Last November, a Cornell junior suffered a vicious beating at the hands of six assailants after an on-campus rap concert. The beating resulted in a ruptured eardrum and numerous cuts and bruises for the victim, the scars of which could take up to a year to heal.
In addition to kicks and punches, the attackers hurled numerous racial epithets at the student during the assault.
Despite the severity of the crime, the Ithaca Police Department has completely dropped the ball in terms of prosecuting the perpetrators. Only four of the six have been tracked down so far. Two of the attackers, who are juveniles, have only been charged with third-degree assault, a misdemeanor. The older two were arrested and charged only with harassment.
To further the injustice, despite the obvious racist motivation behind the attack, the police have refused to classify it as a hate crime.
How is this possible? How can such an obvious case of racial violence not only not be classified as a hate crime but also go almost entirely unpunished?
Quite simple, really. The attackers were African-American, and the victim was Caucasian. The Cornell Daily Sun reports:
The incident was originally investigated as a hate crime on the basis of the victim's statements to police. The victim, who is Caucasian, told The Sun last November that over the course of their exchanges, the alleged assailants told her to "Get your white hair out of my face" and that "they were gonna fuck up my pretty white face." At the time of the incident, the victim identified the alleged assailants as African-American.Despite this, police reports found that the incident was not "racially motivated."
So, when is a hate crime not a hate crime?
When the victim is white.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - mike
There should be no such category as "hate crimes." This is an example of liberals trying to look tough on crime. It places defendants who may be innocent at tremendous legal jeopardy, since the facts in these cases are sometimes very ambigous. If you hit somebody, you hit somebody. That's the crime. Period.
2 - Scott Pepper
I agree, to a point. However, as long as such a category exists, shouldn't the law be applied equally in all cases?
3 - Mac Diva
Have you ever written anything that doesn't toe the far Right line, Scott Pepper?
The Ithaca case has been trumpeted by the Stormfront and similar sites for months. However, they miss some important indicia:
*Apparently, the victim was unable to substantiate her claims about a racial motivation. Despite the crowded concert setting, no witnesses have corroborated her assertions.
*The penalties for juveniles are less severe than those for most adults in criminal law.
Incidentally, the Sun's coverage of the story is lifted from The Cornell Review which is one of those student papers funded by money from far Right foundations. Objectivity? Don't even ask.
A much more balanced piece can be read here.
Mike, I agreed with what you are saying when I was in law school. Now, I believe that hate crime prosecutions make sense when racial animus is the main basis for harrassment, assault or murder. An example would be the James Byrd Jr. case in Texas.
4 - Scott Pepper
Have you ever written anything that doesn't toe the far Right line, Scott Pepper?
About 90% of what I've written here in the months since I've joined have been book and television reviews. The name of the site is Blogcritics, after all.
5 - Shark
The question for McDevil is:
Have you ever written anything that didn't include mindless, unsubstantiated name calling?
6 - Mac Diva
So, Scott, why did you write this entry about a case which appears not to be a hate crime episode at all, saying it is?
7 - Chris Kent
I know very little about this case, so one might ask why am I commenting on it?....lol
I can tell just by reading this post that not everything there is to know about this incident has been revealed. Six people don't just attack another for no reason. This is an incident that obviously escalated, and then later the victim is looking for a way to rationalize and point fingers, rather than accept a part of the blame.
Frankly, any fight that escalates to this point is a hate crime, simply because violence is hate. To try to make a racial issue of this is entirely missing the point. Was the attack unmotivated? I doubt it. Did he/she deserve to be beaten? No.
8 - Scott Pepper
MD-
I don't really know whether it was a hate crime or not; I wasn't there.
However, if this had been a case of a black woman being assaulted by six white women who had screamed that they were going to "fuck up her pretty black face," it would most certainly have been classified as a hate crime.
Additionally, I'm not sure why you think the Journal article is somehow unbiased. The Sun piece has quotes from the victim, the accused, the police, and the university. Seems to be presenting all points of view to me.
9 - bhw
Six people don't just attack another for no reason.
I don't think you can make that blanket statement, although in this case it might be true.
Whether it was racially motivated or not, the entire thing is ugly beyond belief, especially with two 14-year-olds being involved.
10 - Mac Diva
Bullsh!t, Pepper. The races or ethnicities of the parties are not the key to whether a crime is a hate crime. The animus (intent) is. If the intent is to harm the person because of race or ethnicity, then the requirement is met. Based on the facts in this episode, I don't see a hate crime. I do see some poorly behaved young women who got into a spat and should have let it end when security guards at the concert separated them. I think there is any easy test for a situation like this one: Would X have harmed Y if both had been the same race? The answer in this case would seem to be 'possibly,' at the very least.
Yesterday, a man here allegedly abducted a nine-year-old girl from her school and tried to rape her. He had her in the back of his car and had removed her shirt, when she kicked him in the face and ran away. The girl is African-Amercan. The man is described as fair-skinned with blond hair and blue eyes. Applying the same test as above, did a hate crime occur? Again, the answer is not likely. It appears that the man who allegedly did this is a rapist and pedophile. There is no reason to believe he would not rape a white child if the opportunity arose. Race is incidental to the episode. Your problem is that you are rather eagerly imposing racist intent without sufficient evidence.
