In trying to answer that question, the Chicago Tribune has revealed the truth; that some hate crimes are more hateful than others.

The Trib becomes the first major league newspaper to do a front page, above the fold story on the brutal murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, the young Knoxville, Tennessee couple who were kidnapped, raped, and murdered by a group of young African Americans. Beyond that, the paper tackles the controversial question of whether or not that brutal crime was, in fact, a hate crime as well as addressing the double standard at play in the media and society when black on white crime occurs:

Yet as brutal as the crime was, Knoxville authorities have strongly denied that it was racially motivated. And they have sought to correct rumors, eagerly spread by white supremacist Web sites, that the couple had been sexually mutilated before they were killed and their bodies dismembered afterward.

“There is absolutely no proof of a hate crime,” said John Gill, special counsel to Knox County District Atty. Randy Nichols. “It was a terrible crime, a horrendous crime, but race was not a motive. We know from our investigation that the people charged in this case were friends with white people, socialized with white people, dated white people. So not only is there no evidence of any racial animus, there’s evidence to the contrary.”

Newsom’s parents do not accept that logic.

“If this wasn’t a hate crime, then I don’t know how you would define a hate crime,” said Mary Newsom, Christopher’s mother. “It may have started out as a carjacking, but what it developed into was blacks hating whites. To do the things they did, they would have to hate them to do that.”

The District Attorney’s remarks are quite revealing. Let’s reverse the races and see if his comments would hold up.

A group of white kids beats up and murders a black man. Their defense against invoking the federal hate crime statute? They have friends who are black. They socialize with black kids. They date black girls.

Now you tell me how far that defense will get them with the Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and the rest of the mainstream press, not to mention that clueless district attorney. We’d be hearing how they only dated the young black women to use them for sex. Or they only “socialized” with black kids to get drugs. Or they were only pretending to be friends to black kids.

You and I both know the answer to that question without even thinking. The fact that these “extenuating circumstances” are evidently going to save the murderers of the young Knoxville couple from being charged with a hate crime only tends to highlight the discrepancy.

And that’s not all. When it comes to cross racial crimes that are not considered hate crimes, there is a huge difference in the numbers of white on black crimes as opposed to black on white crimes:

But on the other hand, when overall cross-racial violent crimes are tabulated—including incidents not formally classified as racially motivated hate crimes—Justice Department statistics show that blacks attack whites far more often than whites attack blacks.

In 2005, there were more than 645,000 victims of cross-racial violent crimes between blacks and whites in the U.S. In 90 percent of those crimes, black offenders attacked white victims.

“In the old days,” said Hutchinson, contemplating that statistic, “when you said ‘hate crimes,’ it was automatic—whites victimizing blacks. Today you have to pause for a minute and not make automatic assumptions.”

And yet, despite the fact that blacks are 9 times more likely to commit a violent crime against a white person than the other way around, who gets charged with more hate crimes?

On one hand, African-Americans bear the brunt of violent crime in the U.S.: In 2005, the most recent year for which statistics are available, blacks were more than twice as likely as whites to fall victim to serious violent crime, most often at the hands of other blacks.

Blacks are also the overwhelming majority of victims of attacks recorded by the FBI as hate crimes. In 2005, blacks were the victims in 68 percent of nearly 5,000 hate-crime incidents nationwide, while whites were the victims in 20 percent of the cases. Whites accounted for 60 percent of known hate-crime offenders, while blacks accounted for 20 percent.

So despite the fact that whites are 9 times more likely to be the victim of a violent crime, they are 3 times more likely to be charged with a hate crime? Something is wrong with this picture.

What’s wrong is that racism is still not recognized as a sin that afflicts African Americans. If it were only a question of recognizing that some African Americans hate whites simply because they are white, then there wouldn’t be an argument. But “racism” has become synonymous in the black community with “power” or “the power to oppress.” Since blacks don’t have the power to oppress whites, they are immune from charges of being racists.

