Why is a racially motivated murder or attack more despicable than any other? They all suck. Hate is colorblind. It transcends race, sex, religion etc. Declaring one type of violent attack more acceptable than another, on the basis of motivation, is the double standard.
hate is colorblind and it can happen to anybody. and when a violent attack against a jewish person is made or any anti-semitic comments are made in the media, i have seen people apologize for them and nobody said jews were being oversensitive. so the only double standard i see is white concerns being treated with respect and minorities being considered over-sensitive.
I don't know. I could see a concern being that, since whites are statistically more likely to be the victim of a hate crime, these hate crime laws be equally enforced. Maybe it's because we only hear of the big cases, but I've not heard of any racially motivated hate crime against a white person being prosecuted as a hate crime. Not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying I've never heard of it happening. Plus, I do worry that hate crime laws can cause racial divisions. If the public feels a crime was a hate crime (whether it was or not), there can be great pressure to bear against the prosector to file the charges as a hate crime even when the prosecutor doesn't feel there's enough evidence to support such a charge. There was a large amount of uproar in the not-too-distant past in East Texas when an African-American man was found hanged in the woods. There was a large contingent of people who immediately branded it a hate crime at first discovery of the crime, before any suspects were named and any evidence really collected. That can cause stress on a community. Had it turned out to be a white person who killed the man over a drug deal gone bad or something of that nature, the calls for it to be classified a hate crime may not have stopped. But the ability to prove it was a hate crime would've been severely limited. But that doesn't make it any less of a hate crime to those who called for it to be classified as such early on. If such a murder carried the same penalty regardless of motivation in regards to race or what-have-you, the focus would simply be on finding the perpetrator and convicting him of the crime. As it is, the prospecutor has to make a non-hate crime into a hate crime to placate a community who believes the non-hate crime had to be a hate crime. That's just an example, and probably a rare one. But I can understand why there are a great many people who believe the same crime ought to carry the same penalty regardless of the race of the victims and perpetrators or their racial or other motivation. And I do worry that there will be prosecutors who start trying every black-on-white crime (or one race against another) as a hate crime just to jack up sentences. It's a tool that has the potential to be abused against the very people it was designed to help (and say what you will, but the hate crime laws were not championed to protect whites from racially motivated hate crimes).
hate crime laws should be equally enforced. and it is not more likely to occur to a white person in my opinion. statistics don't show everything. there are a lot of asians who have stopped reporting hate crimes against them, cause in some states juveniles are not punished for their crimes and because police usually tell them they can't do nothing to help asians. there are some asians who have stopped going to the police because they know its a waste of time. a juvenile can assault or kill an asian and get away with it in some states. i know this for a fact and i have relatives and friends who have experienced it firsthand and barely survived it to go to court and a juvenile gets away with it and the victim has to pay for their own hospital bill. police are useless, they don't help asians at all in most states. this case demonstrates that even in an area where asians are heavily populated like san francisco, a juvenile can go unpunished for their crime. also i have read some articles about police arguing over whether to classify crimes against asians hate crimes even when it is clear several racial slurs were directed at an asian. a lot of times, what is a blatantly obvious hate crime is classified as a simple assault or regular murder. statistics don't tell everything. also some asian immigrants won't complain to police about hate crimes cause they can get deported and some of them don't even understand insulting racial slurs like chink. so these statistics are not as reliable as you think.
The motivation for crimes is often used to determine the degree to which a person is to be punished. How is this any different? A man who burns down a church for kicks is the same as the guy who burns down the church to intimidate and scare a particular race in the community? Certainly not. Also, the designation of a hate crime and the involvement of the FBI prevents local yahoos and good ole boys from trying to skirt justice in race related issues, something that has a history in this country. Hate crimes have a greater meaning to society than simply being a crime much like terrorism and organized crime also have special laws enacted to deal with them aside from the philosophy of a crime is a crime. You can't take a law, isolate it from the world, and refuse to acknowledge the circumstances under which that law has been deemed necessary. Would you say that because we have laws aimed at terrorism and organized crime that plain old murder is more acceptable? Is that a double standard or are the threats to our society posed by hate crimes, terrorism, and the mob more important than labeling them plain old murder? There is a bigger picture involved here.
dnaslam, let me help you out a little bit here. I know you're a newbie around the board and especially around the D&D forum. I'm by no stretch an old-timer on cc.net, but have been here long enough to understand some of the basic principles of posting. You are consistently making outrageous claims such as "a juvenile can assault or kill an asian and get away with it in some states", "police are useless, they don't help asians at all in most states", etc. Without posting a link to an article or backing up your points with proof, nobody will believe your rants. It's horrible that these asian youths were beaten up, and I hope that the people responsible are punished if it's true. But give me a break with some of your outrageous comments which stereotype racial groups.
