Geeks and monsters: Bias crimes and social identity

Law and Philosophy

Volumn 20, Issue 2, 2001, Pages 121-139

  Blake, Michael ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 0035631364     PISSN: 01675249     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1010617412852     Document Type: Article

References (30)

1. In this paper, I use "hate crime" and "bias crime" interchangeably. Some commentators prefer the latter term, since it emphasizes the prejudiced nature of the criminal's motivation. The former term, however, is that by which these crimes are known in popular political discourse, and I see no reason not to use this term as well.
2. Frederick Lawrence, for example, distinguishes hate crimes from non-bias crimes based upon this analysis. See Frederick M. Lawrence, Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law (Cambridge: Harvard, 1999), p. 9.
3. See Joel Feinberg, "The Expressive Function of Punishment," The Monist 49(3) (1965), pp. 397-423.
4. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 22c, §32 (1997): "A 'Hate Crime' [is] any criminal act coupled with overt actions motivated by bigotry and bias..."
5. See Del. Code Ann. §1304 (1995): A person is guilty of a hate crime who "selects the victim because of the victim's race, religion, color, disability, national origin, or ancestry."
6. Massachusetts does; Alabama, for one, does not. See Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 22c §32, Ala. Code 1975 §13A-5-13.
7. Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 42 U.S.C. §13701 et. Seq. (1994).
8. Avishai Margalit and Joseph Raz, "National Seif-Determination," Journal of Philosophy 87(9) (1990), pp. 439-461.
9. See Margalit and Raz; See also Samuel Scheffler, "Families, Nations, and Strangers," The Lindley Lecture at the University of Kansas, 1993.
10. See Charles Taylor, "The Politics of Recognition," in Amy Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
11. I think, further, that the first aspect of the groups currently chosen for hate crimes protection - that the status be, in some way, unchosen - is not necessarily morally salient either. In 1997, Brian Deneke was killed in Amarillo, Texas, because he dressed as a punk. The killing followed a pattern of abuse in which high school students routinely assaulted and abused the small clique of punk rockers in Amarillo. An argument could be made that the intolerance of difference found in such actions make them morally on a par with hate crimes as currently understood. See Jim Yardley, "Amarillo Asks, 'Is This a Tolerant Place?'," New York Times, November 26, 1999, p. A29; see also "Death in Texas," Punk Planet, March/April 2000, 68-81.
12. I think, further, that the first aspect of the groups currently chosen for hate crimes protection - that the status be, in some way, unchosen - is not necessarily morally salient either. In 1997, Brian Deneke was killed in Amarillo, Texas, because he dressed as a punk. The killing followed a pattern of abuse in which high school students routinely assaulted and abused the small clique of punk rockers in Amarillo. An argument could be made that the intolerance of difference found in such actions make them morally on a par with hate crimes as currently understood. See Jim Yardley, "Amarillo Asks, 'Is This a Tolerant Place?'," New York Times, November 26, 1999, p. A29; see also "Death in Texas," Punk Planet, March/April 2000, 68-81.
13. See "Two More Bodies Found in Lodo, with Slaying of Homeless Men Reaching Seven," Denver Rocky Mountain News, November 18, 1999, p. 4A.
14. Evelyn Nieves, "Violence Becoming a Threat for the Homeless," The New York Times, December 23, 1999, p. Al. See also Jacob H. Fries, "Slain Homeless Man is Remembered," Seattle Times, p. B1, September 3, 1999.
15. Evelyn Nieves, "Violence Becoming a Threat for the Homeless," The New York Times, December 23, 1999, p. Al. See also Jacob H. Fries, "Slain Homeless Man is Remembered," Seattle Times, p. B1, September 3, 1999.
16. See Nieves, "Violence Becoming a Threat for the Homeless."
17. Ken Faught, "Fighting Terrorism in the Schoolyard: Bullying Getting Worse, Teachers Say," Toronto Star, September 28, 1999, p. A1.
18. It is difficult to get precise figures on violence against the socially unpopular; some evidence, however, may be gained from the fact that 25% of all students report that they must avoid certain places in school for fear of violence, and that forty percept of students admit to hitting, slapping, or kicking another student in school. See the surveys of the Center for the Prevention of School Violence at www.ncsu.edu/cpsv/eoto99.htm.
19. Instructive here is the example of Brian Head, an overweight 15-year old who had been slapped and tormented about his weight by his fellow students for years, and who killed himself with a handgun in the classroom moments after being victimized by another student. See Bill Torpy and Linda Jacobson, "Student Kills Himself in Class in Cherokee," Atlanta Journal and Constitution, March 26, 1993, p. C1.
20. Anna Mulrine, "Once Bullied, Now Bullies - with Guns." U.S. News and World Report, May 3 1999, p. 24.
21. See Jonathan Katz, Geeks: How Two Lost Boys Rode the Internet Out of Idaho (New York: Prentice-Hall, 1999).
22. For an analysis of this phenomenon in the related area of nationalism and national identity, see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso, 1983).
23. There is also a distinct argument given by Alon Harel and Gideon Parchomovsky, who premise the justification of such laws upon equal protection. I do not have time to meet their argument here, but I think their argument applies with equal force to the cases I consider. See Harel and Parchomovsky, "On Hate and Equality," 109 Yale L. J. 507 (December 1999). I further ignore utilitarian considerations of deterrence; although such considerations are certainly relevant, I do not think they suffice to ground a difference in punishment if no difference can be found in culpability or harm.
24. Harel and Parchomovsky note this too. Harel and Parchomovsky, 514.
25. Lawrence, 25.
26. Andrew Altman has suggested to me that the historical role of the state in creating and perpetuating certain categories of oppression might provide moral justification for the use of the narrow conception. I think that such a response might be salient at the level of political practice, but I do not think it is sufficient to show a real moral difference. First, I see no tight link between categories of oppression practiced by the state and self-identified groups; even if the state had not acted to marginalize and punish gay men, for example, merely social stigmatization might have been sufficient to produce the recognition of a shared social identity. Second, even if such a link could be established, it strikes me that the state would have a duty to act against intolerance even if it were not the historical source of the intolerant oppression itself. If what I have said in this paper is correct, there are forms of intolerance not easily captured by the narrow conception, and the state cannot escape its duty to prevent such forms of intolerance by citing the fact that it did not itself cause them to exist.
27. See "Minorities doing well in school often accused of 'acting white,'" Tanya Barrientos, Houston Chronicle, July 26 1992, A10.; "Black Identity and Success versus 'Seeming White,'" Seth Mydans, New York Times, April 25, 1990, B9.
28. See "Minorities doing well in school often accused of 'acting white,'" Tanya Barrientos, Houston Chronicle, July 26 1992, A10.; "Black Identity and Success versus 'Seeming White,'" Seth Mydans, New York Times, April 25, 1990, B9.
29. Lawrence uses these considerations to justify restriction of hate crime legislation to suspect classifications - although it should be noted that he does this only after first restricting hate-crime protection to self-conscious groups, of which he views suspect classifications as a subset. See Lawrence, 43-44.
30. The work of Anthony Appiah is instructive in this context. See, in particular, Anthony Appiah, "Identity, Authenticity, Survival: Multicultural Societies and Social Reproduction," in Gutmann, ed., Multiculturalism: Examining the Politics of Recognition.