I don't really see that creating special categories of crimes that are already crimes makes sense. Murder and rape already depend on putting the victim in the category of other and of denying their humanity. The fact that in some cases that humanity is denied because of some characteristic -- race, gender, sexual preference -- doesn't matter. It seems to me that the sooner we acknowledge that there is a Humanity that we all share in, the sooner we can all grok that murder and rape and wrong period. To make special cases only exacerbates the very bad practice of categories and identities which have never done anything other that to divide us. But division is precisely what we don't want.
^^^^^ CB: Why a special category "rape" ? Why punish more for sexual assault than regular assault ? Isn't just any assault wrong ? Do we need a special category of "rape" , even though assault and battery is "already" criminalized ?
Yes , we do.
Probably, it is good that society uses the law to send a special message regarding the particular assault that is a man sexually assaulting a woman, because male supremacy is a social ill, and rape is one of its forms of expression
Info:
> i don't see why people who murder, rape, beat, and rob shouldn't be >
punished more if, indeed, they commit the acts because someone is a > member
of a group they despise and think is less than human
Joanna: Well, put it this way, if a racist gets a heavier sentence for mistreating a black, do you think that's likely to make them less prejudiced or more prejudiced?
CB: Criminal laws are said to be ,not only for rehabilitation of the offender, but to _deter_ others from committing the crimes. Criminal laws and all laws have a didactic function, supposedly. So, might such heavier sentences discourage prejudice in children whose parents say "look, don't do that " ? What hate crimes do is focus the didactic message on the racism , which is a good thing for society to do.
Here bourgeois society has taken on a socialist function, and you are criticizing it for doing so. The bourgeois law is using the criminal law to focus opprobium on racism or some other group hate , and you discourage the law.
Racism or other hate crimes are discrimination against an individual based on their membership in a group. Hate crimes are different than regular crimes because regular crimes don't typically involve attacking an individual because of group membership, as opposed to some personal antagonism. We want the government, authentically representing the general interest, the People, to specially stigmatize hate of groups. However, hate of _groups_ is only actualized in attacks on _individuals_, so the only way to specially stigmatize hate of groups is through punishment of the attacks on individuals as representatives of the hated group, even though said incidents are "already" crimes.
^^^^^
> finally, i don't see why it should be ridiculed -- hate crimes
> legislation. imagine spending your life living every single day
> knowing that there are some people out there who'd like to see your
> entire "race" or "kind" snuffed out. that's what it's like for blacks
> in this county. that's what it's like for gays. there are groups
> dedicated to the causes of seeing to it that your lives are snuffed
> out one way or another.
I'm not ridiculing anything. I'm questioning the practice as a form of justice and as a political strategy. I think it fails on both counts.
Joanna