Fact Sheet 3: Chronology of Domestic Hate Crimes and Responses since 9/11

September 14, 2002 12:12 AM

Fact Sheet 3: Chronology of Domestic Hate Crimes and Responses since 9/11 This only goes up to Janurary 2002, and probably only includes reported incidents, or incidents that were featured in the newspaper.
posted by filecrave (18 comments total)

It would be more useful if there were an explanation of how the information was gathered. It would also help to have some contextual information to compare it with. It's interesting, but it leaves you with more questions than it answers.
posted by jaden at 12:19 AM on September 14, 2002

Agreed, context links? I'm no good sifting through data...

And this seems to be post-processed data aimed at highlighting only "anti-Arab" crimes and reports. How does this compare with other years? What percentage of these crimes could be considered a bias crime compared to crimes with other causes? How about other sorts of domestic/hate crimes? Do they have a statistical similarity? How many of these reports can be substantiated?

Lots of questions, few answers. I also don't know ITVS, but from scanning their pages, they don't really seem like an unbiased source of raw data. Isn't there governmental data, or data from other, more thorough and less opinion-piece-based organizations?
posted by evanizer at 12:36 AM on September 14, 2002

Anaheim, CA: A Diamond Bar man of South Asian descent is attacked outside of a bar by a group of Asian men. The victim, a physical therapist at USC University hospital, suffers a shattered jaw and is released from the hospital Monday.

Asians attacking South Asians? Weird.
posted by donkeyschlong at 1:04 AM on September 14, 2002

Also: What the heck is a "hate" crime, if not a slippery slope of the first order?

A crime is a crime is a crime and should be prosecuted as such. Throwing in tag words like "hate" dilute the crime with a political agenda. Namely: multiculturalism.

Is an assault morally any better or worse because of the supposed motives of the attacker?

Hate is not illegal, nor is thought. When a crime is committed, the perpetrator should be punished. End of story. Otherwise, we truly do have a thought-police state, built on the principles of feel-good liberal fascism.
posted by hama7 at 4:00 AM on September 14, 2002

I'm too tired. Could someone else please set hama7 straight?
posted by donkeyschlong at 4:13 AM on September 14, 2002

On further thought, let me explain. The term "hate crime" is a typical guilty white racist liberal lie. Why? Because the term "hate cime" is never applied to racially-motivated so-called "minority" attacks on whites, but always applied to attacks by whites on so-called "minorities". The reason I use quotation marks around minorities, is because in most cases the minorities in question are actually not minorities in any sense of the word in terms of world population.

The term "hate crime" simply adds confusion and bias to a loaded situation, where rational thought is required. Criminal prosecution should concern only the extent and severity of a criminal transgression.
posted by hama7 at 4:17 AM on September 14, 2002

I'm more liberal that 12 Donahues, and I consider the concept of "hate crimes" specious codswallop. (Still waiting for someone to explain what a "love crime" is.)
posted by RavinDave at 5:34 AM on September 14, 2002

I'm answering just the point quoted below because I suspect the "hate crime" thing has a whole pile of conotations associated with it in American culture (not just from use, but from abuse for political ends).

Is an assault morally any better or worse because of the supposed motives of the attacker?

Of course. If you assault someone who just raped your daughter aren't you less morally culpable than if you assault someone you just met, for the first time in your life, because you object to the colour of their skin?
posted by andrew cooke at 6:41 AM on September 14, 2002

Maybe a parent kidnapping her own kids could be considered a "love crime". In any case, love, unlike hate, is not usually seen as a terrible social problem. In any case, "hate crime" is just a snappier synonym for the perhaps more accurate term "bias crime": a crime motivated by bias against some social category. Here are some 1995 FBI statistics:

Hate crime incidents motivated by race bias: 4,831
Anti-white: 1,226
Anti-black: 2,988

Why are bias crimes worse than other crimes? Because they are not only targeting the proximate victims, but also the members of an entire social category. How safe did white people feel in the black neighborhoods of LA after a mob of black men beat Reginald Denny half to death? Clearly, this was a bias crime. Reginald Denny wasn't attacked for his money, or because of a personal vendetta; he was attacked because, as a white man, he was standing in as the scapegoat for an entire race. As a result, members of that racial group feel more afraid to walk through their own city, more afraid of every black face. Society as a whole is harmed. This makes it worse than an ordinary mugging. Does this make any sense to you?

Or, to put it another way: Lynching is (and is widely considered to be) worse than murder. Why is that?

