Have you ever used a racial slur?
You may have two answers to that question. There’s your initial,
visceral, response: No! Of course not! Never!
But then there’s the response you’d give if you were being a
little more honest: maybe… once or twice. So, if you have, does it
make you a racist? In the court of liberal opinion at least, the
answer seems to be yes.
In the Trayvon Martin case, in which neighborhood watch
volunteer George Zimmerman is accused in the shooting death of
Martin, the liberal consensus seems to be that Zimmerman, who is
Hispanic, acted out of racial hatred against Martin, who was black,
and thus is guilty of a “hate crime.”
According to the FBI, “A hate crime is a traditional offense
like murder, arson or vandalism with an added element of bias.”
Hate crime laws move beyond the criminalization of free speech to
outlaw thoughts society deems unacceptable.
Establishing whether a criminal was motivated by bias or hate is
nearly impossible because it’s nearly impossible to distinguish
correlation from causation. Just because a criminal hates a
particular group of people and commits a crime against a member of
that group does not necessarily mean he was motivated by hatred
when he committed the crime in question.
Of course, there’s little evidence that Zimmerman hates blacks.
The only supporting evidence so far is a recording of the 9/11 call
he made as he pursued Martin. In it, Zimmerman appears to say,
“They always get away, f——ing coons.”
The word “coon” is undoubtedly racist and hateful. But there is
doubt about what Zimmerman actually said. It could have been
“goons” not “coons.”
Let’s assume Zimmerman committed a crime in shooting Martin, and
that he used the word “coon” in reference to Martin. Does that make
the shooting a hate crime?
Many on the left seem to think so, including the 21 Democrats
who last week convened a Capitol Hill briefing on racial profiling
and hate crimes. The Justice Department and FBI are investigating
the shooting as a possible hate crime.
But it’s nearly impossible to know whether Zimmerman acted out
of racial hatred. His family and friends, some of whom are black,
are adamant that he is not a racist. Zimmerman’s lawyer said that
he had recently mentored a black boy, taking him to play basketball
and participating in fundraisers at the boy’s church.
Sometimes people say racist things not because they are racists
but because they want to say the most hurtful thing possible at a
time when they are overcome by sudden and intense feelings of anger
and frustration. It’s plausible that that’s what happened with
Zimmerman.
The threshold for what constitutes a hate crime continues to
decline. Last month a jury convicted Dharun Ravi of all 15 charges
he faced for using a webcam to spy on his dorm roommate having sex
with a man – a verdict, the New York Times reports,
“poised to broaden the definition of hate crimes in an era when
laws have not kept up with evolving technology.”
Ravi had set up a computer webcam, walked into a nearby friend’s
room and viewed his roommate, Tyler Clementi, kissing a man he met
on a gay website. Ravi didn’t see any sex. But he sent Twitter and
text messages urging others to watch when Clementi invited the man
back two nights later.
Ravi didn’t follow through with his plan for a second viewing.
But Clementi found out about the webcam and the twitter messages.
He jumped to his death from the George Washington Bridge three days
later.
Ravi was convicted of “bias intimidation,” which carries with it
a possible sentence of 10 years in prison. The jury concluded that
Ravi had not knowingly or purposely intimidated Clementi or his
partner when he watched the first time. But it found him guilty of
the charge because Clementi could have “reasonably believed” he had
been made a target because he was gay, which in New Jersey is
sufficient to get a hate crime conviction.
We will probably never know why Clementi jumped to his death. He
may have been contemplating suicide long before he met Ravi. He had
files on his computer with titles such as “Why does it have to be
so painful,” and he had taken photos of the George Washington
Bridge before he entered Rutgers.
What’s more, if Clementi felt intimidated by Ravi and his
webcam, why did he have another hook up in his room a few days
after the webcam incident? And why did he tell a friend that he
wasn’t really bothered by what Ravi had seen in the viewing? Ravi
was wrong to record Clementi without his knowledge. But it seems
unlikely that Ravi was guilty of much more than being an
insensitive jerk.
The only thing we know with anything close to certainty is that
Ravi doesn’t hate gays. Several character witnesses testified that
Ravi was not biased against gay people. And the prosecution
couldn’t produce anyone who had ever heard Ravi express hostile
feelings about homosexuality or homosexuals.
In an email to Clementi minutes after he jumped to his death,
Ravi wrote, “I’ve known you were gay and I have no problem with it.
In fact one of my closest friends is gay and he and I have a very
open relationship.”
Ravi rejected plea deals because they would have required him to
admit to bias intimidation. His lawyers said he simply did not
believe he had committed a hate crime. In an interview several days
after his conviction Ravi admitted to saying some insensitive
things about Clement. But he insisted:
“I wasn’t biased. I didn’t act out of hate and I wasn’t
uncomfortable with Tyler being gay.… I’m never going to regre not
taking the plea.… If I took the plea, I would have had to testify
that I did what I did to intimidate Tyler and that would be a lie.
I won’t ever get up there and tell the world I hated Tyler because
he was gay, or tell the world I was trying to hurt or intimidate
him because it’s not true.”
Proving that a crime was committed out of hatred for the victim
is nearly impossible, thus it has become increasingly irrelevant.
Today, all that’s needed for a hate crime conviction is for the
victim to be a member of one of the left’s pet constituencies.
Daniel Allot is senior writer at American Values.
