Does It Make It Better If They Don't Hate You?

Admittedly, there is something appealing about "Hate Crimes" legislation. These laws usually target offenders whose crimes are motivated by racial or ethnic--or, in the case of legislation recently approved by the Senate, homophobic--hatred. These crimes evoke a visceral disgust in the majority of the population, probably because they so offend some bedrock precepts of "American-ness": the idea that all people are created equal, the idea of Americans as basically decent and tolerant, the idea of the United States as a "melting pot." We find these crimes so repugnant that we feel the need to mete out extra punishment to the offenders, beyond that which would normally be administered for their various crimes.

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Is this reaction motivated by fear? We often hear about horrific crimes and "senseless" violence, but what stimulates calls for hate crime laws are those crimes that are horrific and "senseless" but not, from a certain perspective, irrational. Indeed, we often look with something like pity on authors of truly horrific crimes that are truly senseless. Even a clearly culpable murderer, for example, may be found not guilty by reason of insanity--by reason of verifiable irrationality. On the other hand, those who attack members of different races or ethnicities or religions or sexual preferences merely because of those differences are acting in accordance with their own "rational" biases and fears. In other words, to the vast majority, these people have no excuse: They are beyond consideration of leniency and, indeed, their beliefs place them so far beyond the reach of civilized behavior that we want to do everything in our power to separate them from society for as long as possible.

Again, on a "gut level," there is something appealing about this.

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One simplistic objection to hate crime legislation--particularly when considered for murderers--is that all crimes are hate crimes: You don't murder someone you don't hate. This is demonstrably untrue. Many killings are not motivated by hatred. If you think someone is running towards you brandishing a knife, and you have the means to stop that person with lethal force, you will most likely do so: While you are understandably frightened of that person, you probably don't "hate" him--and, indeed, this type of killing may not be considered a crime at all. But even killings that more clearly fall under the heading of "murder" are not necessarily motivated by hate: a contract killing is "just business, nothing personal"; a mugging gone wrong is probably not motivated by personal animus toward the victim; even, as mentioned above, psychopathic murders or spree killings may be motivated by chemical imbalances or other deep psychological factors that have nothing to do with hatred.

In this sense, then, hate-crimes legislation sounds like a good idea: Since not all crimes are committed for equal reasons, we should have different standards for judging and punishing crimes based on their "reasonableness."

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One concern with hate crimes laws is what might be called the "slippery slope" argument: There's a fine line between punishing people for crimes committed due to "hatred" and punishing people for "hatred" itself. In Germany, anti-semitism is effectively illegal. If one walks down the street wearing a t-shirt with a swastika, that person is subject to arrest. Given Germany's history, we understand and perhaps applaud such zealous guardianship of civil rights. In America, however, we would shoot dirty looks at that person while congratulating ourselves on our enlightened respect for all viewpoints, however odious. At least until the swastika-emblazoned thug throws a rock through a synagogue window. Then, all bets are off. We seek to punish that person not just for the action but for expressing "hatred" through the action.

The question is, Is the window-breaking made "worse" by the fact that the window-breaker was wearing a t-shirt with a swastika on it? What if he had thrown a rock through a 7-11 window? What if the manager of that 7-11 happened to be Jewish, but our young antagonist was unaware of that fact--or at least claimed to be? In the parlance of today's youth, this person might be a "hater," but was his crime a hate crime? And what difference does it really make to the person whose window was broken?

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And how far should hate-crimes legislation reach? Lately, because of the country's economic troubles, homelessness has been increasing in many areas. At the same time, attacks on homeless people have been increasing as well, and many states and localities are considering whether to pass hate-crimes laws essentially establishing the homeless as a protected "class." Even civil-rights activists are ambivalent about these proposed laws, mainly because they fear that expansion of this type of legislation will "dilute" hate-crimes laws. They argue that homelessness, as opposed, for example, to race or ethnicity, is not an inborn or permanent trait, and so it should not be subject to special legal protection.

We can't get behind that argument. It sounds like those opponents--who include such established civil rights groups as the Anti-Defamation League--are saying that, because homeless people can, ultimately, stop being homeless, they should not receive special protections under the law. But this is like arguing that it's the homeless's own fault that they're being targeted: If they don't want to get beaten up by roving gangs of bored teenagers, they should just get off the street and go live in houses! Stupid homeless people!

No, our objection to expanding hate-crimes laws to protect the homeless is that it's a simplistic "solution" that won't solve anything. We suspect that people who attack the homeless don't "hate" the homeless--certainly not in the same way that racists and white supremacists and homophobes hate the respective targets of their wrath. Some people may hate homelessness, seeing in it a reflection of their own vulnerability in troubling economic times. They may use the homeless as scapegoats for their own troubles: "Homeless people cause crime! Homeless people bring down property values!"

Wrong? Probably. But is it hatred? Were these folks raised by parents who told them that homeless people were an inferior race, as many klansmen and their ilk were probably raised to think of blacks, Latinos, Jews, etc.? We doubt it.

We think politicians advocating hate-crimes protection of the homeless are at best naive and at worst opportunistic. It's easy to score political points by coming out against intolerance. But it's a lot harder to try to solve the problems. What will it cost in extra policing or judicial services to prosecute hate crimes against the homeless? Would this money be better spent trying to help house the homeless instead?

Think of it this way, most Jews, for example, would probably be offended if a politician proposed the following solution to the problem of anti-semitism: Jews should just stop being Jewish. On the other hand, given two options for solving the problem of violence against the homeless--expanded prosecution of those who attack the homeless or spending more money to get these folks off the streets--which do you think the victims would choose.

Given a choice between grandstanding and problem-solving, give us problem-solving every time.