If “Hate Crimes” Were Bad, Why Not Double Hate Crimes?

It hasn’t been easy being an Asian American over the past decade, knowing that you’re expected to be an obsequious supporter of social justice as a marginalized minority while simultaneously being treated like dirt for working hard, doing well and ending the target of discrimination by the very passionate folks who demand your obedience.

As anti-Asian violence increased, it was hard to address since the perpetrators were mostly the same marginalized people who you were required to adore as they beat you, but you weren’t allowed to mention that it was black and brown guys beating old Asian people* because oppressed people can do no wrong and beating is reparations anyway. Let’s face it, Asians made them look bad, so how could they not be forgiven for beating Asians?

So the mass murder of Korean sex workers in Atlanta presented an opportunity to finally make some public headway, since the killer was a white man. Finally, someone to blame, even if it was just one guy against the hundreds of incidents. This was a big one, by far the most serious one, and it was a white guy. And all the woke folks suddenly stood behind anti-Asian discrimination.

Not enough to let them into Harvard or Yale, or mention that it was black people beating them on the street, but still, violence against Asians, even if it was only because they were sex workers, was finally getting its moment. And a couple of AAPI (you’re nobody without an acronym) politicians were not going to let the moment pass without leaping into the spotlight.

Introduced by Representative Grace Meng of New York and Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act is a short bill with two main provisions:

  • It requires the attorney general to put a Justice Department official in charge of reviewing reports of Covid-19-related hate crimes for at least a year.

  • It requires the Justice Department to issue guidance to state and local law enforcement agencies on how to establish an online hate crime reporting system in multiple languages, expand public education campaigns to encourage reporting of cases and provide guidance on how to mitigate racially discriminatory language in descriptions of the pandemic.

What does any of this have to do with Covid? It doesn’t matter, as every new law needs a hook into whatever it can find to link it to the public’s fears. What does it accomplish? For those who believe that the real problem with “hate crimes” is inadequate statistics, whose purpose is to provide an empirical basis for more crimes and punishment enhancements (“ooh, look more hate crimes so let’s double the sentence because that worked so well with drugs”), it lays an important foundation to prove how right they are to hate haters who hate. Even if, as happened in Atlanta, it was immediately labeled an Anti-Asian hate crime despite it being an anti-sex worker hate crime if any hate crime at all.

The problem with hate crimes in general are well known and have been discussed at length here and elsewhere. Surprisingly, Spencer Bokat-Lindell at the New York Times provides a somewhat useful survey of the arguments for and against hate crimes. While his sources are suspect and his descriptions shallow at best, it’s about as good as one could expect from a non-lawyer who has no meaningful grasp of the issues at hand.

If there’s a takeaway to be found, it’s the absurdity of the same people bemoaning mass imprisonment while demanding more imprisonment. If criminalizing speech or thought worked to eradicate racism, it hasn’t done much to help AAPI or much of anyone else. This irony doesn’t make it past the empty rhetoric that lets people believe they’re being sensitive to the plight of Asian Americans while making sure that their efforts to achieve admission to the most elite schools are crushed to make room for others. Those darn Asian Americans and their curve-busting ways.

It’s hard to blame Senator Mazie Hirona from seizing the moment to push a law for her racial cohort, since she’s finally got some backing due to Atlanta and has a white man to blame. But to what end does enacting more “hate crime” laws serve? Will it finally end racism to have people convicted of being double hate criminals, on top of murderers, so that after they’re executed, the woke can spit on them and kick them in the head a few times while screaming racist at their lifeless body?

What it will do is give the woke yet another opportunity to create performative laws that leave them feeling all warm, fuzzy and accomplished by having done something, something, to fight whatever hate is the bad hate of the moment. It might not be much. Heck, it might not be anything, actually. But it was also something, and as the syllogism goes, that’s close enough.

In his address about last week’s spa shootings in Georgia that left eight people dead, including six women of Asian descent, President Biden had only one novel policy prescription for stemming the rising tide of anti-Asian violence in the United States: Whatever the shooter’s motivation, he said, it was time for Congress to pass a new piece of hate crime legislation, the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act, which had been introduced this month.

