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| Witchvox Chapter: Wren's Nest News | Chapter Page Views: 56,555,375 |
 Hate Crimes Against Blacks, Religious Groups Rise Author: Marisol Bello Source: USA Today Title: HATE CRIMES AGAINST BLACKS, RELIGIOUS GROUPS RISE The number of hate crimes against blacks and religious groups increased in 2008 over the previous year, the FBI reported Monday. Hate crimes overall increased by 2%, to 7,783 incidents, according to the report. Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said it is difficult to make a yearly trend analysis from the data because the number of agencies that report the crimes — and the way they report them — can vary each year. In 2008, 2,145 police agencies reported hate crimes, compared with 2,025 last year. | |
| Community Thoughts: There are 17 comments posted | Reverse Sort |
| Something To Think About | Nov 25th. at 10:16:04 pm EST |
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nasionnaich (Stanchfield, Minnesota) - Email Me Perhaps the following can be of some help in revealing why certain "Good, Citizens", people who publicly claim to be against violence (yet are first in line to deliver a hate-filled tirade and/or blow) resort to hatred and terrorism of those they see as "different": "A nation is a society united by delusions about its ancestry and by common hatred of its neighbors." -- William Ralph Inge Anybody see themselves in that statement? --nasionnaich |
| This Issue Was Brought Home To Me, | Nov 25th. at 12:32:12 pm EST |
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stalkingwolf (Bullhead City, Arizona) - Email Me Recently I have had the whole bias /prejudice issue brought home to me. My wife and I were having coffee with a person who we had just met. This person as it happened was a very pretty young black lady. She is 26 I am 53 and my wife is 50. We are by classification caucasion. The place, in fact the the area in which we live can only be classified as "redneck". Being observent myself as Mr Holmes was observant, I noticed during the entire time we were there we got "looks". These looks got far more intense after a point in our conversation when I took the young ladies hand and held it for some time. later I went out to smoke. While smoking it occured to me why we were getting "the Look". A middle aged White man holding hands with a very beautiful young black lady in the presence of his white wife. Surrounded by very redneck people. WE had a good laugh about it. |
| **** | Nov 25th. at 9:38:31 am EST |
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bigcat (peoria, Illinois) - Email Me Are they really rising-or is it just that more are being reported? |
| Hate Crimes Misunderstood By Many | Nov 25th. at 6:34:24 am EST |
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NightLad (Toronto, Ontario) - Email Me Hate Crime law has nothing to do with granting certain people more protection than others. A hate crime enhancement addresses the previously ignored motivating factor in a crime. No more, no less. Consider: if a person is beaten while being robbed, the perpetrator is charged with assault and robbery. However, if a person is beaten for no other reason than being [insert status here], the perpetrator has historically only been charged with the beating. The reason for it, the motivation, and the larger impact of that crime have been ignored. An attack based on hate is different than a random attack because of the method of victimization. By singling out a person/group based on their membership to a certain community, the attack becomes a message of intended violence to that entire community. That is one of the definitions of terrorism. Never mind the fact that a hate crime enhancement is often hard to make stick, because one must prove the intent of the perpetrator. Still, I’m glad the recognition of it exists, and at least in cases where the intent was so overwhelmingly obvious (Mathew Shepherd, for one) it can be applied justly. |
| ... | Nov 24th. at 10:00:38 pm EST |
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Draken (Bronx, New York) - Email Me - Web ACTUAL stats would help... |
| Hate Crimes | Nov 24th. at 9:44:19 pm EST |
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Ander s. Drake (hays, Kansas) - Email Me What's really under attack here. Religions that are unpopular with the majority. Or is it possible that the underlying reason for many hate crimes is to attack the concept of any person being able to choose their beliefs and values for themselves. It's seems to me that religions are often used by states as a political tool to promote one party over another. Many of those people who fought for civil rights of one kind or another have been attack or monitored by the government. Martin Luther King, him self was taped by the F.B.I. because the government consider his idea's a threat to national security. |
| One Nation, One People? | Nov 24th. at 9:10:55 pm EST |
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Arden (Atlanta, Georgia) - Email Me At very best the concept of Hate Crimes is misguided good intent, at worse it serves only to divide us as a nation. According to the 14 Amendment of the Constitution we are all guaranteed equal protection under the law. |
| Biased But Complex Law And Statistics | Nov 24th. at 7:51:17 pm EST |
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Terry (Irvington, Virginia) - Email Me Even the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting sub-site devoted to 28 USC § 534, the 1990 Federal 'Hate Crime Statistics Act', admonishes against some of the pitfalls this article makes of overly simplistic summary comparisons and their reporting. Serious depth is far beyond what can be studied in a month, never mind an article, but the basics of law, methodology, and data collection can be found here: [Web LINK] [Web LINK] [Web LINK] Inspecting the category data summary for 2008, and the captions for more general UCR reporting, reveal some general valid and biased elements of how the Dept of so-called Justice (parent to FBI, etc) views itself and society: [Web LINK] [Web LINK] In effect, these reports suggest FBI managers and other law enforcement contributors are largely pinheaded mercenaries who follow marching orders from above, except for their focus on deaths to their own kind. A serious problem is that from various civil rights law perspectives, except for legal procedural games to largely exempt corrupt cops, prosecutors, judges, and politicians from the core elements of anti-discrimination law, most of all of the above categories are rightfully serial felons, and hate criminals themselves. The majority of