Hate
Crimes : Criminal Law & Identity Politics by James
B. Jacobs, Kimberly Potter
Beginning in the mid-1980s, Americans were told
that "hate crime" was on the rise throughout the nation.
Numerous advocacy groups lobbied for--and achieved--the passage of
laws specifically engineered to document the rise in hate crime
and dole out extra punishment for perpetrators who chose their
victims on the basis of race, ethnic group, religion, or sexual
orientation. But were these legislative efforts necessary?
James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter suggest not.
They argue that the definitions of "hate crime" are
often too vague to be meaningful. They cite the case of a black
man who robbed white people simply because he believed they had
more money than blacks and who did not abuse whites with racial
invective as he committed his crimes, as an example. Jacobs and
Potter point out that "whether or not the authors of hate
crime legislation meant to cover [such] offenders, these are the
individuals who dominate the statistics." They then analyze
the statistical data and find no evidence supporting the belief
that hate-instigated violence is on the rise; they also find that
the majority of reported hate crimes are low-level offenses such
as vandalism and "intimidation." Brutal assaults and
murders, while they may provide grist for media sensationalists,
are rare.
Jacobs and Potter also argue convincingly that
the development of hate-crime legislation arises from the identity
politics movements which have gained strength since the passage of
the Civil Rights Act. Essentially, according to their line of
reasoning, claims of the existence of a hate-crime epidemic and
laws punishing hate crimes serve two purposes. One, they allow
minorities to express outrage at the way they are being treated by
society. Two, they allow nonminorities to act as if they
understand minorities' pain and reaffirm the uncontroversial
belief that prejudice and bigotry are wrong. But crime, the
authors suggest, is not simply "a subcategory of the
intergroup struggles between races, ethnic groups, religious
groups, genders, and people of different sexual
orientations." Hate-crime laws may even, they warn,
exacerbate perceived differences rather than create harmony.
Hate--or, more accurate, bigotry--is wrong.
Crime is also wrong. But Jacobs and Potter make a convincing
argument against considering crime tinged with bigotry worse than
unadulterated crime. "The enforcement of generic criminal
law," they conclude, "is adequate to vindicate the
interests of 'hate crime' victims as it is of other crime victims."
