The Jena 6

Subject: hate crimes

doctor j, the concept of a hate crime may well be a social construct, but there is no doubt that assaults and attacks upon groups and individuals occur due to hate for that group or individual. Moreover, the hate is aimed at the identity of the group or individual. Race, creed, color, religion or place of origin.

Clearly the appearance of a swastika on the front door of a Jew's home is an attempt to upset the occupant with a well understood message of hate. But I don't think any Jews in the US are worried about the intentions of their government toward them. Quite the opposite.

Meanwhile, you claimed that due to the absence of hate-crime laws, it could be assumed there were no hate crimes in the past, say, before 1969.

Not true. Lynchings certainly qualify. Even if the black victim were tied to some act of law-breaking, punishments delivered by mobs are hate crimes. Depending on your sources, you will find the estimates of lynchings falling in a range of 3,000 to 5,000 for the period beginning after the Civil War and ending by 1960. The bulk of the lynchings occurred by 1910.

Moreover, I'd put the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King in the category of hate crime. There may be an ex-post-facto quality to declaring long-ago actions as hate crimes, but they clearly fit the definition.

There is no reliable record of lesser hate crimes. However, there is a record of biased legislation. Discriminatory legislation such as Jim Crow laws and laws restricting Jews in various ways. Then slavery itself.

Meanwhile, neither swastikas nor nooses are illegal. Defacing property by spray-painting a swastika -- or anything else -- is an act of vandalism. But the image itself is protected speech. The same goes for nooses. Most employers have workplace rules that prohibit harrassment. Therefore, lots of behavior is prohibited. But drawing a swastika or tying a rope in a certain way are permissible acts.

In Jena, the kids who hung the nooses were suspended for a few days. They expressed some remorse and that was that. On the other hand, a couple of months later, the Jena high school caught fire. It appears the cause was arson. Then the black students involved in the original dispute planned an attack on one of the white kids. He was knocked out in the attack. Not seriously injured. But knocked out in a planned assault.

He was not robbed or the victim of any common felony. He was attacked because he was a white kid.

An outrageous disconnect has emerged from the Jena debate. On one hand there is a group that believes the black student who knocked out the white kid was on the same moral plane as the whites who placed the nooses.

In other words, even-steven, the white kid got what he deserved. But the white kid didn't commit a crime, as defined by the law. However, planning to attack and beat someone, then actually carrying out the plan is a serious crime. Thus, those who protested the developments in Jena support the idea that committing a violent crime is justified if the crime is committed in response to an event that merely angers someone.

What we have here is a case of whites-declared-guilty-of-racism by popular opinion. Seems like nothing was learned from the Duke Unversity case.

The bottom line is this: the problems besetting the black community are found within it. The solutions are there as well.