JohnPowell wrote:
AspieUtah wrote:
JohnPowell wrote:
We should completely scrap the term 'hate crime'. Doesn't help anyone or anything.
I have been saying this for years ... and, I helped write my state's original hate-crime laws! No, it is better to describe "hate crime" as an intended "victim selection" for assault, aggravated assault, battery, extortion, intimidation, vandalism, rape, theft, breaking and entering, and robbery based on defined characteristics of potential victims. My state's Legislature is attempted to do just that this year.
A crime is a crime. Anyone being targeted because they were vulnerable is a crime. If one person is walking home alone and is attacked by a gang of thugs and killed for no reason, would that suddenly become more of a crime if that person was non white and attacked by a gang of white people? Not in reality it wouldn't, but the media and co would make that case.
Most of the time, that is, indeed, true. But motivation is one of the things courts consider when determining guilt. Motivation to steal cash or personal property, vandalize real estate, or extort certain things or behaviors are all examples of how courts combine all known facts to arrive at a determination. In my state, as with most others, laws exist to prohibit harming or injurying military service members, educators, law-enforcement officers, religious leaders, children, emergency-medical service providers, and on and on. Nobody I know has ever doubted the need or effectiveness of such laws protecting certain people who are more at risk than most others. So, too, should there be laws to protect those who are decidedly selected for harm or injury based on their status, as well. If the desire to make the statuses of all victims mute, should we then repeal those laws which protect service members and law-enforcement officers among others? That would be foolish, of course. I see no difference in attempting to protect those groups of people who FBI statistics have shown are most vulnerable to crime.