It’s convenient, clever, and a crock. This sort of thinking has been enabled by left wing sociologists and other academics for the last 40 years:

Sociologists have defined racism as a system of group privilege. In Portraits of White Racism David Wellman (1993) has defined racism as “culturally sanctioned beliefs, which, regardless of intentions involved, defend the advantages whites have because of the subordinated position of racial minorities,” (Wellman 1993: x). Sociologists Noel Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern define racism as “...a highly organized system of ‘race’-based group privilege that operates at every level of society and is held together by a sophisticated ideology of color/’race’ supremacy. Racist systems include, but cannot be reduced to, racial bigotry,” (Cazenave and Maddern 1999: 42). These definitions are important advances because the dominant definition of racism presumes that racism is an irrational form of bigotry that is not connected to the organization of social structure.

Scholars such as anthropologist Audrey Smedley (2007) point out that the very idea of ‘race’ implies inequality and hierarchy. Biologically there are no scientific classifications that delineate human groups into ‘races’ (Graves 2004). Historians such as Theodore Allen (1994; 1997) have analyzed colonial records from Virginia and concluded that the idea of a “white race” was originally invented in the early 18th century to splice together various European ethnic groups who never before thought they had anything in common. Noel Ignatiev (1995) has written an historical analysis of how the Irish became members of the “white race” in the 19th century.

The Seattle Public Schools summarized this line of thinking by defining racism thusly:

Racism:

The systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little social power in the United States (Blacks, Latino/as, Native Americans, and Asians), by the members of the agent racial group who have relatively more social power (Whites). The subordination is supported by the actions of individuals, cultural norms and values, and the institutional structures and practices of society.

Can this be so? If it is true, there is very little chance an African-American – or other minority for that matter – could ever be charged with a hate crime.

Using sociological constructs to redefine a word or concept for political or even legal advantage damages language and communication. What Goldstein points to as “intentionalism” – that is, the classical realist view of the meaning of text and language where the actual intent of the author or speaker is what matters most when analyzing meaning. Clearly there is a political and legal motive to redefine racism to exclude blacks and other minorities. The shocking statistics above make it an open question as to whether this kind of nonsense actually enables violence against whites by blacks, although that may be stretching the point too far.

The article also highlights the disturbing reluctance of African-American leaders to face up to the problem of black on white hate crimes:

But it’s not just conservative whites and extremists who have criticized the national silence over the Knoxville case.

“Black leaders are not eager to take this on because it’s one more thing that would cast a negative light on African-Americans,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an author and nationally syndicated black columnist who has written frequently about the reluctance of black leaders to denounce crimes committed by blacks against whites. “There’s already an ancient stereotype that blacks are more violent and crime-prone, anyway.”

Rev. Ezra Maize, the president of the Knoxville chapter of the NAACP, has been one of the few black leaders to address the case.

“It doesn’t make me uncomfortable speaking out against this crime because it was African-Americans [allegedly] committing a crime against Caucasians,” Maize said. “It’s not a black-and-white issue. It’s a right-and-wrong issue. Those who committed this crime were unjust in doing so and they should pay the penalty.”

“Equal justice under the law” should be just that. And this has been the problem with hate crime legislation from the beginning. By establishing a double standard if not in law then certainly in the enforcement of the law with regard to the prosecution of hate crimes, equality before the law takes a body blow and breeds contempt for the law. Stuart Taylor:

The interracial Knoxville rape-murders would probably not qualify as hate crimes. The reason is that although the murderers were obviously full of hate, it cannot be proven that they hated their victims because of race. (Or so say police.)

Both the Duke lacrosse case and the (fictional) barroom scuffle [where one patron called another a “queer” for spilling a drink on him and then hitting him. Ed.], on the other hand, would probably be federally prosecutable under the bill that the House passed on May 3 by 237-180. This is because the angry words attributed to the accused could prove racist and homophobic motivations, respectively.

Do such distinctions make any sense? Not much, in my view.

Indeed, it may prove that prosecution of hate crimes has as much to do with politics as enforcing the law. And it raises the question is it necessary to have hate crimes statutes in the first place?

Most would agree that some crimes can be particularly heinious where the motivation is racial or ethnic hatred and that hate crime laws – if enforced fairly and equitably – serve both as a deterrent and an additional component of justice. It somehow seems fair that someone should get a longer sentence if his motivation to hurt someone is the result of something beyond the victim’s ability to control – his race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation. But unless the laws can be drawn fairly, I see little point in carrying on the charade that mostly whites are capable of hating another race. That smacks of politics – perhaps an inevitable result of making law to cater to interest groups.