The third article of the Bill of Rights (the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States) guarantees an individual citizen the right to speak their opinion without interference from the government. It is quite clear on this fact, reading "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech." Naturally this amendment was not intended to license or condone abuses of free speech, such as calumny or libel, or even indecent speech. But the ugly fact remains that many opinions are considered indecent, and the Constitution protects those opinions.
According to our national zeitgeist, one of the more indecent perspectives is that of racism. We have a troubled history regarding race, from the outright slavery and abuse of black slaves imported from Africa or the Caribbean to the aggressive marginalization of immigrants ranging from the Irish, the Poles, the Italians, and (most recently) the Mexicans. The legacy of our civil war, fought at terrible cost and with very dirty tactics, and the influence of great men like Martin Luther King, Jr. have forced us to address, to varying degrees, these issues. Living in an enlightened age, informed by a college-educated, liberal media (whose freedom is guaranteed by the same article of the Constitution that protects the freedom of speech), we collectively and correctly deplore racism. It has become a social solecism of the worst sort.
Yet increasingly it has become a crime. And this confuses me. Because simply to harbor the opinion that one race is better or more deserving than another is essentially an opinion, which is clearly protected by the constitution. In fact, nearly all of us are guilty of this sort of prejudice in some fashion or another: employers often prefer to hire from a certain type of school, or from a certain area of town; customers are treated differently in stores because of the way they're dressed; we even tend to pick friends from a certain social set and (perhaps) avoid people from certain other sets. All of these actions are based on stereotypes, and those stereotypes inform our opinions. And this is not a bad thing, for judging others is a consequence of relationships. Yet to have a similar opinion about Black people or Mexicans or Gays is considered horribly wrong and insensitive. Keep in mind that I am just talking about having the opinion. In Canada, the Hate Crime laws have put Catholic priests in jail for speaking negatively about the homosexual lifestyle. Clearly that opinion is illegal. Fortunately it isn't so yet in America--the Constitution's guarantee holds good in this regard.
But it does not cover the instance of a racist person committing a crime. If society has determined that opining negatively about another race is morally wrong, our government has gone further and enacted laws that punish crimes apparently motivated by racism much more severely than the same crimes that are otherwise motivated. This is ludicrous. For one thing, it punishes the same crime differently, for if two equally racist men commit the same crime of robbing a convenience store, the one who robbed a store owned by someone of minority group will be punished more severely than the other (who robbed a store owned by a "normal" person). More importantly, however, "Hate Crime Law" presumes that the government can legislate against an opinion specifically, if that opinion apparently leads to an illegal act.
I used the word "apparently" twice there, because short of a criminal declaring in a confession that he or she was motivated by racism, or selected a victim because of their race, there is no realistic way to prove that a crime was actually founded in racism. People commit crimes for all sorts of reasons: they need money, they want revenge, they lose their temper, they are medically psychotic. Perhaps something along the lines of a lynching is really and truly a "Hate Crime," but it is also a first-degree murder, and we have legitimate laws on the books for that specific crime. A lynching is horrifying and degrading, but so are many murders. And the result is that some people killed another. Is there one reason to commit murder than is better than another? Is it less bad to kill for money, or because the victim committed adultery, than it is to kill because the other is of a different race? I argue no. Jealousy, greed, emotional betrayal, and anger are not better reasons to commit a crime than racism. The opinion that someone does not deserve to live is protected by the constitution (even if it is based on racial perspectives), but acting upon that opinion is wrong in the nature of the act, not the opinion. Hence we have legislated degrees of crime (e.g. first degree murder vs. manslaughter).
Prejudice against those of a particular race or any other discriminator (like sexual orientation or religious affiliation) is particularly ugly, and it has caused a lot of hurt and oppression in our country. It deserves to be deplored by all of us. But it is legal under the auspices of the constitution, and is one of the many evils necessary to guarantee that the government cannot silence our criticism or censor our ability to speak for what is right. Hate crimes violate this Constitutional right by allowing the government to punish a criminal additionally--specifically because of his or her perceived racism. These laws should be stricken from the books.
