From: fcrary@ucsu.Colorado.EDU (Frank Crary)
Subject: Re: What is a "hate crime"?
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Distribution: co
Date: Sat, 23 Jan 1993 19:22:46 GMT

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
Newsgroups: co.politics