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Beyond horror
Those of you who have read me for a long time know that most of the time, I post things that are silly or meant to be humorous.
This is not one of those times.
I want to call your attention to this news story, concerning a woman whose body was found Monday morning in the small Colorado town of Surrey Ridge; she had been noosed, the noose then tied to the back of a car, and dragged to her death, leaving a mile-long trail of blood on the road. She has not yet been identified, as her body was mutilated beyond recognition.
When I heard about this case, I was immediately reminded of the similar lynching of James Byrd, Jr. in 1998, in Jasper, Texas. He was also dragged behind a car until he died; his body was also horribly mutilated. Within 24 hours, the police had determined that this was a hate crime, as his assailants were known white supremacists. The FBI was called in, the murder was immediately condemned as an act of racism, and Byrd's death instantly became the focus of a national conversation about racial politics and hate crimes. It even became an issue during the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Well, this unidentified woman has been dead for a week. The FBI have not, apparently, become involved. The suspect is apparently an illegal immigrant, so INS is involved, but the murder case itself is being pursued by state and local authorities. That in itself isn't so wrong, in my eyes.
What is wrong, is that this case has gotten nowhere near the same amount of attention. It's all over their local news, of course, but while national news has carried stories about it, none of them were on the front page. The woman has yet to be identified positively. And most importantly, in my mind, is that there is no discussion, in law enforcement, in the mainstream media or in the general blogosphere, about calling this a hate crime. Outside of explicitly feminist circles, those words aren't even mentioned. Nothing about violence against women in general, nothing about how much this resembled a lynching, nothing about how, gee, maybe there is a growing problem with violent acts against women.
Where is the outcry?
I have seen various discussion boards where the subject became one of illegal immigration, with the usual bigoted shitstains trying to blame it on the fact that the suspect is Latino, or talking about how "those people" are just the sort of people to beat and murder "their" women. Nothing, though, about how common assault and murder of women is in this country (for example: the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US is homicide). Nothing about the problem of rampant misogyny. Nothing about invoking VAWA for this crime.
Where is the outcry, I ask you?
This is not one of those times.
I want to call your attention to this news story, concerning a woman whose body was found Monday morning in the small Colorado town of Surrey Ridge; she had been noosed, the noose then tied to the back of a car, and dragged to her death, leaving a mile-long trail of blood on the road. She has not yet been identified, as her body was mutilated beyond recognition.
When I heard about this case, I was immediately reminded of the similar lynching of James Byrd, Jr. in 1998, in Jasper, Texas. He was also dragged behind a car until he died; his body was also horribly mutilated. Within 24 hours, the police had determined that this was a hate crime, as his assailants were known white supremacists. The FBI was called in, the murder was immediately condemned as an act of racism, and Byrd's death instantly became the focus of a national conversation about racial politics and hate crimes. It even became an issue during the 2000 Presidential campaign.
Well, this unidentified woman has been dead for a week. The FBI have not, apparently, become involved. The suspect is apparently an illegal immigrant, so INS is involved, but the murder case itself is being pursued by state and local authorities. That in itself isn't so wrong, in my eyes.
What is wrong, is that this case has gotten nowhere near the same amount of attention. It's all over their local news, of course, but while national news has carried stories about it, none of them were on the front page. The woman has yet to be identified positively. And most importantly, in my mind, is that there is no discussion, in law enforcement, in the mainstream media or in the general blogosphere, about calling this a hate crime. Outside of explicitly feminist circles, those words aren't even mentioned. Nothing about violence against women in general, nothing about how much this resembled a lynching, nothing about how, gee, maybe there is a growing problem with violent acts against women.
Where is the outcry?
I have seen various discussion boards where the subject became one of illegal immigration, with the usual bigoted shitstains trying to blame it on the fact that the suspect is Latino, or talking about how "those people" are just the sort of people to beat and murder "their" women. Nothing, though, about how common assault and murder of women is in this country (for example: the leading cause of death for pregnant women in the US is homicide). Nothing about the problem of rampant misogyny. Nothing about invoking VAWA for this crime.
Where is the outcry, I ask you?
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It's really very sad, and infuriating.
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White victims and white offenders accounted for 55% of sexual
assault murders, black victims and black offenders accounted for
24% of all murders involving sexual assault, 2% involved black
victims and white offenders, 15% involved white victims and
black offenders, and the remainder involved victims and
offenders of other races.
From: http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/ascii/soo.txt
U.S. Department of Justice
Office of Justice Programs
Bureau of Justice Statistics
Sex Offenses and Offenders:
An Analysis of Data on Rape
and Sexual Assault
By Lawrence A. Greenfeld
BJS Statistician
February 1997, NCJ-163392
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(Anonymous) 2006-09-23 11:44 am (UTC)(link)victims and white offenders, 15% involved white victims and
black offenders,
wow
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Black women are less likely to get real justice when raped by a white male, because white men are the ruling class, and black women are both black and female. Doubly of a lower class. A rape victim in general is less likely to be believed when her attacker is of a higher class, and sadly, class makes her more likely to be victimized. An upper class rapist simply believes she is there for his use, and doesn't qualify for as much 'personhood' as, say, a white woman.
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A crime is a crime. Murder is murder, whether or not you murdered the person simply because they were black, or murdered them because they slept with your wife. I don't think the law can or should address your reasons for the crime, other than to make the sentence closer or further from maximum.
I feel similarly about "sex crimes". If it is wrong to trick someone into drinking corrosive chemicals, why is it "more wrong" to get sexual thrills out of it? Why does that make it worse? You're a sick fuck either way.
As far as why there's been no outcry... I really couldn't tell you. Probably part of it is that no one knows who the victim is, so no one can really identify what aspect of her was "hated". If this was a drug related crime, this might not have been "hate crime" so much as her serving as a warning to others. And also-- I've heard about this from several sources, so I'm not sure it's entirely true that there hasn't been a big old hooha outcry over it.
*patpat* I'm not sure I answered your question so much as just spouted all over you. Whee.
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See, motive for a crime has always been a consideration, in both common law and civil law jurisdictions. Murder is punished differently depending on motive, such as whether it was premeditated, or deliberate versus accidental killing, or who the victim was (murder of police or public officials is treated more seriously).
Since motive has already been established as a valid reason to treat the same outcome (a person was killed) differently, then what makes something qualify as a hate crime? That would be if the person was (at least partially) targeted for being a member of a group, because the perpetrator(s) hated that group. If someone is shot just to mug them, that's a crime of opportunity. However, if the same person is shot for being gay, that is a damaging message to other gay people: you're next. Even if there was some personal reason for the killer to kill this particular gay person, if the crime was motivated at all by the victim's sexuality, it qualifies as a hate crime.
The reason we need hate crime legislation is because targeting people based on what group they belong to is so destructive to society. It's worse, in many ways, than just individual murder, because it serves to terrorize other members of that group. It is, simply put, a form of terrorism, directed against a social, cultural, or ethnic group instead of a state.
Women suffer attacks like no other group in this world. They are the most oppressed, most despised group of people on Earth. If someone kills a woman because she was his girlfriend, and he doesn't want her to leave him...well, was that at least partly motivated by the fact that she was a woman? I say yes. Men are encouraged to think of women as their property, and the men who accept this notion (most of them, I think) react with rage when women don't do what they want. This can, and all too often does, lead to violence. Violence motivated by hatred of women in general. If that does not qualify as a hate crime, nothing can.
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and...