarchy is built into social strucutres and institutions), thus, there is no such thing as “reverse racism”. A black person cannot OPPRESS a white person – unless we are dealing with other factors like gender, in which case it is gender-based oppression and not racism. A black person can dislike, hate, despise, and act prejudicially towards a white person – but I sincerely believe that this is not racism (because it is not oppression).
I’ve thought about this extensively for a couple of years now. I welcome your comments, but ask that you consider the argument carefully before attempting to rebut. (I ask this out of experience with people who instinctively give a knee-jerk reaction based on the idea that any hate of a person because of their race is racism. I am challenging the popular definition of racism.)
Disclaimer: I use CAPS because I don’t know how to post with italics – I’m not trying to yell. :)
Also, I use “black” and “white” because of convenience and easy recognition. I realize other non-white groups are also oppressed by white people.
Disclaimer: I use CAPS because I don’t know how to post with italics – I’m not trying to yell.
You use italics through codes.
You “turn on” italics by enclosing an “i” within arrows. You “turn off” the italics by enclosing an “/i” within arrows.
You should look here for an example:
https://www.amptoons.com/blog/how-to-use-blockquotes/
This shows you how to turn on/turn off the “blockquote” function. It worls the same way for italics, which is “i” and bold, which is “b”. If you look at that example and replace ‘blockquote’ with the letter ‘i’ you get italics.
Sorry I can’t post an example but the example will show up as italics and won’t be of much use :)
Sailorman, is it like this?
I wonder if that will work. Sorry to all for trying this out on commenting space!
Thanks!
Thanks, thinking girl, that’s much more clear. I don’t know that I buy the argument, but I appreciate the time you took to clarify what you meant.
I won’t bore you with the blow by blow; I’ve had it out on a different thread. Suffice it to say that I don’t accept the “racism = racial predjudice + power” definition. As far as I’m concerned (and as you point out, as far as most people are concerned), racism means a thought/act/etc. based on race. If a black man rapes a white woman with no concern towards her race, that’s not racism. If a black man rapes a white woman because he has a hatred towards white people, that’s just as racist as if a white man rapes a black woman because “she’s just a n—–“. YMMV, but that’s my opinion.
Pingback: UPDATE ON WEST VIRGINA TORTURE AND RAPE VICTIM « BEAUTIFUL, ALSO, ARE THE SOULS OF MY BLACK SISTERS