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Two items:<\/p>\n
On hoaxes:\u00a0 \u201cRacist messages at Air Force Academy were written by student who claimed to be targeted<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n On politics in Venezuela:\u00a0 \u201cVenezuela\u2019s hate crime law seeks to silence political opposition, bishops warn<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 The pro-regime defense:\u00a0 \u201cVenezuela\u2019s ANC to Approve New Hate Crime Legislation<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The statistics:\u00a0 \u201cLatest Hate Crime Statistics Released<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0 The FBI report itself<\/a>.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s start with the first:\u00a0 the racist messages left on students\u2019 doors at the Air Force Preparatory Academy turned out not to have been left by a white supremacist after all; instead, it was a black student who thought that by becoming a \u201cvictim\u201d he could avoid penalties for some other unnamed misdeed.<\/p>\n Is there a tally of the relative frequency of hoaxes vs. actual misdeeds?\u00a0 Certainly they show up in the news over and over again, and there\u2019s even a website devoted to cataloging them<\/a>.<\/p>\n For the most part, I\u2019m not a big fan of the concept of the \u201chate crime.\u201d\u00a0 In general, murder, assault, theft, destruction of property, etc. \u2014 even a bomb threat \u2014 is equally deserving of punishment if the perpetrator was motivated by hate towards the victim for reasons of ethnicity, religion, etc., or because of a personal dispute or any other reason.\u00a0 I can see, though, that in the case of a \u201chate crime\u201d there\u2019s a secondary victim, insofar as a murder of a fill-in-the-blank person for reasons of bias causes fear among others of that category in a way that a domestic violence case doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n The one distinction, I suppose, is the case of vandalism, leaving messages with offensive words as opposed to something bland and generic \u2014 though apparently (e.g., in the above-linked article) some collectors of hate crimes deem pro-Trump messages to be \u201chate.\u201d<\/p>\n And hoaxes?\u00a0 Social justice advocates now have a track record of saying, \u201ceven if it was a hoax, it\u2019s still a good reminder to us all to be nice.\u201d\u00a0 But they cause real harm, insofar as they cause people of that minority group to feel that they are threatened.\u00a0 They cause conflict.\u00a0 And they divert resources \u2014 both directly, in terms of the time spent investigating the deed itself, and indirectly, when a university is convinced, due to fake hate, that they need to spend even more money on combating it, money that could be spent in more useful ways instead, or just not spent at all, moderating, to whatever small degree, the next round of tuition increases.<\/p>\n Ace at Ace of Spades HQ<\/a> has some useful commentary on the topic, asserting that<\/p>\n This is not a hoax \u2014 this is a hate-crime, or, more accurately, malicious vandalism with the sentencing intensifier of being committed with the intent to spread fear and hatred, just as it would be if a white guy did it.<\/p>\n The fact that a non-white did it does not change those facts \u2014 and neither should it change the criminal penalty nor the social opprobrium heaped on the miscreant who did it, unless our nation is prepared to officially declare, unconstutionally but with the authority of Spike Lee, that non-whites are incapable of racism and hence any laws regarding racialized crime apply only to one race.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And, in fact, the student who did this has now left, whether because of this action or his prior misdeed, but his name is unknown; he is being given anonymity, which would not be afforded a white perpetrator.<\/p>\n The Tribune article reports,<\/p>\n Using a ProPublica database, BuzzFeed News found 154 total incidents of hate speech at more than 120 college campuses nationwide. More than two-thirds promoted white supremacist groups or ideology, while more than a third cited Trump\u2019s name or slogans, BuzzFeed News reported.<\/p>\n Yet authorities caught less than 5 percent of perpetrators in cases of vandalism or threats. In at least three instances, college officials determined the incident was a hoax, according to BuzzFeed News.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Reason has more<\/a> on this ProPublica\/Buzzfeed News report<\/a>, which further lists examples of some of the incidents, such as:<\/p>\n a Latina student returned to her dorm to find that her roommate had built a makeshift wall between their beds, alongside a note that read, \u201cTrump won so here is a little preview of what\u2019s to come.