bigtexxx, you don't need to believe me. you already made up your mind long before i posted this article. i am consistently making outrageous claims? i am basing it on firsthand knowledge. it is a fact that juveniles can not be punished the same way as an adult.
and since you requested more articles to back my claims: ATTACKS AGAINST ASIAN-AMERICANS ARE RISING By Kenneth B. Noble NY Times, 12-13-95 A16 LOS ANGELES, Dec. 12 -- He chose his course of action matter-of-factly, as if he were deciding which color shirt to wear. "I'm going to kill me a Chinaman" is how Robert Page put it in his written confession to the police. A few hours later, as Eddy Wu carried a bag of groceries from a supermarket in Novato, Calif., to his car, Mr. Page attacked, leaving Mr. Wu, 23, with stab wounds to his back and shoulder, and a punctured lung. "He was looking for a victim based on his white supremacist beliefs," Jim Laveroni, a police sergeant in the affluent suburb about 30 miles north of San Francisco, said at Mr. Page's court hearing last month. The assault on Mr. Wu is the latest in a series of recent race-based incidents directed against Asian Americans, particularly in Northern California. A study released in July by the National Asian Pacific-American Legal Consortium, an organization representing 40 groups, calculated that there was a 35 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes nationwide to 452 incidents last year, up from 335 incidents in his audit for 1993. In Northern California, the increase more than doubled to 83 last year, from 39 the year before. The State Attorney-General's first hate-crimes report, which was released today, counts 57 hate crimes against Asian Americans in the last six months of 1994, involving 72 victims. The crimes, as reported to various Asian-American organizations and to the police, range in violence from racist-graffiti on the offices of the Japanese-American Citizens League in Sacramento, to an attack on a Chinese-American family in a Vallejo, Calif., amusement park, where they were taunted and told to return to China, to the fire-bombing of the home of a Chinese city councilman in Sacramento. In a significant number of incidents, attackers say, "Go home," or "Get out of my country," the report said. The attacks have largely baffled the police in places like Novato, whose middle- and upper-middle class community is widely regarded as liberal and tolerant. ANd, compared with the rest of California, it has a small Asian-American population -- not large enough, residents suggest, to pose a threat to anyone. The incidents have heightened fears among many Asian-Americans that increasingly blatant race-based harassment is on the rise and that those who commit these crimes seem to hate Asians without drawing distinctions between newly arrived immigrants and native-born Americans, or between Chinese, Japanese, Cambodians and other Asian nationalities and ethnic groups. "Like most minority groups, we're accustomed to to dealing with subtle forms of racism," Thanh Ngo, a lawyer with the Asian Law Caucus in San Francisco said about the attack on Mr. Wu. "But it's striking to see such a blatant act. A lot of people are very frightened." Like many of the more recent crimes, the attack on Mr. Wu involved a young white man. Still at issue is whether Mr. Page is competent to stand trial. A psychologist hired by the public defender's office told a judge last week that Mr. Page was seriously disturbed, and a hearing has been set in January to determine his competency. Meanwhile, Mr. Page, who is being held in the Marin County Jail, has been charged with attempted murder with bail set at $1 million. In another incident in May, across the bay in Los Altos, John Lee, 28, an American of South Korean ancestry, stopped at a gas station. There he was approached by a white man, Justin Adams, who began taunting him by putting his hands together and bowing "Buddha-like", squinting his eyes and mimicking an Asian accent. According topolice and court records, Mr. Lee confronted Mr. Adams and two other whites, saying his antics were not amusing. Mr. Adams then punched him several times, kicking Mr. Lee to the ground. One of Mr. Adams' companions kicked Mr. Lee in the head, and the third punched Mr. Lee as he lay on the pavement. The three men were later arrested. Two pleaded guilty to battery. Mr. Adams pleaded innocent to charges of committing a hate crime. The case, which went to trial in October, resulted in a hung jury. The local District Attorney's Office has announced plans to try Mr. Adams again. National Asian-Pacific American Legal Consortium said in its report: "Many incidents begin as simple name-calling and escalate into further violence resulting in serious or fatal injuries. Further, racist hate messages alone cause real psychological and emotional damage on their victims." Elaine H. Kim, a professor of Asian-American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and Chairwoman of the comparative ethnic studies department, said Asian-Americans have faced a distinctive type of racism in the last 100 years, a feeling on the part of the white population that "you can't be here." "My mother came to Hawaii in 1903 as an infant, and she could not become a citizen until 1952," Professor Kim said. "I think