The Trouble With Hate-Crime Laws

By Richard Cohen

[Reprinted from Issues & Views Summer/Fall 1999]

James Q. Wilson, the eminent social scientist, has done a useful bit of cloning. He has taken Buford O. Furrow Jr., the man who is charged with killing a Filipino letter carrier and shooting up a Los Angeles Jewish center, and given him two fictitious brothers. Buford killed the letter carrier because of his race. "Alfred" did it because he had taken out life insurance on his victim, and "Charles" killed the guy to show that he's tough. Which crime is worst?

The answer, President Clinton and others tell us, is the one committed by Buford. It is a hate crime and, as such, it is directed not just at a single individual but an entire group--in this case, Asian Americans. Speaking at the White House, the President once again called on Congress to pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which, besides stiffening penalties and getting the Feds involved, would demonstrate to the world how much we abominate bigotry. He cited Bosnia and Kosovo. We can show them how to deal with hate.

It seems to me, though, that we would be teaching these countries what they already seem to know--that the worth of an individual is dependent on the group to which he belongs. This is what the proposed law endorses. It sets a higher value on the lives or safety of certain people than on others. The various Furrows of Wilson's fertile imagination all killed their victim. But it is only the hate killing that would warrant a special penalty and trigger the interest of the federal government. In all these cases, though, the victim lay dead in the street.

As Wilson points out, the intent of the bill is to punish motive. This is not the same as intent, and gets into questions of what's in the perpetrator's head. Did he beat someone up because he dated his girlfriend, took his parking space or because he was black? Are the welts on the victim's face any different in either case? And what happens if, in the course of seizing a parking space, you simultaneously lose your temper and your tongue and denounce your victim in some bigoted way? Should you get a stiffer sentence?

Wilson, an opponent of hate-crime legislation, wrote his piece for National Review, a conservative magazine. But hate crime legislation is one of those areas in which conservatives are liberal and liberals are just plain out of their minds. In an effort to send a "We Care" statement to gays, blacks and other minorities, liberals are plunging into the sort of mind reading that they so abhor in other areas. Sure, some conservatives oppose these laws because they would apply to gays, but they are right in insisting that penalizing motive is a dangerous precedent--an awesome power to give the government.

-- Richard Cohen is a regular columnist for the Washington Post.