FIGHT HATE BY ENDING 'HATE CRIME' LAWS
by Thomas M. Sipos, managing editor.
[November 27, 2006]
[Hollywood Investigator.com] Racial hatred was once a serious problem in America, manifested in lynchings
and government-enforced segregation. But the pendulum to "combat
hate" has now swung into a Kafkaesque Orwellian Zone. Our laws encourage
shakedown artists and charlatans, while exacerbating rather than mitigating
race relations.
Consider comedian Michael
"Kramer" Richards, who shouted the N-word to black hecklers in his audience. Attorney Gloria
Allred now represents two hecklers and is threatening to sue Richards
for "assaulting" her clients with "verbal missiles."
Then there's
firefighter Tennie Pierce, awarded $2.7 million by the Los Angeles City
Council because Pierce claimed he was "racially harassed" when colleagues
tricked him into eating dog food. |
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It later emerged that Pierce himself
often engaged in insensitive firehouse antics, taunting a bound firefighter
whose clothes was scrawled with: "Oy Vey, I'm Gay!" While the City
Council reconsiders its settlement offer, Pierce's attorney is threatening
to sue for a larger amount from a "downtown jury" (code for "black jury")
unless the city meets her extortion demands.
Extortion
is the right word. Hate crimes can either include legal speech that
is illegal due to its context (usually the workplace, though Allred claims
that the comedy club made her clients a "captive audience") or an illegal
act, such as assault, that's punished more severely because it was motivated
by hatred toward certain protected groups (i.e., killing your boss because
you hate her is not a "hate crime").
Perhaps because hate crime laws
are passed to appease activists, they attract two kinds of extortionists:
those seeking money and those with an agenda. Jesse Jackson has made
a career out of extorting money by crying "racism" (see Ken Timmerman's Shakedown:
Exposing the Real Jesse Jackson). So has Al
Sharpton, who in 1998 was found guilty of libel by a New York court
for his role in the Tawana
Brawley hate crime hoax. Ironically, publicist Howard Rubenstein
has advised Richards to seek forgiveness from Jackson and Sharpton for
his comedy club meltdown.
Hate crimes
laws encourage political grandstanding. Governor Schwarzenegger called
GOP congressional candidate Tan D. Nguyen's letter to 14,000 Latino voters
(in which he wrote: "if your residence in this country is illegal or you
are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result
in jail time") a "hate crime."
Hate crime
laws encourage false
reports. Last October, police arrested University of New Hampshire
student Breanne Coventry Snell for falsely reporting that she'd suffered
an anti-Semitic attack after leaving the Hillel Jewish center. Universities
seem to incubate hate crime hoaxes. A few years earlier, Leah Miller,
a black student at San Francisco State, wrote racial epithets on her own
door because she wanted "to be a part of something," and Claremont McKenna
College professor Kerri Dunn spray-painted her own car with racial and
anti-Semitic epithets before reporting it as a hate crime.
Hate crime
laws are unevenly enforced, further fueling racial tensions. Three
Long Beach women (ages 19 to 21) were beaten last Halloween by 20 to 40
black youths while hurling racial epithets. Had a white gang beaten
three black women, it might have made national TV news, with the D.A. immediately
announcing hate crime charges. But when police arrested several youths
for the attack, hate crime allegations were not included in the district
attorney's filing.
"Outrage over the lack of hate crime charges was
swift," reported the Long Beach Press Telegram. Hate crime charges were eventually filed, but residents were further outraged
when City Councilwoman Rae Gabelich tried to limit advance notice of a
public hearing on the assaults. "I was trying to keep it out of the
press," she admitted. This double standard plays into the hands of
racists. According to LBReport.com,
the Press-Telegram article was emailed across
the nation and linked by white supremacist groups.
Defenders
of hate crime laws claim that our legal system has long considered the
criminal's mental state when determining guilt or punishment, but
these people confuse intent (Did you intend for the crime to occur?)
with motive (Why did you intend for the crime to occur?).
Premeditated murder is punished more severely than accidental homicide,
but we've never cared why you premeditated a murder (greed or hatred).
Motive is useful as evidence, but was never itself punished.
Let's
return to tradition and fight hate -- by abolishing hate crime laws.
Copyright © 2006 by HollywoodInvestigator.com.

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