On preview: I like where andrew is going, but technically speaking, it's not a matter of culpability, but of the seriousness of the crime. One may be totally guilty of the crime; it just doesn't seem as bad to kill a rapist as it does an innocent stranger. I hesitate to nitpick this point, because I fear a thread derailment might result. Please don't let it happen, people.
posted by skoosh at 7:00 AM on September 14, 2002

Damn, I hate spotting errors right after I post. Please ignore one of the "In any case" 's. I apologize completely and without reservation for any distress this may have caused anyone.
posted by skoosh at 7:15 AM on September 14, 2002

Thank you, Andrew and Skoosh, for the above-mentioned straight-setting. On the topic of this list: it would be nice to have some context. What I draw from it is a sinking feeling that as early as the evening of 9/11, there were people out there wandering the streets harassing those who "looked Arab" already. I mean, wow, that's some fast-acting irrational hate. You wanted something to do, you could've donated blood, people. It depresses me that there's always someone willing to lash out and make the world a little worse, rather than stopping and thinking for, oh, five seconds or so.
posted by hilatron at 8:53 AM on September 14, 2002

Under the concept of hate crimes as I understand it, Ted Bundy was guilty of hate crimes: his victims were strangers picked solely on the basis of physical attributes. Let's dig that bastard up and put him on trial. This reminds me of prosecuting someone for armed robbery and adding on, usually for another nickel, "committing a felony with a gun". Prosecuting for something beyond the obvious crime is embellishment for the purpose of social engineering.
posted by Mack Twain at 10:20 AM on September 14, 2002

I suspect that the reason why so-called hate crimes are considered a special case even by many conservatives is that those crimes are simply more dangerous and destabilizing to our society than others. Rwanda, the Balkans, India, etc., etc... nothing can spiral out of control for a government faster than a warring citizenry. And as skoosh implies, nothing organizes a group and incites them to violence faster than the feeling that they are unprotected by their government.

Does that mean that hate crimes should be legally different than garden-variety assault? I don't know. But the argument that motive should play no part in the definition of a crime implies that there oughtn't to be a difference between first degree murder, second degree murder, and manslaughter. And that there's no difference between writing "Kilroy wuz here" and "Shoot the President" on a wall.
posted by adameft at 10:40 AM on September 14, 2002

I'm glad that we've had the Race Relations Act in the UK since 1976. This includes provision for such 'hate crimes' as incitement to racial hatred, which without the 'hate' element has no meaning. I believe that legislation of this kind has greatly helped in improving British people's attitudes towards towards all (non-white) people.

"Swaran Kaur Bhullar, a Sikh woman, was stopped at red light in her car on Miramar Road when two men on a motorcycle pulled up and attacked her. She is subsequently yanked from her car and stabbed twice in the head. She is rushed to the emergency room and released later in the day." - they build Sikh women strong !
posted by daveg at 1:07 PM on September 14, 2002

Criminal prosecution should concern only the extent and severity of a criminal transgression.

You know, I would be a lot more willing to discuss the whole "hate crimes shouldn't receive special treatment" argument if there were no other legal precedents. For example: what, besides intent, differentiates first degree murder from manslaughter? Is the manslaugher victim slightly less dead somehow? Why is the factoring in of intent okay in those cases but not for hate crimes? (I'm assuming it's okay-- I've never heard anyone railing against first degree murder as "thoughtcrime.")

Why are people so quick to forget that hate crime laws don't just shelter minorities, but defend against prejudice-based assaults of many different kinds? (Excluding, of course, sex-based crimes-- I'm pretty sure I've seen someone address that particular oversight somewhere on Metafilter before.)

Saying that extra punishment for hate crimes is unfair smacks of selective blindness, if you ask me.
posted by tyro urge at 3:27 PM on September 14, 2002

going back to the FPP link: whoever compiled the list should do a little more fact checking on those incidents.

i live in Tulsa, so of course i'm more likely to spot that particular error, but i wouldn't have a clue about whether any of the other hate-crimes turned out not to be hate crimes. surely, if i spotted one during a quick scan, it's possible (probable?) that there are more misreported incidents on that list.
posted by tolkhan at 4:17 PM on September 14, 2002

Re Britain's attitude towards ethnic minorities: four asian men were today chucked off an EasyJet flight purely because the other 24 passengers didn't like the look of them. Police found no evidence of terrorism; clearly this is an example of absurd post-WTC racism.

I'm not sure how, but shouldn't the government be more actively promoting harmony, specially now?
posted by bwerdmuller at 6:24 PM on September 14, 2002

I'm disgusted by EasyJet's behaviour (and that of the complaining passengers) - I wish that the pilot had thrown the complainers off rather than the four asian men. I hope that they sue EasyJet for significant damages.
posted by daveg at 7:02 AM on September 15, 2002