badgenome said:
I wouldn't say nobody would care. Some people would care because they are genuinely bothered by racial epithets. I wouldn't expect it to get any legs as a news story the way Michael Richards' meltdown did because the weak-spleened cultural elite in the media do hold a double standard about such things, but it is a double standard all the same. Look at the handwringing that goes on about racially motivated white-on-black murders like the white kid running over a black guy for fun in Mississippi and the way we're all supposed to get all introspective about it compared to the utter silence around the black-on-white Atlanta midtown murders where the racial motivation was completely ignored by the national media. That's also a double standard, and it flows from the same place. White liberals are downright giddy at the prospect of lecturing other whites about being racist because it makes them feel enlightened and superior, and they are not at all comfortable about confronting black racism.
You don't get rid of racism and sexism by exercising a double standard, either. You can get rid of white racism (or at least make it radioactive to the point that it's largely driven underground) with such a double standard, but then you're letting other racists off the hook by creating the impression that white racism is somehow inherently worse. If it has been worse, it was only worse because white racists have historically had more power and could act more freely on their hate. A white kid beaten up for being white doesn't feel any better about it than a black kid who is beaten up for being black, and feeling differently about one situation over the other because of history that predates either kid's life and society's neurosis about race is pretty fucked up. Just because people are more viscerally offended by something doesn't make it worse. What makes nigger more instantly offensive than cracker is its stronger connotation and history, sure, but what makes racist epithets generally offensive is the hateful intent behind them. The former is superficial, the latter is what really matters. It ought not matter if you only have relatively lame terms like honky or cracker to work with because a racist is a racist is a racist. |
A) That's a totally different situation. Specific hate crime murders are a total different thing... and i'd argue it has less to do with people finding more fun to point out other peoples flaws.... when the truth is.... everybody is racist and sexist to some degree. You couldn't be otherwise raised in modern culture. Heck there are a lot of black people racially biased against their own people.
B) Why wouldn't it be worse? The damage is far worse. I've had black people say some straight up racist shit to me before... it didn't effect me in the slightest. It was actually kind of funny at the time because of how novel it was.
Situations reversed that could be ruining someones whole week or month.
It's like the old legal question "If someone shoots a dead body thinking it's alive, did they commit murder?"
No. They very well may have well wanted to, and even thought they did.... but they didnt.
As for kids getting beat up over their race. Well that's a violent act, so really i don't think it applies, since at that point we're talking about physical harm which pretty much outweighs any sort of emotional harm, to the point of where any motivation is mostly a moot point.
Of course that said I'd say your analysis is still flawed in regards to violence, if we were to take two boys exactly the same except one is black and the other is white and have them both beaten for their race. I'd bet money on the Black kid being more negativly effected then the White kid.
I mean on any average day, racism doesn't even enter into a white kid's mind. So it would be a LOT easier for that boy to write it off as a weird fluke. To a Black kid, it's part of a general byproduct of institutionalized racism that still exists to some degree, just in less overt ways. It holds bigger meeting then just getting your ass kicked once, and you'd be far more unlikely to be able to write it off as a "one time thing".
Is that reason enough to assign extra time? No. It's why I don't agree with hate crime laws.
Does it make it worse though? Well yeah. If you were forced to choose at gunpoint which kid was going to be getting brutally beaten and they were exactly the same/you didn't know anything about them but their race... you could make a fairly logical decision on which was likely to do less damage.
It would be a pretty fucked up decision you'd be forced to make sure... but you could still tell which was worse, and which was more likely to cause more damage.
