Overall, the occurrence of hate crime in America has dropped one percent in the last year. In the media from Florida to Washington State this 2007 statistic, like the election of Barack Obama is being touted as a banner of America’s growing maturity and tolerance.
Would that in the brief hours between Obama’s rousing inauguration onto the national stage, on the podium at the 2004 Democratic convention and our exhilarated preparation for him to assume leadership on the international stage that America grew to manifest the dream. She did not; we have not. NPR questions the reliability of Hate Crime Statistics and the headlines consistently underscore the reasons for doubt.
No American is exempt; though all of us are prone to claim the bulk of the evil is directed against our particular race, religion or lifestyle.
December 13 a 28-year old San Francisco woman was kidnapped, beaten and raped by four men who made comments indicating they were aware of the victim’s s*xual orientation. The attack occurred after the victim got out her car in full sight of her attackers; there is speculation the rainbow gay pride sticker displayed on her vehicle provoked the brutal assault.
December 22 Keith and Kevin Harris, Dallas County felony prosecutors were named to assist Special Prosecutor Toby Shook in the controversial Lamar County murder case against Shannon Keith Finley and Charles Ryan Crostley. Both men are charged in the September dragging murder of Brandon Demon ("Big Boy") McClelland outside Paris Texas. McClelland and the pair were known drinking buddies and while there has been much pressure exerted to prosecute the matter as a hate crime, judicial authorities have to date declined to do so.
Christmas Eve found the two men accused in the election night attack of 17-year-old Ali Kamara, an immigrant from Liberia suspected in yet another hate crime assault the same night. Staten Island police believe Bryan Garaventa and Ralph Nicoletti, both 18 randomly sought Blacks and Latinos to beat up; investigators think the pair was seeking some kind of "payback" for Barack Obama’s election. The second victim was walking home from work when police believe Garaventa and Nicoletti deliberately hit him with their car and left him for dead in the middle of the street.
Also Christmas Eve, the Jonesboro ABC affiliate reported that a series of arsons, in which all the victims have been Hispanic are being investigated as hate crimes.
Even the right claims victimization, pointing to the venomous reaction to California’s Proposition 8 vote and the more recent vitriolic reaction to Rick Warren’s invitation to deliver the invocation prayer at Barack Obama’s Inauguration.
December 28 a Jewish family in Scottsdale awoke to find their garage door graffitied with anti-Semitic slurs that the homeowner described as taking it to another extreme.
In less than two weeks, from sea to shining sea, we have proven that hate and its ensuing violence are not only alive and festering in America, but may indeed be the only true example of egalitarianism we can yet offer.
North Carolina State University instituted a study to determine whether a system-wide policy is needed to address hate crimes and acts of violence and intimidation after graffiti including “Let's shoot the N----- in the head,” was found on the institution’s Raleigh campus. The students involved were disciplined but not expelled for their spray-painted hate in the Free Expression Tunnel, an open “monument” encouraging student’s freedom of speech since the 1960s. Statistics indicate that the disparities between African Americans and Caucasian Americans continue to widen and Arizona is called ground zero in “Immigration’s New Race Wars”
“Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.” Who said that? He said this too. “There is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America - there's the United States of America.”
Just Sayin
Posted By: Michelle Diane
Wednesday, December 31st 2008 at 12:13PM
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