A couple of weeks ago, I wrote this post about a possible anti-gay hate-crime hoax at North Carolina State University. It appeared to me that the police had not pursued the most likely suspects — the supposed victims — raising some very serious issues about the impartiality of justice.
Now comes this hate-crime hoax at Williams College. This time the issue is race, rather than gender. But it fits the same pattern: hate graffiti, followed by police investigations, followed by official and student events and actions decrying anybody who doesn’t support the attacked group’s agenda. The handwringing is then followed the proverbial chirping of crickets due to the absence of arrests. Only this time, apparently it’s common knowledge on the Williams campus that the person who wrote the anti-minority graffiti was a minority student. If he indeed wrote the graffiti, why isn’t he arrested for make a false report to the police (plus vandalism)?
There have been dozens of these hoaxes over the last decade — maybe a hundred or more. It used to be that schools actually sought to discover the perpetrators, but it now seems that academia is moving ever further away from unbiased pursuit of the truth. Whether the specific incident involves falsifying climate change research, education professors who teach that science is not objective but is instead dependent upon the background of the scientist or science student, or false criminal reports, the denial is growing in all directions. I wonder where that’s going to lead.
I remember when I was in college, we had one of those hoaxes happen. I think the main reason they don't go after the person who do the hoaxes is the bad publicity they think will come to the school. There are deans at every school that think its their job to prevent bad press, and in some cases keeping the lid on things is good idea. They almost always get way out of hand and enter the land of the absurd.
In the case of the one at my school, it was a good idea to keep a lid on it and keep it quiet. It was one of my black roommates who did the hoax, some racist graffiti on our door. I imagine he wanted the attention these things normally get. However after the deans met with the rest of us (me a white guy, my roommate an Asian guy, and his roommate another black guy) in that apartment, they knew right away they probably had a hoax. Thankfully the city police were not called and the press never got wind of it. It even wasn't that big of a thing on campus, it a small school and people know each other too well. He finally admitted it was a hoax. The school asked him to leave and he did.
That's not the way its handled on most American universities today. I at least went to a school run by sane people. If it had been real, they would have found out who did it. When they did find out it was the "victim", they didn't ruin his life, but didn't let him get away with it either. So it's got to be a case by case thing. In that case, criminal charges were overkill. Schools just need to not let it get out of hand. That may be the main problem.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhile admitting that you have more context for your conclusion than I have, I respectfully disagree that the hoax should not have been criminally prosecuted.
By allowing the student to leave without any documented punishment, that student was then free to commit the same crime at a different location. This doesn't reduce crime, it merely changes the location of the activity and subjects other potential victims to the possibility of a false, and extremely damaging, accusation.
While admitting, again, that there may be mitigating facts, it appears to me that the college administration did not act as responsible citizens.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOver a cliff, usually.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI find the expression "hate crime" somehow offensive. If an act is a crime, why is the motivation behind it -- hate or not -- important?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBecause some victims are more equal than others. Didn't you read "Animal Farm"?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAnimal Farm - the greatest political tract ever written. Read this little book and you begin to understand the workings of the Modern Left.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf you want to get REALLY unmentionable, it bears noting (though it IS outside the ambit of this Web site) that "hate" hoaxes of this kind are quite common in the larger society off campus.
At least some of the hate hoaxes are used to mask crimes arising from INDIVIDUAL animus. The "hate" decorations on such crimes serve, of course, to throw investigators off the track of the perpetrator whose motivations pertain to the (a) SPECIFIC victim.
And then, of course, there are the "entrapment" schemes that organizations as diverse as the FBI and the Canadian Human Rights Council base upon actual or presumed intergroup hatred.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI do wish conservatives who sound off against the concept of "hate crime" would take the time to learn that quite often, in both criminal and civil cases, "intent" is a legitimate concern. There is nothing new or liberal about this--if anything is at fault it is the common law tradition itself.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIntent might make the difference between a charge of 1st degree murder and a lessor charge. That's fine. Not all homocides are 1st degree murders.
However, consider two cases of assault, one where the victim is a white male beaten by minorities and the other where the victim is a protected minority assaulted by a white male. Furthermore, consider if witnesses heard the assailant yelling racial slurs during the assault. If you honestly believe that hate crime laws would be applied equally in both of those cases, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you. In both cases, the crime of assault was identical. How is the concept of hate crimes allowable under the constitutional mandate of equal protection under the law?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt isn't even a case of consistently enforcing the law. The problem is in the definition itself.
If a group of thugs targets someone out of "hate" and beats them to a pulp, it is a "hate crime" if the target is a Jew - but not if the target is a homeless man.
The difference between murder vs. manslaughter is the intent of the person committing the crime. The difference between a "hate crime" beating vs. a non-"hate crime" beating is the not the intent of the perpetrator (which may be identical in both cases), but rather the identity of the victim.
It would be a more accurate analogy to compare it to a situation where the law classifies a killing as "first degree murder" if the victim is a wife, but an otherwise-identical crime is only "manslaughter" if the victim is "just" a servant girl.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseUsually, those who are convicted of "hate crimes" are generally white, but when Blacks engage in "hate crimes" against whites it is just another crime, if even that. Don't insult us here: The word "intent" attaches to the crime itself, not to the identity of the person.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'll tell you where this finally leads...from hate crimes to thought crimes. The hi-tech Cultural Revolution is coming. The ruling elite will know your background and your associations. They will know the blogs you read and the comments you leave. If you do not love Big Brother, your crime will be merely existing.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHate crimes are in the eye of the beholder.we are still waiting for ""rev al" to fess up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThat there is even such a thing as hate crime tells you all you need to know about our current culture. When a valid emotion becomes a crime then we know we are well past losing our freedom.
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