What do you mean when you say "hate"?

Talking to some friends recently about this and that and some politics, I mentioned something about "hate crimes". Both of them are definitely anti-racist types, but they reacted negatively towards my support for anti-hate crime legislation and left me dumbfounded with the well-trotted argument that "all crime is hate crime". Instead of dealing with the assumptions behind that, as I usually do, I sidestepped the whole argument by renaming "hate crime" by the situationally accurate term, "racially-motivated crime".

If you want to read someone who can accurately explain the need for specific "hate crime" legislation, please read David Neiwert right now. I'm not really great on the the particular topics of racism, etc. but what I do know (or like to think I know) is the power of language. And I've always thought the term "hate crime" was just awful, though I couldn't put my finger on why. But after that conversation with my friends and then after reading a Utopian Hell post on "political correctness", something clicked into place. There are a number of problems with the term "hate crime" that have been used to muck up the discussion of what it is and what's going on, and in this case, liberals have to take some of the blame on themselves for not thinking it out more thoroughly. And, in a lot of ways, not being tough enough.

Issue number one with the term "hate crime" is that it's so vague that it veers dangerously close to euphemism. That leaves us wide open to conservative attack, since the right's rhetorical side excels at exploiting ambigious terms for maximum effect. In this case, the term "hate" was chosen to mean very specifically that sort of hate that people feel towards groups that are Other than them. Hate crimes are therefore crimes aimed at a specific member at the hated group with the purpose of intimidating all the members of that group, with an end result of restricting that group's freedoms, particularly freedom of movement. Read Neiwert for more detail, but briefly it's wise to remember that lynchings in the South targeted not only the specific victim but also all black people to scare them away from agitating for a better place in society.

What the right has deftly done though is to have taken the ambiguity of the term "hate" and turn it into a self-serving term for members of dominant classes. The fact of the matter is that not all crimes are driven by hate; in fact the majority of crimes are driven by economic motives. People steal for money, not out of hate. Even if someone is beaten or killed in the commission of a typical robbery-style crime, there was not a larger motivation to intimidate everyone else of the victim's race or ethnic group or sexual orientation. But despite this, it's common sense that someone who mugs or robs you probably hates you on some level; if nothing else, that person is justifying his/her actions through resentment. The criminal likely resents your perceived greater wealth or whatever.

But this interpretation, that every crime is a hate crime, is an extremely self-serving argument that implies that members of privileged groups, that white people, rich people, straight people, whatever, are as oppressed as actual oppressed groups. This gives us a certain level of permission to ignore the underlying issues involved in "hate" crimes to a point of ridiculousness. The defense in the Matthew Shepard case made the argument that the defendents were under some kind of "homosexual panic" that caused them to kill him in a fit of humiliation. Of course, the defense did not do a good job of explaining why if it was a crime of passion that they felt the need to display his body in a gruesome manner. The best model for understanding what they did is all over the place in our history--they lynched him. Displaying the mutilated body is part of a lynching ritual, because it serves as a warning to the rest of the oppressed group to kowtow to the wishes of the dominant group.

So why not just stick to the old term "lynching" and just revise anti-lynching laws to incoporate extra protections for other oppressed groups? There are pretty good, albeit politcally correct reasons, to avoid the word "lynching". For one thing, it's a bit hard to define, and there's an implication of mob violence involved. While mob violence is still common enough in "hate" crimes, the upswing in loners who feel they speak for the community is enough to cause us to reconsider how we name these types of crimes. Beyond that, I think that one of the big reasons is the fear that by using terms commonly attached to the deep injustices dealt to black people in our history for other groups who suffer oppression of a lesser sort, that we are devaluing the importance of black history.

This is no small thing. Lynching, for instance, was a problem that was so huge that it cannot compare to violence dealt out to other oppressed groups. There are thousands upon thousands of documented lynchings, far more than any other murderous hate crime spree in our history. On top of that, the practice enjoyed widespread social support that is almost inconceivable nowadays. (Warning, that picture is not for the weak-stomached.) These factors mean that "lynching" will always connotate a certain kind of racist violence. If that's what's necessary for us to remember the sordid side of our country's history, then that's what's necessary. One of the good things "political correctness" has gotten us is it reminds us that words have cultural power that must be acknowledged. Fight it or accept it, but you are not thinking properly if you deny it.

But we still need a term that helps us understand the need to separate out those crimes that are committed to intimidate a larger community from those that are committed for reasons of financial gain or out of passion. In my mind, a "hate" crime is two crimes, in essence. There is a crime committed against the victim, and then the one committed against the larger community. Lynching, for instance, is a crime against the victim, and it is also a crime against all black members of the community who are being threatened into giving up their freedoms. Incidentally, this is exactly how hate crimes are dealt with under Texas law. In Texas, a murder is only a capital crime (death penalty eligibility) if it happens as part of another felony. By classifying racist intimidation as a felony, hate crime legislation makes it possible to argue that murders like James Byrd's are capital crimes. As Neiwert points out:

As I point out in the book, hate crimes have the fully intended effect of driving away and deterring the presence of any kind of hated minority -- racial, religious, or sexual. They are essentially acts of terrorism directed at entire communities of people, and they are message crimes: "Keep out."

In this country, it is not a violation of free speech to prevent someone from stalking and threatening another. "Hate crimes" are just that sort of behavior but aimed at a larger group of people. It is perfectly legal to be racist. It's illegal to use violence to scare people who you hate for racist reasons out of their freedoms.

Neiwert says it, but I will say it way more forcefully here--the primary opponents of "hate crimes" legislation oppose it due to their own bigotry. (Though, as Neiwert points out, by hanging out the fear of the "thought police", they have managed to recruit liberals and civil libertarians to their side.) On a documentary I saw recently on Trio, they showed James Byrd's son on a radio show in Houston. He was there to speak out, as a Christian, against the death penalty. The grumpy old white guy veered off into talking about hate crimes instead. (It's no small irony that those most gung-ho for the death penalty are often those most against hate crimes legislation.) And then the grumpy old man went off on a rant about how black people should be grateful, since if it wasn't for those forward-seeking, magical white people, they wouldn't have gotten a chance to be descended from slaves in order to live in this Great Land. He said this to a man whose father's murder was due to that very history of slavery and racism. To Byrd's son's credit, he politely listened. I would have kicked that asshole's teeth in.

Of course, the problem that Neiwert points out, is not just those who would have us redefine racist crime as "free speech" to suit their own racist agenda, but those whose laudable dedication to free speech is blinding them to the particulars of certain crimes. And that's why I propose changing the term "hate crime". Not because I am one of those who wants to change any word once it gets a negative connotation, because that's ineffective. (Rename feminism, for instance, and the next word will get demonized just as surely.) The term "hate crime" lends itself well to be misinterpreted as some kind of thought crime. It causes the listener to focus on the nebulous thoughts of the defendent (Who did he hate? What does hate mean?) and not on the intent. I think the better term would be "terrorism" or "domestic terrorism". This is something I've definitely gotten of Neiwert who is continually frustrated that we neglect domestic terrorism like abortion clinic bombings.

The use of the word "terrorism" takes emphasis of the state of mind of the criminal and puts it back on the actions at hand and the intent behind them. Gay-bashing is terrorism intended to terrify gay people. Racist violence is intended to terrify members of that race. So on and so forth. We shouldn't be a bunch of chickens and avoid using the word for fear that we are somehow devaluing the word "terrorism" by overusage. Terrorism is terrorism, and it might do a lot of people a great deal of good to have to stop and consider that a white Christian abortion clinic bomber and a Muslim plane hijacker are both terrorists.