No, it doesn’t accomplish anything useful, unless you’re desperately seeking empirical evidence to support your priors. But what it does accomplish is letting you know how much your government cares about your feelings, because if single hate crimes didn’t do the trick, maybe double hate crimes will fill those prison cells. But really, what difference does it make as long as there are laws criminalizing hate to make those good people who hate hate feel good about their government. Isn’t that what it’s really all about?

*It’s not me saying this. It’s the statistics. The NYPD kept stats on the race of defendants who committed the 20 anti-Asian hate crimes for which someone was arrested. Two were white. Five were white Hispanic. Two were black Hispanic. The rest, eleven, were black.

18 thoughts on “If “Hate Crimes” Were Bad, Why Not Double Hate Crimes?

  1. Henry Berry

    The way I look at the Atlanta shootings incident is something like: Suppose someone hates broccoli. Broccoli torments him. He wants to take out broccoli. He goes rampaging through a California broccoli farm where the large majority of workers are Hispanic shooting at broccoli and anything that gets in his way as he is doing this. This is not a hate crime. It’s the broccoli, stupid.

    1. Rengit

      But you’re listening to him stating his motive that he hates broccoli, and he’s a killer, so why should we believe him? And even if he’s being honest, perhaps his strong hatred for broccoli stems from a subconscious bias against migrant laborers who pick the broccoli, and those migrant labors are disproportionately Hispanic. So it’s bias-motivated. And we spoke with a Chicano studies professor, and she says this incident fits in with a long history of violence by white men against people of Mexican descent, stretching back to the Mexican-American War; the feelings are still so raw.

      Boom, now it’s a hate crime.

  2. DaveL

    For those who believe that the real problem with “hate crimes” is inadequate statistics, whose purpose is to provide an empirical basis for more crimes and punishment enhancements (“ooh, look more hate crimes so let’s double the sentence because that worked so well with drugs”), it lays an important foundation to prove how right they are to hate haters who hate.

    Unfortunately, for the purpose of proving how righteous you are, it turns out that inadequate, even boneheadedly craptacular statistics work just as well as high-quality, reliable ones.

    1. SHG Post author

      There are a great many failings with what passes as empiricism these days, but as long as they produce the desired results, does it really matter?

  3. B. McLeod

    What does it have to do with COVID? That is the batshit crazy mechanism to blame Trump for the spa shooting. Meanwhile. They ignore that Biden dumped the anti-discrimination case. Biden passed over the AAPI favorite for Labor Secretary. Biden sanctioned China for the Uighur thing. Biden set back diplomatic relations with North Korea. Worst of all, even when ostensibly asking his followers not to commit violence against Asians, Biden himself never misses pointing out Trump’s comments that COVID-19 originated there. So he can blame Trump, and so Jen Psaki and Meng the Merciless can blame Trump. However, objective comparison of Trump’s and Biden’s behaviors tends more toward a conclusion that Biden is the evil, Asian-hating bastard.

      1. B. McLeod

        But he can’t be allowed to be gone. He has to be blamed for causing the spa shooting. We can’t just continue the media precept from 2016-2020 that all hate crimes are caused by the current president because Biden is president now. Even though the ascendency of the Anti-Asian hate crimes (and the spa shooting) may have transpired on Biden’s watch, it CAN’T be him, because, reasons.

  4. KeyserSoze

    So if you commit a hate crime resulting in the the death penalty, do you get executed twice?

    1. Corey

      That would certainly take the idea that “a coward dies a thousand deaths” to it’s illogical extreme, so yes.

    2. SHG Post author

      That would be silly, Steve. You execute once, then kick him in the head a few times while calling him names. Have I been unclear?

      1. Corey

        Who knew the Cadavor Synod would be relevant 1000 years later? Plus the Brits have done that sort of punishment so I’m sure some “brilliant” law student out there can tell us that there is precedent in common law.

      2. KeyserSoze

        I know! Lets give him 1X the lethal dose per hate crime specification he is found guilty of. Two specifications equals 2X the lethal dose and so on. That will show him!

    1. cthulhu

      I trained you well, grasshopper!

      (Back in the day when there was Freedom of Video on this blog (sniff), I recall you mentioning you were not familiar with the esteemed Mr. K before I took to posting some of his more apropos stylings here. Glad it’s still the gift that keeps on giving. You need to find a post where the entire Merzsuite is appropriate though…)

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