Unequal Hatred For All

Two white people were brutally murdered by some black men back in January. I've been watching this story for months, more interested in how the media handled it than the actual murder. The most interesting thing about the way the media handled it was, frankly, that they did not handle it. Virtually no coverage. Why? Because it was too uncomfortable for editors to categorize. To sensitive. Too challenging to the meaning of "hate crime," which is what some are insisting it was. I admit I was reluctant to jump on the story until now, partly because it was hard to substantiate due in no small way to the lack of mainstream media coverage. It was difficult to tell the nutter reports from the legit ones. Needless to say, a lot of white supremicist types jumped this story early on. It was all over the neo-nazi sites and similar web pages. But today it's front page news in the Chicago Tribune, and you don't get more mainstream than that. The story is about the double murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, "a young Knoxville couple out on an ordinary Saturday night date" back in January 2007. The murders were incredibly heinous and brutal. Both Channon and Christopher were carjacked, kidnapped, raped and ultimately murdered. Both Channon and Christopher were white. Their accused killers are black. Was this a "hate crime?" An excerpt from today's Chicago Tribune story (emphasis mine): But it's not just conservative whites and extremists who have criticized the national silence over the Knoxville case. "Black leaders are not eager to take this on because it's one more thing that would cast a negative light on African-Americans," said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an author and nationally syndicated black columnist who has written frequently about the reluctance of black leaders to denounce crimes committed by blacks against whites. "There's already an ancient stereotype that blacks are more violent and crime-prone, anyway." Country music star Charlie Daniels, who lives 150 miles from Knoxville, contrasted scant coverage of the Christian-Newsom murders with the national media frenzy that erupted last year when a black woman accused three white members of the Duke University lacrosse team of raping her at a party. Which begs the question: Was the black woman who falsely accused the Duke lacrosse players herself guilty of a hate crime? The boys were found to be innocent. The accuser was found to have lied repeatedly; she fabricated the crime that she accused them of. Why? Out of hate? Writer Ellis Washington was an editor at The Michigan Law Review and a law clerk at The Rutherford Institute. He graduated from John Marshall Law School and is a lecturer and freelance writer on constitutional law, legal history, political philosophy and critical race theory. Washington recently wrote a column titled "Are hate crime statutes constitutional?" An excerpt (emphasis mine): The irony of the hate crime statutes is that they were conceived, promoted and enacted into law by socialists, progressives, liberals, leftist pols and activist groups like the ACLU, People for the American Way, MoveOn.org, NAACP, NOW and the Human Rights Campaign, and codified into law by liberal activist judges who have nothing but utter contempt for the original intent of the constitutional Framers and the rule of law. However, in line with the zeitgeist of this post-rationalist age, they carve out a class of special punishments against the criminal defendant that has violated one of their protected groups – minorities, women, atheists, gays, Islamic terrorists, anarchists, illegal aliens. This, dear reader, is the height of cynicism and a shameless perversion of the rule of law and the Constitution. FULL ARTICLE... A few years ago, some gay people in the largely gay "Boys Town" Chicago neighborhood raised the roof about some idiots in a car driving around yelling things at them. "Fags!" I've had drinks with friends in some of the clubs in Boys Town, and you regularly hear gays calling each other "fags." It's like some blacks, who shout "Hey Nigga!" at each other from across the street. The gays didn't like the guys in the car calling them "fags." I don't blame them. Sure, the idiots in the car meant to insult. The remarks were probably meant as hateful. But was it a "crime?" The offended gays said it was. But what if the situation was reversed? Let's ramp it up. If a straight person kills a gay person, is it a "hate" crime? Let's cut to the chase and ask, if somebody is different from their victim, does that make the crime a "hate" crime? One more notch: If a white person kills a black person, is it a hate crime? If a black person kills a white person, can it be a hate crime? If a dwarf kills a tall person, is it a hate crime? Presidential Candidate Ron Paul says this about hate crimes legislation: Hate crime laws not only violate the First Amendment, they also violate the Tenth Amendment. Under the United States Constitution, there are only three federal crimes: piracy, treason, and counterfeiting. All other criminal matters are left to the individual states. Any federal legislation dealing with criminal matters not related to these three issues usurps state authority over criminal law and takes a step toward turning the states into mere administrative units of the federal government. FULL ARTICLE by Ron Paul... If a murder is classified as a "hate crime," is the dead victim more dead because the killer hated him? Of course not. But it adds a new layer to the legal case. It costs the taxpayers more money. It also causes resentment amongst members of groups that are not "protected," as Ellis Washington notes. The question, "Why don't we have the same protection against 'hate crimes' that that group does?" is a valid - and frequently asked - question. RELATED: Black Racism: The Hate Crime That Dare Not Speak It's Name Outside the local Wichita press, however, virtually the only media to report this hate crime were Frontpagemagazine.com and the American Renaissance newsletter. While the federal government rushes to Los Angeles to investigate an incident in which a handcuffed youth was slammed into the hood of a car and punched by an officer, a pall of silence still blankets the horrendous racial murder of four young people whose murderers are now on trial. The difference in the responses to these two stories can hardly be attributed to anything other than the skin color of the perpetrators and the victims involved. Apparently the sexual torture and brutal executions of four promising youngsters is of no interest to the nation's moral guardians, because the victims happen to be white. FULL ARTICLE... ABC News: New Details Emerge in Matthew Shepard Murder Six years ago, on a cold October night on the outskirts of Laramie, Wyo., 21-year-old gay college student Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten, tied to a fence and left for dead.... The story garnered national attention when the attack was characterized as a hate crime. But Shepard's killers, in their first interview since their convictions, tell "20/20's" Elizabeth Vargas that money and drugs motivated their actions that night, not hatred of gays. FULL STORY... House Passes Hate Crimes Bill Protecting GLBT Americans, Women, and People with Disabilities - FULL ARTICLE... CAIR's Hate Crimes Nonsense - article by Daniel Pipes Specifically, the number of "anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States" has gone up dramatically. FULL STORY... RealClearPolitics - Articles - Why Not Hate Crimes For All? The bill simply asserts that hate crimes affect such commerce and are committed using articles that have "traveled" in interstate commerce. FULL STORY...