by Frances Quaempts
[Editor’s note: The version of this column that was originally posted this morning was missing several paragraphs as well as some important quotes. I apologize profusely to Mrs. Q, whose version was fine, but for some reason I had a devil of a time formatting it, putting me into back and forth, paste and copy, metadata Hell. In the ned there were four drafts of the post up at once, plus previews to show where the formatting wasn’t working. I have no idea how so much was dropped, but it was all my fault. Please read the expanded piece, and again, my apologies to all.]
“As a gay woman, it’s kind of flattering to have the government say that if someone who has the wrong kind of hate kills me, it’s a special killing. But flattery should only go so far. My selfish side likes to be viewed as “special” by the FBI, but my honest side knows that this is both unfair and treacherous. As a gay woman, I refuse to be part of a system that tells me that I count more than any other woman who gets raped or murdered.”
—-Tammy Bruce, author of The New Thought Police.
The April 2nd Ethics Alarms post on the acts of violence committed by Jose L. Gomez against an Asian family he believed had COVID-19, highlights how hate crime laws are problematic because such laws, “have never made any legal or ethical sense, criminalizing prejudice and thought, neither of which can be made illegal under our Constitution. They were virtue-signaling and pandering to certain minority group political agendas from the beginning.”
Booker T. Washington, in his book My Larger Education, published in 1911, challenged minority based group victimhood and those who push this agenda.
“I am afraid that there is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means to make a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.”
One of the first issues with hate crime laws is the defeatist and demoralizing outlook among their advocates that all minorities are victims. Referring to various minority types as belonging to a “victim group” attempts define or redefine how minorities think about themselves, and negates in attitude, the resilience of these peoples. Instead of highlighting, for example, how racial minorities have endured and even thrived, race-hustlers and other so-called justice advocates cling to the narrative that they need help, especially from the government, to make their lives animus free.
Minorities are not a monolith. In FBI Hate Crimes Statistics Reports the assertion is made that “the effects can reverberate beyond a single person or group into an entire community, city, or society as a whole.” What this assumes is that all people who have been designated as a minority, whether they want to be put in such a category or not, is somehow magically affected by an act committed on another person who fits the same category. Where is the evidence of this? Pandering politicians along with media misery merchants do a great job of taking a story and using it to attempt to instill fear in “victim groups” and moral grandstanding in those who love to self-flagellate with guilt, but that doesn’t mean all people of said group cares or is affected.
In Thomas Sowell’s 2009 book Intellectuals and Society, he challenges how self-proclaimed allies tend to pit, “group against group by arbitrarily viewing innumerable situations through the prism of “race, class, and gender,” setting unreachable standards of “social justice,” and setting impossible goals of redressing the wrongs of history.” He goes on to say:
“So long as sweeping presumptions are accepted as knowledge and lofty rhetoric is regarded as idealism, intellectuals can succeed in projecting themselves as vanguards of generic “change”- for whose consequences they remain unaccountable.”
Author and former radio host Ken Hamblin made a similar assertion in his 1996 book Pick a Better Country when he wrote about this vanguard of helpers:
“I understand that it was natural for them to get warm feelings when they were helping us. But I had no idea that for some liberal do-gooders, those warm feelings would become an intoxicating narcotic. Today they simply refuse to let us go. They refuse to face the fact that it is possible for a black person to get a fair shake – to be truly free and to be treated justly in America. They refuse to admit we can make it without special consideration and without their special help. They refuse to treat us as equal Americans.”
Certainly minorities, like every class of persons, experience bigotry and unfairness. However special hate crime laws haven’t eased the pain of these so-called victim groups because both new and old types of discrimination between fellow “victim groups” have continued. In LGBTQ+ circles, homophobia has made a bold resurgence, creating sometimes dangerous ill will between these rainbow groups, leading some members to break away and create their own charities and organizations. Jose L. Gomez is a Latino who attacked an Asian family. Colorism persists among racial and ethnic groups. And let’s not forget there are numerous instances of racial minorities who have brutalized whites for their skin color.
One example noted in Larry Elder’s book Stupid Black Men was a 2006 incident on Halloween where, “30-40 teens and a few adults – mostly black – beat three young white women.” These women required surgery afterward, including the repair of twelve facial fractures in one victim. Witnesses to the mob heard people in the crowd shout “we hate white people, fuck whites.” My own wife experienced race based prejudice last year when a black man followed and threatened her for blocks screaming, “I’m gonna fuck you up,” and, “I hate whites” while also calling her a “faggot.” Interestingly, in progressive Portland, none of the bystanders offered to help my wife. Perhaps they paused because they were trying to decide who the greater victim was – the black man yelling in the streets or the Irish appearing short haired lesbian. When situations like this happen, rarely is the media or those who claim to fight for equality there to seek justice for this version of hate. It seems if love is love, then the same should apply to hate. Continue reading
