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- Newsgroups: co.politics
- Path: sparky!uunet!convex!convex!darwin.sura.net!spool.mu.edu!agate!boulder!ucsu!ucsu.Colorado.EDU!fcrary
- From: fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)
- Subject: Re: What is a "hate crime"?
- Message-ID: <1993Jan23.192246.10997@ucsu.Colorado.EDU>
- Sender: news@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (USENET News System)
- Nntp-Posting-Host: ucsu.colorado.edu
- Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
- References: <1993Jan20.052237.11178@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> <1993Jan21.140729.19278@ncar.ucar.edu> <1993Jan21.232004.13676@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu>
- Distribution: co
- Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 19:22:46 GMT
- Lines: 122
-
- In article <1993Jan21.232004.13676@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> smorine@nyx.cs.du.edu (Suzanne Morine) writes:
- >>sm> As for society spurning group hates, I meant how all of us must recognise
- >> our small part in the marginalizing of groups, a la the south after the
- >> civil war, a la germany in the '30's.
-
- >> Half my ancestors weren't even in the US until after 1900, and I have never
- >> been a citizen of Germany. Why am *I* in some "small part" responsible for
- >> actions that occurred before I was born?
-
- >>sm> How, as a society, we've decided to never forget that societies must be
- >> responsible for what they as a group do to sub-groups.
-
- >> Societies aren't responsible, individuals are.
-
- >Oh, Please! *All* of *my* ancestors weren't in the US before 1900 and I am
- >not German. This doesn't make what happened in the south and Germany
- >irrelevant to my life and thinking.
-
- I think you are confusing responsibility and influence: What happened
- in the past is relevant to our thinking (i.e. the events constitute
- experience from which we should draw.) However, we are not responsible
- for them, nor should we feel guilty for them, since we were not
- involved. (I also find the whole concept of "social responsibility"
- a strange and dangerous one: If I take no part in an act, I'm not
- responsible for it. Saying that I am is not only unfair, it spreads
- the blame and dilutes the personal responsibility of those who are
- really guilty.)
-
- >If you go back to Germany in the 30's, you can't find people to pin all the
- >blame on. Sure, Hitler, Himmler(sp?). The German soldiers who carried out
- >the death marches, etc. told people afterward that "I was just following
- >orders." Were they to blame? The train conductor who shipped loads of
- >people crammed into boxcars had a hand, too. The train scheduler who knew
- >very well what the "shipments" were. The people in the fields where the
- >trains went through (and made brief stops) who sold food to the Jews for
- >jewelry but didn't help them. The people who didn't help/hide their Jewish
- >neighbors. Where to pin *all* of the blame?
-
- On the individuals. All the people you mention (except possibly those
- that didn't risk their own lives to help/hide others) had personally
- done (or failed to do) something. They are responsible, individually,
- in proportion to their actions.
-
- >The situation of the old south elaborates the illustration. Remarks, cross
- >burnings, lynchings. People weren't systematically eliminated but their
- >lives were systematically (in a subconscious sort of way) ruined.
-
- Here a major flaw in this idea of "social responsibility": Some people
- tried to prevent these crimes. That, to me, clearly means they aren't
- responsible for them. However, they were also part of that same
- society. According to this concept of "social responsibility", these
- people would be responsible (as members of their society) for crimes
- they activly tried to prevent. This doesn't make any sense to me...
-
- >It seems to me that collective actions are signifigant.
-
- No, the individual actions of a very large number of people were
- significant.
-
- >...We as a society
- >can try to monitor what these attitudes and collective actions are.
- >Education and speaking out are important, but in a difficult situation
- >you will want to have that "big stick" of the law to enforce fairness
- >for people.
-
- I'm afraid this strikes me as an extremely elitist attitude towards
- government: Those few who "understand" the "right" way for people
- to behave should use the government to "enforce" these opinions
- on the great, unthinking masses. In a democratic/free/"liberal"
- society, your opinions of fairness are no more valid that David
- Duke's opinions of fairness (after all, the whole idea is
- for everyone to be equal...) and the government is simply a
- reflection of the prejudices and biases of society as a whole.
- That isn't a very good arangement, but anything else would place
- the government in control of society. Everything our government
- is intended to be requires the reverse: The people must control
- their own government.
-
- > It seems to me that a "hate crime" designator for increasing the
- > seriousness of a given instance of crime could be useful. Like any
- > such designator, you'd have to show in court, beyond a reasonable
- > doubt, that the intent was to play a hand in marginalizing a group.
-
- Can you define, specifically, "marginalizing a group"? The phrase
- is so vague that it could mean almost anything: Does opposing
- affirmative action laws "marginalize" blacks? Do most political
- campaigns "marginalize" groups which oppose them? (The rhetoric
- used certainly implies extremely negative things about opponents...)
-
- Also, can your "hate crime" laws be applied to slander? If a politician
- makes inaccurate statements in a speach which "marginalizes" someone,
- could he be arrested for "hate" slander? If so, I'd have to very
- strongly object: The law would be vague enough to effectively
- allow political censorship.
-
- > I don't see a use for having an official list of marginalized groups,
- > but maybe there's some legal mumblemumble reason for such a list - I
- > don't know.
-
- Such a list would, in it self, be offensive: Are you saying that only
- certain politically "popular" minorities (i.e. the ones the drafters
- of the laws liked) can be victims of hatefull crimes?
-
- >> Easy. Use better ideas to battle idiots like Slater. Don't *ever* make the
- >> mistake of letting the State decide which ideas are too dangerous to be al-
- >> lowed. Doing so just might result in *your* ideas being illegal.
-
- >Absolutely use education/opinions, but don't at the same time take away the
- >"big stick" of laws against blatantly biased crimes.
-
- Since the governemnt can does not, currently, have such a "big stick",
- there is no question of taking it away. More properly, should we
- give the government such a big stick, when we know that the government
- can and has abused almost every power it is given. While such a big
- stick might be a good thing, if the government is always benevelent,
- there is no way to guess how the government will act in the future:
- Would you like to see such hate crime laws available, as a powerfull
- weapon if abused, were (say) someone like Richard Nixon in control
- of the government?
-
- Frank Crary
- CU Boulder
-