Well shit. This is very telling of our culture. A group of black teenagers and one 24 year old kidnap and torture a peer suffering from schizophrenia and it is automatically pinned on the Black Lives Matter movement. The authorities have already confirmed that it was in no way connected to the Black Lives Matter movement but the offenders were black so apparently we have to assume that all black people are some sort of “other” connected with each other. The actions of one person somehow defines the actions for everyone else.
In case you’re not in the know somehow, a young white man was abducted and tortured by four individuals- all of whom were African American. Apparently, the victim had been friends with at least one of his captors before being restrained.These einsteins recorded their actions, streamed it online, and somehow didn’t think they would face any consequences whatsoever. And for what? A whopping three-hundred dollars. That’s not even enough to get Tetris on Sega Genesis.
The criminals have so far been denied bail and have a slew of charges against them. In the video, they were saying discriminate things against white people and trumplestiltskin (I am going to refer to him as such until his presidency ends) so have also been charged with two counts of hate crime.
But… is this a hate crime? To a lot of people, the answer is an obvious “yes” but it’s far more complicated than that. Here’s the thing about racism and prejudice-- it’s contextual.
The notion in recent time is that sociological and institutional discrimination comes from power disproportionately held by a party at the expense of other parties. If you’ve ever heard someone shout “reverse racism!!” this is what a lot of people are addressing. How can you be oppressed by someone who has less privileges than you have? If you spend your life as a rich man stepping on all of the impoverished people and one day a poor man kicks you can you really claim that you’ve been the victim?
In this case, a lot of people would argue that it’s impossible for a black person to oppress a white person, and therefore cannot take racist actions against a white person because the country is built around the benefit of white heterosexual men. After all, even though this crime was completely reprehensible and there’s nothing to justify the actions of the perpetrators, there is no way in this day and age that these four have gone about their lives without experiencing cultural racism in some way, shape, or form. Each one has had run-ins with the law before, so it can be justifiably argued that they themselves are the victim of a system built from gentrification and prejudice. Obviously, this does not excuse their actions at all, but it’s something to think about. To people who have been faced with racism of all kind each and every day, calling this a hate crime is like a rabid dog criticizing a rabbit for being too vicious.
People with no self-awareness intimidated by the word “privilege” would refer to me as a social justice warrior in a hilarious attempt to invalidate anything I might say that they don’t want to agree with. So I tend to agree with the progressive crowd, but to me this definition of racism and prejudice is missing a big portion of the issue.
If you’re white, you’re not the victim of some sort of “reverse racism” because there’s a black history month and not a white history month. However, if you’re white and someone of a different race abducts you and assaults you with a knife whilst shouting profanities directed at people of your specific skin tone, I would say that you are the victim of racism. Like most things in life, context is important and it depends on the situation you’re in.
Every interaction with a human being is going to have some sort of exchange of power. If two people are about to walk into each other, whoever refuses to move is refusing to let the presence of the other determine the actions they take. It’s not exactly conscious, but it’s a thing that actually happens. It’s why a lot of men tend to not move out of the way for a woman. Things like racism are what happens when someone with that power uses it at the expense of someone else. Systemically, it happens when a city full of impoverished people has no water and is neglected by the government created to protect them. Or when more African Americans get harsher penalties for breaking the law than Caucasians do. Or when a football team is named after a demeaning term for a race of an indigenous people and reduced to a dehumanizing stereotype. It is very very unlikely that a white person will be the victim of systemic racism because these systems are built and maintained by white people.
However, it’s different in a situation where someone picks you out as an individual because of your race, such as the situation we have here. Privilege is something that gives you an upperhand against someone else. If you’re the one with a knife threatening a guy you’ve dunked face-first into a toilet you are, at that moment in time, the one with both the power and the privilege oppressing someone who has currently has none. That is what I call a hate crime.
But maybe I have no idea what I’m talking about. Afterall, I am a white, heterosexual male who has been fortunate enough to never live in poverty and the only way I have ever seen the world is through the eyes of someone as a white, heterosexual male who has been fortunate enough to never live in poverty. The most difficult part of having privilege is recognizing when you have it. Perhaps that’s why crime like this happens.