it's always tied to resentment. If you don't make it, you get kicked down. And if you make it, you get kicked down. It's really a Catch-22." What is particularly unnerving for many Asian-Americans, community groups say, is that success has not bred tolerance; they have assimilated into many communities but are still the objects of hate. Rather, their financial and educational achievements may have engendered a new generation of hate crimes directed at them from disenfranchised whites who are jealous. One factor that may be fueling the upsurge in hate crimes, especially in California, has been the unparalled influx of Asian-American immigrants in recent years. In San Francisco County, for example, Asian-Americans are now the largest minority group, exceeding in numbers the black populations and people of Hispanic descent combined. Data from the 1990 census show that the 337,118 white residents of the county constitute 46.6 percent of the population; Asians, whose numbers total 205, 686, constituted 28.4 percent; Hispanics totaled 100, 717 or 13.9 percent; blacks were 76, 343, or 10.5 percent, and the rest were American Indians, Eskimos and Pacific Islanders. But even as Asian-Americans are integrated into their communities, changing the character of those communities, they are still considered to be interlopers by some, and thus legitimate candidates for harassment. The consortium complained in its report, for instance, that "in best-selling novels and blockbuster movies, Asian-Pacific Americans continue to be cast as untrustworthy foreigners, devious economic competitors or martial arts experts." Perhaps an even bigger factor inciting anti-Asian sentiment, experts say, is what many see as growing nativism and racial intolerance exemplified by Proposition 187, the immigration-control proposal that has become one of California's biggest political disputes. Diane Chin, a lawyer and co-chairman of the Intergroup Clearinghouse in San Francisco, a nonprofit group that assists victims of hate crimes, said that with Governor Pete Wilson's promotion of Proposition 187, "There has been a climate created by the established political leadership that devalues peoples of color, and gays, lesbians and bisexuals; they've established a climate that allows hate violence to exist." Michael Wong, the co-chairman of Break the Silence, a San Francisco based group that documents hate crimes against Asians and provides assistance to victims, suggested that the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes is linked to the Congressional debate over welfare cuts. "At a time when public benefits are being curtailed, there's a lot of talk of not having enough space and resources to protect our communities," Mr. Wong said. "There's a lot of scapegoating and pitting populations against one another."
BOSTON GLOBE Copyright Globe Newspaper Company 1994 DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 PAGE: 1 EDITION: THIRD SECTION: CITY WEEKLY LENGTH: MEDIUM SOURCE: By Sandy Coleman, Globe Staff MEMO: CITY WEEKLY A PLACE TO TURN FOR VICTIMS OF HATE Last week was a busy week for hate. By 11 a.m. on Monday, Greg Chen, director of the SafetyNet Hate Violence Prevention Program, already had been to court to help a Vietnamese family allegedly beaten by a large group of white men and was upstairs in a staff meeting discussing another case in which two Asian men were attacked with hockey sticks in South Boston. During the meeting, Chen periodically ran downstairs to answer phone calls from people who wanted to talk about the South Boston case, the second incident of its kind in the neighborhood this month. ''We're talking about that right now,'' Chen told a caller before racing upstairs to finish his meeting. Settling down at a table downstairs in his sparse office on Kneeland Street, Chen began to talk about SafetyNet, which he founded to provide advocacy and community support for Asians who are victims of hate crimes. ''You've come at a good time and a bad time,'' he said. It was a good time to see why the newest soldier on the battlefield is necessary, and a bad time because the necessity is increasingly apparent. Last week, two Asian men were attacked by 10 to 12 white men in South Boston. An off-duty police officer saw the attack and ordered the men to stop. The men continued, however, until the officer fired shots in the air. On June 5, three Asian men were attacked by 10 to 15 white men in South Boston. On April 30, a Vietnamese family said they were attacked and beaten with a bat and a hockey stick outside their Brighton home by several white neighbors, according to a SafetyNet report. It began when one of the white neighbors bumped into the Vietnamese family's parked car and then began yelling racial slurs. The situation escalated into a fight that sent three members of the Vietnamese family to the hospital. When police came, members of the Vietnamese family were unable to communicate in English, the neighbors blamed the Vietnamese for the incident, and police ended up charging both sides with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, said Chen, noting a police report that indicates the neighbors have continued to threaten to kill the Vietnamese family. The case is now in Brighton District Court. And in February, at a Brighton health