"A hate crime law is a law intended to prevent bias-motivated violence. Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech in that hate crime laws enhance the penalties associated with conduct that is already criminal under other laws, while hate speech laws criminalize a category of speech."
Got this out of Wikipedia, 'cause I know there's a lot of controversy surrounding hate crime laws. Let me make the disclaimer that I'm not looking for confrontation on the matter with this post, but rather try and throw some objectiveness into the subject.
Note that hate crime laws look to "enhance the penalties associated with conduct that is
already criminal under other laws." So basically what I take this to mean is that, yeah... murder is murder. But intent is taken into account.
If a white man murders a black man, it's not automatically considered a hate crime. That would be ludicrous. But.... if a white supremacist gang goes out and lynches a black man... that is a hate crime. It's motivated by hate based solely on race
. If there was a militant black group, and these people went out and killed a white person.... I would imagine the same thing would apply. If not, then the law is flawed.
I'm not defending the laws as they are now. I'm sure they could be improved and are probably very flawed. But hate based on race, ethnicity or religion is very wrong... and lawmakers can't be blamed for wanting to legislate to make penalties tougher.
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