Labeling Theory and the Problem of Defining Hate Crime Essay

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My Views on Hate Crimes

Although hate crime is often associated with some sort of violent crime motivated by a desire to hurt a group or person based on that group or person’s identity, Green, McFalls and Smith (2001) admit that hate crime is actually difficult “to define, measure and explain” (p. 479). The reason for the difficulty is that hate, in the obvious sense of a person persecuting another because the other person is different, is not always so explicitly manifested or expressed in the crime. In fact, it could be said that at some level hate is the motive behind all crime—hate for the state, hate for society, hate for the law, hate for one’s neighbor, hate for God, or even hate for one’s self. To make it even more complicated, Chakraborti and Garland (2009) argue that “hate crimes are not crimes in which the offender simply hates the victim, and in reality crimes do not need to be motivated by hatred at all in order to be classified as a hate crime” (p. 4). One can commit a hate crime, in other words, without even having any hatred towards the victim. Thus, even among researchers and scholars, there is a great deal of gray area with respect to hate crime.

For that reason I view the label of “hate crime” as somewhat pedantic and further evidence that we live in a legalistic society that wants to label everyone and everything instead of dealing with people and their actions on a case by case basis. I do not see the label of “hate crime” as a positive step in criminal justice—especially since there is so much confusion among scholars themselves over what constitutes a hate crime.

A recent crime that occurred in Detroit this year is a typical example of what could be called a hate crime: a family was targeted by a neighbor in the community after the family put a “Black Lives Matter” sign on their lawn. The neighbor threw rocks at the house, slashed the family’s tires, and fired a gun at the windows of the house (Spruill, 2020). The neighbor was arrested and charged with committing a hate crime, as the neighbor was upset by the sign and acted out of antipathy for the BLM movement. The attack was motivated by a conflict of ideological viewpoints. That is what made the crime a hate crime.

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But what actions are not motivated in this way? Recently an Iranian scientist was assassinated in a covert operation that was likely supported by US and Israeli forces. Is the motivation in this action any different from the motivation in the hate crime described above? Yet the kind of action that the state engages in towards a nation like Iran is not considered a hate

Indeed, even what could…

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…Palestine is akin to Anti-Semitism. And being labeled an Anti-Semite is akin to being labeled a Nazi in today’s world. It is thus not hard to see how labels are applied for ideological purposes even at the level of the federal government, which should be impartial on issues such as this.

The fact that the state is not impartial and that it has adopted the label of hate crime in order to categorized and classify offenses is clear that it is engaging in the labeling of people who hold views or act in a certain manner. The label of hate crime is a way to further sensationalize the act or the thought and it is a way to reinforce the idea of thought It is a way to restrict freedom of thought and freedom of opinion as well. The only opinions that will soon be allowed will be those that conform to what the state wants one to think—about all things. That is the problem with the label hate It is Orwellian at its very core.

Thus, I not only believe that hate crimes should not be punished more severely than if they were not labeled as such, but also I believe that the very label of hate crime should be abolished completely. It should not be used ever. A crime should be assessed on the act committed—not on a subjective….....

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