I believe the plaintiff had two weaknesses in her case in addition to lack of corroboration:
*Security guards had separated her from the group, yet somehow she ended up back in its company. (Is that what the woman who pleaded guilty means by 'she was looking for a fight?')
*She may have tried to exploit the situation by injecting race. (To have gone to the papers with a complaint about the assailants' race instead of the assault itself looks strange.)
Yes, it is ugly, bhw. The victim will have to learn to live with her injuries the same way I've learned to live with mine from an aggravated assault.
11 - Ernest
Whenever race is even remotely involved, people in general (minorities in particular) tend to abandon quite a bit of logic to recite their pre-fab statements. Lawyers or law-school students are especially prone to ignore common sense and engage in advocacy instead. (I’m being charitable now, Mac Diva.)
It is true that the concept of hate crime is somewhat nebulous and that it is capriciously and unevenly applied. That’s because such nomenclature itself is racially-motivated and as such it does not serve the goal to promote justice or fight crime " it is simply to portray the people of color as the continuing victims, all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. As we all know " or should know " 90% of interracial violent crime is black-on-white, yet the hate crime nomenclature is reserved primarily for the remaining 10% white-on-black. (Walter Williams, the courageous black economist from George Mason University, expended a lot of ink on the topic.) Only a dimwit like Mac Diva would seek and find excuses where there are few or none. Also, such a disproportionately large segment of her post is devoted to gratuitously worrying about the “rightwing” that one suspects, had the rightwing not existed, she might not have much to say at all.
Anyway -- first, I was struck by some unwarranted assumptions.
Chris Kent: “ Six people don't just attack another for no reason.”
Why not? Then perhaps race was THE reason.
Chris Kent: “This is an incident that obviously escalated, and then later the victim is looking for a way to rationalize and point fingers, rather than accept a part of the blame.”
Whoa! And where is the evidence that she deserves any part of the blame? Even the so-called balanced article (as per Mac Diva) does not establish such claim " it merely says there are inconsistencies between the three testimonies (the victim’s, the defendants’, and the witnesses’.)
Now, back to Mac Diva.....
-- “Apparently, the victim was unable to substantiate her claims about a racial motivation.”
Well, she specifically claims the assailants used epithets with racial aspects. But it is true that beyond the fact of her ripped lip, stitches, ruptured eardrum, the 6 assailants being black and her being white " the race is not an issue here.
Happy now?
C’mon now… Where on Mars do you reside… As someone else noted, had the roles been reversed " 6 whites savagely beating up a black sistah -- there would have been a black riot, presided over by Jesse and Al, if the incident was not declared an anti-black hate crime and prosecuted as such.
Mac Diva: “Scott, why did you write this entry about a case which appears not to be a hate crime episode at all, saying it is?
It “appears” to you " that’s why you’re challenging him, as though it was a given? Does that make sense? If you establish something beyond appearance, that’s the time to challenge him. (I remember Warren Burger’s lamenting about the low quality of lawyers nowadays. I presume the curve has not reversed its trend….)
Mac Diva: “The animus (intent) is [the litmus test for hate crime]. If the intent is to harm the person because of race or ethnicity, then the requirement is met. Based on the facts in this episode, I don't see a hate crime.”
You mean you’re simply not sure (well, to be charitable about your motives). For you’ve said absolutely nothing that would exclude such a possibility. But here is the reason why this was not classified as hate crime " a technicality (and it comes from your article that you labeled balanced.)
-- “Tompkins County District Attorney George Dentes said hate crime charges were not filed because second-degree harassment is not one of the charges specified in the hate crime statute.”
There you have it. After the charges are reduced, for all intents and purposes, to second-degree harassment, it is no longer possible to meet the statutory definition of a hate crime. A technicality, in other words.
Mac Diva: “I think there is any easy test for a situation like this one: Would X have harmed Y if both had been the same race?”
Good thinking.
Mac Diva: “The answer in this case would seem to be 'possibly,' at the very least.”
Poor thinking. You have no idea either way. “Possibly” is meaningless. If you want to speculate, consider the FBI Uniform crime reports that bear out the statistical preponderance of black violence against whites.
Mac Diva : “I believe the plaintiff had two weaknesses in her case in addition to lack of corroboration: *Security guards had separated her from the group, yet somehow she ended up back in its company. (Is that what the woman who pleaded guilty means by 'she was looking for a fight?')
You’re the one with the weakness. You’re implying -- somewhat dishonestly, I might add " that she was the one to come back (a) and to seek them out for a confrontation (b). There is no evidence for this in any of the articles adduced. If there is, you will cite it no doubt….. Right?
Mac Diva: “She may have tried to exploit the situation by injecting race. (To have gone to the papers with a complaint about the assailants' race instead of the assault itself looks strange.)”