clinic, an elderly Cambodian woman reported that several white teen-agers spit in her face and hit her with glass bottles. They yelled racial epithets, taunted her and dared her to call the police. According to recent Boston police figures, the number of reported hate crimes against Asians rose from six in 1978 to a high of 45 in 1985 and then dipped again last year to 22. Chen said that although Boston police figures indicate that hate crimes against Asians are down from the 1985 high, that does not necessarily mean that the crimes are decreasing. Frequently, he said, Asian victims are reluctant to report such crimes. According to statistics gathered statewide from participating police departments and compiled by the Criminal Histories Systems Board, 11.4 percent of the 472 crimes reported in 1992 were motivated by anti-Asian sentiments. In March, SafetyNet, which mainly had been dealing in education and outreach, launched a victim assistance hotline and began to do victim advocacy work. The organization has handled seven cases since then. ''I'm surprised I got that many,'' said Chen, again stating that many*Asian* victims do not report hate crimes. They are reluctant to do so for a variety of reasons, he said, from cultural beliefs to language barriers. Chen, a Harvard graduate, began to research starting SafetyNet in November 1992. In a survey of 80 area organizations, he found no groups directly focusing on tracking, reporting and preventing such crimes against Asians. Chen's organization, which employs two part-time interns and nine volunteers, is sponsored by the Asian American Resource Workshop. The workshop's director, Michael Liu, SafetyNet is a welcome addition to the war on hate crimes. ''The rate of racial violence has been increasing in the past few years, and even though the Boston area has been less intense we've been seeing signs that things are getting worse,'' he said. ''We are aware that there is strong anti-immigrant feeling throughout the country, so we feel it's important that the community be able to respond to hate crimes. Now, we have more capacity to do things.'' Paul Watanabe, a codirector at the new Institute for*Asian*American Studies at UMass-Boston, echoes Liu's assessment of the need for SafetyNet. He also credits Chen with being highly motivated. Indeed, since its official start in April 1993, SafetyNet has trained 200 professionals in the community service field to help recognize hate crimes and assist victims. As Chen explains it, if SafetyNet is to act as a liaison between victims and the criminal justice system, he must make members of the*Asian*community aware of their rights, create an environment of intolerence for hate crimes and push law enforcement officials to rigorously investigate and prosecute cases. It is also critical, Chen said, to use the Police Department's bilingual officers efficiently. According to Bob O'Toole, the department's director of informational services, there are 22 police officers of Chinese ancestry who speak Chinese and another six being trained at the police academy. There also is a Vietnamese liaison in Dorchester. O'Toole concedes that with any influx of immigrants, there is potential for a language barrier. However, he said, there are always ways to communicate. Chen agreed, but said that the Brighton case points out the need for SafetyNet to assist in that process. At first, he said, members of the Vietnamese family were willing to shake hands and walk away. They had realized they had been beaten, Chen said, and that they had been discriminated against. ''But,'' he said, ''they didn't expect the courts or the police would do anything about it. . . . That's exactly one of the roles we play.''
dnaslam you had to dig around and find articles from 1994 and 95 to attempt to prove your half-baked racist filled ideas. What a joke. bigtexxx hit the nail on the head with his post, however he left off the fact you are the biggest racist on the bbs. Your poorly masked attempts to cover your racist views on those different from yourself won't cut it around here. Your fooling no one--except perhaps yourself.
94 and 95, are the few articles that actually address the issue. didn't i say hate crimes against asians are often not reported and get practically no media attention? it hardly ever makes it to the news. i know plenty of events that are not in the news that happened recently. the first article i posted is a current and recent event. it happened this month. the proof is all there in the article. but of course, queencheetah and bigtexxx already made up their mind before they even read this article. he asked for more articles to support my claims. does it really matter when the article was published? some people here are in denial. the only person you're lying to is yourself. i could get you more recent articles but would that prove anything to a person who already made up his mind? NO. attempt to prove what half-baked racist filled ideas? what have i said in this thread to offend you? could it be you're in denial of your own prejudice? hallucinations are a result of lack of sleep. go to bed, get some sleep and come back and say something intelligent. cover my what views? that prejudice exists and racism is colorblind? that's a racist view? ok sure. whatever you say.
