What is a Hate Crime?

The law is filled with enhancements.  Basically, an enhancement is something which makes the penalty for a crime more severe. There can be no enhancement without first there being a crime.

For example, in old England, murder was a crime, but lying in wait in Sherwood forest to rob and murder a nobleman meant the penalty for the crime would be enhanced, i.e., increased to death. California Penal Code § 189 still mentions lying in wait as one of the factors to make a murder into First Degree Murder.

The rationale behind increasing the penalty for crimes done with a certain state of mind or in a particularly upsetting manner is twofold: (1) express society’s condemnation of the behavior and (2) deter the behavior.  One of the proper functions of government is to set up and administer the criminal justice system in line with the society’s mores. Intergroup hatred can tear apart a society, making enhancement for violent crimes which are based on the perp’s hatred of the group to which his victims belong something which the country needs to seriously penalize.

Penalties May have Varying Impacts on Behavior

When one encounters crimes of passion, the law is not a very effective deterrent.  In fact, if someone kills another when they are in a “heat of passion,” many states will reduce the murder to the lesser crime of manslaughter.  It is generally believed that increasing the penalty for heat of passion murders would not deter such killings.

Deterrence is most likely to happen when the perp has time to think about his actions, which is the opposite of being in the heat of passion.  One enhancement which seems to work is increasing the penalty for a robbery when the thief has a gun.  I’ve heard gang members discuss such enhancements and decide when not carry a gun on them.   Law enforcement wants to deter unintentional deaths.  If robber has no gun, he can’t panic and shoot the victim.

Purpose of Hate Crime Enhancements

Our nation began with the motto E Pluribus Unum which means that we come from many different places, cultures and religions in order to form one secular nation, i.e., a more perfect Union.  America cannot live up to its promise if people will attack and kill other people for no reason than they belong to a different ascriptive groups.  Thus, when the motives to commit a crime is hatred of another group, America has a strong public purpose to stop intergroup violence.  (A more direct route is MLK’s formation: judge each individual by character and not by skin color.) 

Hate Crime Enhancements Have Become Anti-White

The comparison between how the media treats the Atlanta shooting and the Boulder shooting shows an unacceptable difference.  When the perp is White, the crimes is almost instantly labeled an anti-Asian Hate Crime based on the race of 75% of the victims.  When Boulder victims are 100% white, there is no Hate Crime label.  Due to his name Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, we quickly learned that the Boulder shooter was a minority.  No Hate Crime label.  Later we learn of his prior physical attack over race (ethnicity) issue, his rants against Islamophobia, and that the FBI knew about him due to some connection with an unidentified third party.  The point is that the media ignores the facts that the white Atlanta shooter was not a white racist but ignore the indications that the Boulder shooter had a history of anti-white feelings.

Two Pernicious Aspects of the Gun Control Response

There is another disturbing anti-white aspect to the response to the Boulder Shooter. 

(1) The media ignores the likely inter group hatred of the Boulder Shooter. Assigning a hate crime label to white perps but not to minority killers of whites drives a wider wedge between Americans.

(2) Many Whites are pro gun.  When 10 white people are gunned down by a minority, especially by one whom whites identify as belonging to the same group that flew the airplanes on 9/11, the idea that white people should have their guns taken away drivers another wedge between Americans.

[Disclosure. I would be OK with the confiscation of all guns. Nonetheless, I see the anti-conservative white bias of the media when it calls for Gun Control right after 10 white people have been murdered by a minority. There were some milder calls for gun control after Atlanta]

Hate Crimes Enhancements Are Used to Increase Inter Group Hatred

Within hours of the Boulder Shooting, people found indications that the Boulder shooter harbored hatred for White Americans in addition to his mental illness. (Most likely, Paranoid Personality Disorder).  More than a week after Atlanta, there still is no evidence of the perp’s having anti-Asian hatred.  In fact, according to his roommate who had asked why he went to Asian massage parlors, he had told them because he felt safer there than in other places.

The Boulder shooter, however, had attacked a white student over ethnicity, he had ranted over Islamophobia, and most ominously, “he was linked to another individual under investigation by the FBI.” These scant facts are mere clues but the media closes its eyes to their possible implications.  Suppose the Atlanta perp had been known to the FBI due to his participation in some Internet group?  How quickly would people insist it was a white supremacist site?

The focus here is on the discriminatory treatment the media affords Whites who may perpetrate hate crimes but not when Whites are the victims.  

Society would be better off if the media would stop playing Politicial Correctness but instead reported “all the news.”  Readers can learn to discern a mere clue, i.e. The Boulder shooter being known to the FBI, from Dylann Roof who said he killed the Black parishioners to protect the white race.  When both conservative and liberal media play the same game of distorting the news according to its political agenda, they increase intergroup hatreds.

(Richard Lee Abrams has been a Los Angeles attorney, Realtor and community relations consultant and can be reached at RickLeeAbrams@ Gmail.com. He is a CityWatch contributor.)

-cw