people incarcerated in the USA are political prisoners, victims of laws designed to pretend Calvinist prejudices over drugs, sex, and other inherently religious and other protected criteria values and practices somehow belong in public policy rather than excluded as citizen rights under our Constitution. Even this hate crimes reporting law shows serious Congressional prejudices, both in its paragraph excluding its use as a cause of action in discrimination related litigation, and in the entire second section proclaiming anti-gay and pro-RRR style "family values" bigotry as national policy. The notion of Catholics and others who conspired to use referendum process to systematically lynch the legal rights of gays via political process and economic support of fraudulent election tactics being treated as if hate crimes victims is also messy. What if instead of "anything goes" for political operations, those who maliciously conspire to corrupt government with laws designed to systematically violate rights of others were treated as perpetrators of violence against targets of those bad laws, even if the violence was latent via threat of use of police truncheons and firearms, even when not converted to actual assaults, murders, kidnappings, extortion, and other crimes police regularly perpetrate if viewed from the perspective that every citizen, especially government agents, are personally liable for Constitutional violations, and cannot be exempted any more than they are under UN international law on the crime of Genocide, whether by attempted extermination of persons, or just of cultural groups or freedom of cultural practices others dislike? We have a very problematic legal system, when from an honest and comprehensive treatment of the whole of our rule of law, stripped of sovereign immunity for what are not supposed to be some aristocrat's mercenaries, the majority of people entrusted with operating government and with enforcing law are themselves hate criminals, and worse. Only by careful exemptions to manipulate biased statutes and narrowly constructed statistical reporting can the USA pretend to be many idealistic things it is not. |
| Hate Crimes.... | Nov 24th. at 7:09:35 pm EST |
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Aritimi (RotterdamJct/Schdy/Scotia, New York) - Email Me maybe we ought to look in our own backyards (like here) for haters. There seems to be a bumper crop of them as of late. PC has its limits, but to use derogatory language against everyone because you feel like it or because it's your Constitutional right to do so won't endear you to many, unless they're of the same mindset as you are. Sometimes I think pagans are biggest hypocrites of all; they claim they're all for diversity, but put two different pagan trads together and they'll be at each other's throats over who's better. Not to mention along with the Christian-bashing, Muslim-bashing, Obama-bashing, liberal freak-bashing that goes on. This place has no need for nasty, bitter, self-serving hypocrites like that. It uglifies everything we claim to stand for. |
| Politicaly Correct | Nov 24th. at 3:42:38 pm EST |
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Ken Ra (Minneapolis, Minnesota) - Email Me The statistics I would like to see are those of hate crimes by blacks against whites. Whenever i hear "hate crime" I start to think politically correct bigotry against whites. Witch just boils down to bigotry. |
| Hate Crimes. | Nov 24th. at 1:53:13 pm EST |
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Farmer Weatherbeard (West Sunbury, Pennsylvania) - Email Me Blk Derby. If you're as old as I am, and you don't know what a hate crime is yet, it's probably a waste of time trying to explain it to you. |
| What's A Hate Crime? | Nov 24th. at 11:43:04 am EST |
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Blk Derby (Helena, Montana) - Email Me I'm an old man so maybe this is something only a youngster understands but what's a hate crime? I've never able to figure out how if somebody beats the stuffing out of me but doesn't hate how the beating hurts less. But if hate is involved the beating hurts more. |
| Hmm | Nov 24th. at 11:29:30 am EST |
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Dynnys Derwydd (Lubbock, Texas) - Email Me Sadly most "studies" never mention the fact that Christianity, especially amongst many so-called "Progressives" has been under attack as well. One thing quite a few fail to realize is that ALL RELIGION is under attack. I once had a professor spend 50 minutes stating all religions were fictions created by immature minds; she included Christianity, Buddhism, and even neo-Paganism. What's funny is that she was my English Literature professor! This was 20 years ago and, according to my younger friends, it has gotten worse in the past 10 years. As for more attacks against blacks. . .Hmmm, maybe there is some backlash because of Obama, especially amongst the ignorant. Yet for the people I know who don't like Obama race isn't a factor. His politics are. But hey!! Bill Maher, Janeane Garofalo, et al., says that anyone who opposes Obama is a racist with no proof to back their claims. Sad, sad, sad. We live in a world where debate is discouraged; discussion is disallowed; free thought is attacked; and varying views are quashed. Personally I think hate is born of willful ignorance and it isn't just the province of conservatives. Hate is self-destructive; hate destroys the spirit and the mind. I don't hate haters; I pity them. Gnothi Seauton honi soit qui mal y pense, Dynnys Derwydd Libertarian, Free-Thinker, Wiccan, Pagan |
| All Fluff And No Substance | Nov 24th. at 10:53:51 am EST |
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Angel Fire (Claremore, Oklahoma) - Email Me There is not enough information about this article to conclude that hate crimes against religious groups have risen. The article did report the number of hate crimes among Jews, but where is the statistics of hate crimes among those of other religious paths that are not Christian, i.e. Wicca and other pagan paths, Hindu, Islam, etc.? The article contains more fluff than facts, and I am dissappointed with USA Today who is usually one of the more accurate papers out on the market. |
| I Agree | Nov 24th. at 12:43:22 am EST |
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Shadow Dragon (nashville, Tennessee) - Email Me The article is missing a lot of info and throws a lot of numbers. It must be misleading. What about Muslims? I doesn’t claim blacks are the biggest victim of race base hate crimes. I thought whites where. And why the only example is gay? |
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