Hate Crime Laws Give Certain Reaction Paper

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It has also been suggested that, in effect, this equality is relatively meaningless, because non-minorities are so much more rarely the victims of hate crimes, and that, therefore, these laws protect and benefit minorities more than they protect or benefit non- minorities. Ironically, the accurate analysis of this observation is precisely backwards:

the fact that minorities are so much more likely to be targeted by racially motivated crimes is hardly a reason to consider the laws that criminalize such conduct "unfair" to non-minorities. If anything, that reality only reinforces the absolute need for laws that prohibit racially motivated crimes. The fact of the matter is that minorities are much more likely to be the victims of racial hatred than are non-minorities, and that non- minorities are more often the perpetrators of racially motivated crimes than are individuals from minority backgrounds. Certainly, there are instances of racially motivated crimes perpetrated by minorities against non-minorities; wherever they occur, those crimes are addressed exactly the same as the reverse situation, exactly as they should be. In any case, the point is actually moot, because, regardless of how often it occurs or what the identity is of perpetrator or victim, the laws specifically addressing racially motivated crimes protect both minorities and non-minorities equally however those crimes occur, or between whom. As far as the issue of divisiveness is concerned, what is divisive in society is failing to protect innocent victims of racially motivated crimes, not simply providing the same equal protection of laws prohibiting race crimes to all, without regard to race.

As a matter of fact, in the pre-Civil Rights era of American history, laws that were supposed to protect the rights of all Americans equally were routinely ignored when they should have protected minorities from racially motivated crimes (Schmalleger 1997).

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Particularly in the Southern states, criminal laws that were already required under the Constitution to protect minorities were routinely ignored, sometimes, even in the case of murder. Even where criminal charges were brought and proof of guilt established beyond doubt at trial, non-minority juries ignored the evidence anytime the defendant was white and the victim black. Ultimately, anti-hate crime legislation is designed to protect everyone equally, not to accomplish the opposite or divide society at all......

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