Jesse Jackson At It Again

I was flipping through the channels and found this on the local (Greenville, SC) Fox station.

http://www.fox21.com/Global/story.asp?S=2975583

The piece de resistance is this quote by Jackson:

The killing is a hate crime and that is illegal and unacceptable

First of all, we don't know what the situation is that the police officers faced. That's why there is an investigation ongoing.

But the "Reverend" coming into the situation is never good. Throwing around terms like "hate crime" isn't going to make the situation any better. It sure as heck not going to bring the young man back, for that matter. But Jesse's MO has always been to use these kinds of situations to his political advantage.

Right now, the situation isn't even in the major news website for the Greenville area (http://greenvilleonline.com). So I'm not sure if Jesse's next attempt to sow the seeds of discord here in South Carolina will reach the national media or not. Then again, he may just become a parody of himself by saying these inciteful comments.

This brings up the question of whether "hate crime" legislation is a good thing or not. What the Jesse Jackson comment shows is that the original intent of the legislation is already becoming lost to the new meaning of the phrase. Originally, the hate crimes legislation was meant to punish people further who used race as the main reason for committing the crime. Now, thanks to people like Jesse Jackson, it's now being used to mean any crime where the race of one person is different from the race of another. And more specifically, the race of the victim is a minority.

I've never been in favor of hate crimes legislation. I would much rather see all crimes punished equally. But that's the road that hate crimes legislation has travelled down. People aren't psychic, so only in limited situations will we actually know the intent of the criminal. And that means that ideally, hate crimes legislation can only be used in limited situations. Unfortunately, that's not what the lawmakers intended, so it's only a matter of time when judges and juries start to infer that race was a factor just based on a difference of races between the criminal and the victim. Or based on a difference of sexual orientation... or whatever difference you want to imagine. That means that every crime could be a hate crime, but then that would take away from the real intent of the "hate crime"'s creators. Much like affirmative action, "hate crime" legislation was just an attempt to create a leg up for minorities. Or whatever "disadvantaged" group you can think of.

That's a problem that the country has... we have institutions that say that all people are created equal, but at the same time, we have laws that say just the opposite. And until this cultural schitzophrenia is cured, the U.S. is going to have the potential for some problems.