Yeah sure, and this Mr. Byrd fellow, the black guy that was dragged to his death in Texas, also presumably “injected” his race into the situation. Also, your parenthetical claim is just as clueless " she merely provided a description of the attackers " not an unreasonable thing to do….
Hey... Mac Diva… Why are you so bigoted against whites? I mean, it’s egregious though thinly veiled, your “indicia” and other cute props notwithstanding.
Anyway, hate crime or not…. This is not a happy situation. This is just another example (as if we needed any more) that statistically, blacks tend to be violent, both to themselves and to others, and that many lawyers tend to do violence to logic while defending those blacks. You don’t need to spend your time on Stormfront to recognize this sad reality.
12 - Natalie Davis
Tend to be? In my opinion, that is a bigoted statement and conclusion. What's more, the human who wrote that hideous statement turns around and calls someone else a bigot???? That is supposed to be against the rules!
13 - Roger
I'm telling, that's against the rules. Mommy,mommy!!! Why can't some of you act like adults instead of whinning.
I strongly agree with a statement from a person (whom I won't name so as to avoid further anger and events of tearful episodes)who stated that most everyone on this site has a problem when a white man has an opinion or something to say. Now I guess that was bigoted to?
The truth is the truth. When violence is committed against a caucasian by a black (which is at a much higher rate) it is simpley a general crime. If a smart ass white honky like me (Roger) committed the same murder, rape etc against another race it becomes hate.
Bottom Line: Any crime committed against any one humanbeing by another is hate, wouldn't you say?
14 - Ernest
I did not call all blacks violent, obviously. Perhaps I should have said that compared to whites, the Black community as a whole exhibits a much greater proclivity to violence. In no way does that mean that all blacks are violent.
Call me a bigot if that makes you happy, I don’t care. You do know " or should know " that I’m correct.
Facts are not racist, statistics are not bigoted -- all the politically-correct nonsense notwithstanding. Hello…………….
15 - boomcrashbaby
race isn't my issue, so I'm really not qualified to speak on it, but it is my perception that if black Americans are more prone to violence than whites it is because they are more likely to face oppression. There are statistics that prove that black Americans equally qualified for a job as a white person will be passed over in favor of that white person. This gives the white person the job, and leaves the black person unemployed. So perhaps the black person has no alternative but to turn to crime in that instance? Affirmative action was created to combat this discrepency but then we white folk got worried we'd not get hired, didn't we?
16 - Roger
I hope you read my statement Ernest. I agree whole heartedly. Wouldn't you say that any person murdering, rapeing or assaulting another is hate? Regardless of race.
17 - Natalie Davis
That's baloney, Roger. No one gives a hang what you look like.
A crime is a crime. When a crime is motivated by bias, whatever the melanin levels of the immediate victim(s) and perpetrator(s), it is two crimes -- one against the immediate victim and one against those who share whatever characteristic the perp hates. Hence, hate crime. James Byrd was as much the victim of a hate crime as was Reginald Denny, who was as much the victim of a hate crime as Matthew Shepard. When applied properly -- and, in truth, it isn't always done so, unconscionably -- hate-crime laws are to protect people of ALL hues, sexual orientations, genders, etc.
18 - Ernest
However, I will apologize for the weird computer-generated characters that appears in conjunction with my posts. I’m typing in MS-Word and pasting into this window, hence these weird A-characters appear, due to coding incompatibility.
19 - boomcrashbaby
Those are MS-Word 'smart quotes', where your quotations and whatnot have 'curly-q's'. You can turn that off in MS-Word as those are not web compatible.
20 - Ernest
Yes, Roger, thank you.
I am in favor of eliminating this morally-bankrupt concept called hate-crime laws. Transcending the race requires that we start viewing people as human beings, not as members of privileged or special groups.
21 - Roger
You are diluted Natalie. And yes I meant "diluted" not "deluded" meaning I think you have a watered down way of thinking. If something has been "diluted" than it is weak or has been weakened!
22 - boomcrashbaby
My own personal opinion of what qualifies as a hate crime is when it terrorizes a community. Murder is murder, true, but I think many serial killers should be prosecuted under hate crimes. If there is a man killing women, then many women in that community feel terrorized. if there is one single murder of a woman, many women think 'how horrible' and lock their doors and go on. When the 12th woman dies, other women feel terror and their lives are disrupted as they modify their behavior for additional safety. That to me goes above and beyond the single murder, which is reprehensible to say the least. That is why I am for hate crimes and they should apply across the board for all people, for all communities, no matter what the race, orientation, religion or whatever.
23 - Natalie Davis
That's your opinion and you are entitled to it, however wrong it may be.
24 - Roger
Damn Natalie with your tunnel vision opinions you are bound for a train wreck. Who the hell are you and what drugs are you on to think that your right and everyone else is wrong?
Talking about hate, it's closer than you realize. It's in you! But I don't know you so I love you anyway.
Goodbye,
Roger
25 - boomcrashbaby
Natalie, you can't have equal treatment, you can't have a spouse, you can't fight for your country, you can't be mentioned as existing in the school system but somebody out there loves you. Isn't that enough? Geez.