Andrew Jones Isn’t every crime a hate crime?
E-mail the author at ajones@media.ucla.edu.
Click Here for more articles by Andrew Jones
Sometimes a movie screening is just a movie screening. At other
times, like UCLA’s Feb. 26 showing of HBO’s “The
Laramie Project,” it’s more like a product torn
straight from the pages of the leftist handbook “Exploiting
Homicide for Fun, Profit, and Political Gain.”
In the particular case of “The Laramie Project,” the
horrific murder of an innocent gay man has been manipulated into a
leftist showpiece calling for “hate crimes”
legislation.
Just as Norma McCorvey would be the figurehead for the abortion
agenda, Matthew Shepard’s murder would serve as the catalyst
for hate crimes legislation. The case was almost too good to be
true ““ situated in the conservative, cowboy-culture center of
Wyoming. The victim was a physically weak young man, regarded as
having universal good will. And best yet, the killers were two
young white males. Every fact was perfect for condemning
traditional American society, and from the start, leftists
capitalized on this.
The creation of a propaganda piece like “The Laramie
Project” is only one part of this larger campaign. But
Shepard’s case, on closer inspection, actually demonstrates
that existing criminal statutes, not hate crime laws, punish
criminals as much as deemed necessary.
According to leftist arguments, the lack of hate crime penalties
in Wyoming allowed Shepard’s killers, Aaron McKinney and
Russell Henderson, to escape with slaps on the wrists. But the
facts don’t back this up. Yes, McKinney escaped a death
sentence, but only because Shepard’s own father asked that
his life be spared. Instead, both McKinney and Henderson received
consecutive life sentences and will spend the rest of their natural
lives in jail. The sum of the Shepard murders? Each killer received
the harshest sentence possible for his crime ““ all without a
need for an increased hate crime penalty.
“Laramie,” for its part, minimizes these pesky facts
because they go along with the film’s central premise that
the nation needs hate crime laws. But understand that this
deception is standard practice ““ using a crime as
“proof” that new legislation is needed to address a
problem despite hard facts proving the contrary. The Shepard case
illustrated the need for hate crime statutes about as much as the
killing of Jon-Benet Ramsey illustrated the need for, say,
increased federal union-busting ““ in other words, not at
all.
However, appropriation of splashy crime incidents for the
advancement of marginal political causes is nothing new. UCLA
itself witnessed a supposed “hate crime wave” two years
ago. The crimes totaled a few poster slashings and defacements,
coupled with a black transfer student being kicked on the steps of
Campbell Hall by a white man in his 30s shouting slurs.
In the end, the few and the noisy who demanded that UCLA
policies enhance punishment for hate crimes, were successful.
Chancellor Carnesale buckled under the light pressure like a 5-foot
linebacker.
Never mind that the alleged assailant was a man in his 30s
““ older than most graduate students, much less 20-something
undergrads ““ almost certainly making the assailant a
lone-gunman racist unconnected to the UCLA campus. Never mind that
the UCLA hate crime code, applicable only to students, faculty and
employees, would not have increased punishment for the kicking
assailant.
As with the Shepard case, hate-crimers are using such crimes as
an excuse to jump-start their separatist cause. Given the lack of
hate crimes on which they could base their campaign on, a case that
is in no way related to their goals became the centerpiece of an
imaginary hate crime wave, crying out for some type of
administrative response.
Our university and country are in bad shape when social policy
is created within a vacuum of facts. Hate crime laws will never
serve to build a utopia bursting with social justice. It will only
create a society in which a nasty look or a muttered curse word
cannot be a part of the daily coarseness of modern life. Instead,
it will become a hate incident undeserving of hysterical responses
with a “re-education” to conform with leftist group
ideologies.
We need less, not more, separatism. Hate crime legislation only
serves the goals of the totalitarian leftist by heightening the
division along racial and identity lines, which will eventually
destroy the civility which binds us together.