Sorry but it appeared to me that the basis of your problem with the hate crime is that one crime is the same as another and that because we label one a hate crime that it makes a non-hate crime more acceptable. Would you say that capital murder charges make murder charges more acceptable?
dnaslam, I am not arguing with you about whether or not hate crimes against asians are on the rise or not. I have not researched this point. You have not convinced me, either, with your dated articles. Whatever. The point is that even if they were on the rise, your comments toward Jews and the hard-working men and women of this nation's police department are completely uncalled for. To say that the police are useless and that if something like this happened to a Jew there would be a different reaction are very ill-thought out conclusions. I'm not sure how old you are (I'm guessing a teenager), but you should not make such leaps with your conclusions. but I do like the way you have mindlessly regurgitated what I told YOU earlier, that you've already made your mind up. Imitation is the finest form of flattery.
you were arguing with me about whether juveniles can get away with murder and in some states, they can. juveniles are not punished to the same extent of the law as adults. that is a known fact that people show extra sympathy to a juvenile. is that hard to understand? my comments about jews are in response to robbie's comments and your comments regarding this double standard concept that you ignorantly pursue as a excuse for your own prejudice. he asked the question of what would happen if the white person was the victim? i answered it. if you don't want me to answer ignorant questions, don't ask them in the first place. if you want to complain about double standards about other races and you think there's nothing wrong with it. why is it wrong for me to reply to your ignorant and uncalled for opinions with something that i know is true and is also a double standard. any bias or prejudice or anything remotely anti-semitic is dealt with in the media with respect. jewish also own large media corporations. they control what you see and hear. what's wrong with stating the facts? as for my criticism of police, it is a simple criticism of the legal system. last time i checked, freedom of speech was still allowed and criticizing the law and government was not wrong. your ignorance can not possibly be imitated by a teenager. a teenager is usually more intelligent. as for my dated articles, and the article referring to current events, i could care less if you believe it happens or not. like i said before, you already made up your mind a long time ago. i could play a video with the hate crime happening right in front of your eyes, and you would still doubt it was real. i don't care. i don't remember asking for your opinion on this hate crime anyway. i just posted the article. what you think of the article is your own opinion, and i could care less really. if you disagree with what i say, then don't comment.
Originally posted by mrpaige I don't know. I could see a concern being that, since whites are statistically more likely to be the victim of a hate crime, these hate crime laws be equally enforced. Maybe it's because we only hear of the big cases, but I've not heard of any racially motivated hate crime against a white person being prosecuted as a hate crime. Not saying it doesn't happen, I'm just saying I've never heard of it happening. Doesn't that have more to do with the media than the DA though? Plus, I do worry that hate crime laws can cause racial divisions. If the public feels a crime was a hate crime (whether it was or not), there can be great pressure to bear against the prosector to file the charges as a hate crime even when the prosecutor doesn't feel there's enough evidence to support such a charge. There was a large amount of uproar in the not-too-distant past in East Texas when an African-American man was found hanged in the woods. There was a large contingent of people who immediately branded it a hate crime at first discovery of the crime, before any suspects were named and any evidence really collected. That can cause stress on a community. Was it found to be a hate crime? You have to admit that a black man being lynched is a signature hate crime. That act itself has more meaning than a shooting or a stabbing. This can work both ways however, if you remember during the sniper shootings the profile of the killer from every "expert" was a white male. Certain crimes have certain profiles. Some types of crimes are always going to cause stress on a community though.
Just my 2 cents... 1. I have never, ever had a positive experience from authorities when trying to report dumbasses making racial comments or threats. By authorities I mean police, school officials, anybody. I've witnessed, and experienced firsthand, blatant racism several times. Every single time I've tried to talk to people in charge about it, my complaints have been largely ignored, or written off as "hypersensitivity." 2. It's strange that it's totally okay to call somebody a chink, wetback, or gook, but when you start dropping "N" bombs or express anti-semitic statements, you're crucified immediately. You gotta admit there is a double racial standard in our society. If you can't see that, you really are just lying to yourself. 3. DNASlam was right when he said a large number of hate against Asians go unreported. I think it could be attributed to Asian peoples' passive natures. Also, theres that whole language barrier thing.
You need to take your own advice about strong words backed up with zero proof. There is no way to prove that Dusty Baker caught more or less flack than Rocker or Zoeller.
I agree. There is a double standard. I think the test is if you can replace the "ethnic description" in a joke with the N word. The mere mention of the N word would associate me with hate and being the KKK grand wizard. Chink is okay, N****r is not. See, I'm afraid to write the N word, but I'm not afraid of chink. And that is WRONG! We're at a point where Jews and blacks are somewhat untouchable. Whereas, racism against Asians and Mexicans are accepted and not taken seriously. Jay Leno and Conan routinely make jokes about Asians and Mexicans about their food and culture, but will not make fun of blacks or Jews. They know the audience will laugh at the former and not the latter for fear of offending them. Meanwhile, whites are open game for all types of insults.