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n and<\/p>\n At Iowa State University less than a week after the inauguration, business cards were left in the campus library stating: \u201cAmerica was 90% white in 1950. It is now 60%. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Trump is the first step, we\u2019re next!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So the obvious\u00a0math is this:\u00a0 154 * 5% = 7.7.\u00a0 \u201cAt least\u201d 3 (what does that even mean?) out of 7 or 8 identified perpetrators were hoaxers.\u00a0 But that 5% is so small, and the \u201cincidents of hate speech\u201d so broadly defined (was their ongoing antagonism between the roommates, for example?), that this whole thing doesn\u2019t really provide any real information.<\/p>\n And recall the Jewish community center bomb threats back immediately after the election, which turned out to be the work of a Jewish man in Israel<\/a>.\u00a0 So far as I know, we never learned his motivation but he sure wasn\u2019t a neo-Nazi.<\/p>\n What about Venezuela?\u00a0 Yes, of course, there\u2019s the whole context of a country in which the ruler is assuming increasingly dictatorial powers.\u00a0 And slippery-slope arguments are always somewhat suspect \u2014 either a thing is wrong in itself, or it isn\u2019t.\u00a0 \u00a0But it\u2019s still unsettling as an example of the consequences of using the concept of \u201chate crimes\u201d to control one\u2019s opponents.\u00a0 The pro-Maduro site says the law was necessary to put an end to instances such as anti-government protests in which (suspected) pro-government individuals were attacked, but the Catholic bishops in the country say the aim is much greater.<\/p>\n The president of the Venezuelan bishops\u2019 justice and peace commission has criticized a hate crimes law passed on Thursday, charging that its aim is to silence those opposed to the socialist government of Nicolas Maduro.<\/p>\n The Law Against Hatred and Fascism, the Nov. 2 legislation passed by the Constituent Assembly, will be used by Maduro\u2019s government against the opposition \u201cso we can\u2019t even speak or protest,\u201d Emeritus Archbishop of Coro Roberto L\u00fcckert Leon told ACI Prensa.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Does the example of Venezuela necessarily prove that hate crime laws will be used to silence government opponents, or that hate crime accusations will be used to silence the political opponents of the accuser?\u00a0 No, of course not.\u00a0 But some of the claims of \u201chate\u201d that have been tossed around, such as the incident in which \u201cTrump 2016\u201d chalk sidewalk messages<\/a> at Emory University were deemed to be offensive, tend toward that direction.<\/p>\n What about the FBI statistics?\u00a0 The FBI has a table breaking down known offenders by type of crime and race\/ethnicity.\u00a0 It\u2019s not as crystal clear as \u201cwhite racists\u201d \u2014 in the category of assault, only 51% of perpetrators where classified as \u201cwhite\u201d, with 27% black, 2% each Asian or American Indian, 9% a group of assailants of multiple races, and 10% unknown (which seems odd as I would assume that this would be part of reporting data; perhaps \u201crace\u201d was based on self-reporting, but I would assume a bureaucrat would identify race when it was visibly obvious so that \u201cunknown\u201d represents \u201cnot white, but dunno what exactly\u201d).\u00a0 On the other hand, \u201cintimidation\u201d perpetrators were 67% white, 17% black.<\/p>\n And the types of crimes?\u00a0 They report that<\/p>\n But the statistics are just that, shorn of any details about the circumstances \u2014 or, at least, I can\u2019t find any place on this site in which one can see examples of \u201cintimidation\u201d crimes or vandalism, for instance, to see how broadly these crimes are defined.\u00a0 How many of these are the \u201cstereotypical\u201d hate crime, in which a turban\u2019d Sikh is shot because of that clear faith identifier?\u00a0 How many of these are more muddled, in which bias is one of a confluence of motivations, mixed in with generic criminality?\u00a0 How many are like the Matthew Shepherd case<\/a>, in which the victim\u2019s clear \u201cminority\u201d status causes everyone to assume the reason is bias (in this case, it turned out to be drug-related)?\u00a0 And how much of the claimed increase in hate crimes recently is a matter of true increases vs. reporting increases?\u00a0 (An ADL press release<\/a>\u00a0I came across simultaneously cites a year-over-year increase and at the same time urges greater reporting.)<\/p>\n It\u2019s a mess.\u00a0 Attacks against individuals because of their race, ethnicity, religion or other characteristics, are bad.\u00a0 Hoaxes, or too-quick identification of an incident as a hate crime prior to learning the motivation, are troubling and counter-productive.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t see any progress here.<\/p>\n So I\u2019ll finish with my usual request.\u00a0 Readers, do you have any experiences?<\/p>\n\n