Ok.
For just a minute I want to talk about "hate crimes."
The term refers to acts of violence and vandalism in which the perpetrator is assumed to have been a racist.
Now, violence and vandalism are already illegal. If you beat someone to death with a hammer, frankly, it doesn't matter if you scream "nigger nigger nigger" while you do it or not, they're still dead, and homicide is a crime.
However, some people don't understand the underpinnings of their own idea, so I'm going to explain it to you.
SOME people have been sufficiently misguided that they now believe that yelling "nigger" while killing someone somehow makes the fact that he's dead FAR WORSE than simply killing him with a hammer would. Thus, the "hate crime" laws passed in virtually every state, because people are fucking stupid.
So: if your premise is that committing a crime because you hate someone's skin color is worse than killing someone for no damn reason at all other than that you're really fucking crazy, what you're really saying is that there's something to this racism, after all. Because, you know, the existing laws against rape, murder, robbery, vandalism, assault, and battery are only good enough for WHITE PEOPLE. Everyone ELSE needs "special protection."
The very concept of "hate crimes" is in itself racist; it implies that minorities require protections not extended to the majority, which is a flat out statement that the minorities aren't as good as the majority. The majority, after all, can be trusted to take care of itself.
What society needs to do is stop BEING racist - and instead of codifying racial differences into law with demeaning intent, ENFORCE THE EXISTING LAW.
What brought all this long-ass rant on, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. A Florida State Representative from Fort Lauderdale has proposed an anti-bullying law, which makes bullying behavior among schoolchildren a crime. Now, I can understand that, although I think a more effective deterrent to bullying would be mandatory self-defense classes - if everybody knows karate, who's gonna be the bully, hmmm? - but I disagree with criminalizing our citizens before they're even out of grade school.
So, where's the hate-crimes aspect come into play? Simple. The law's introduction into debate in the state legislature was greeted with storms of protest over so-called "human rights" groups, because it didn't contain any special, extra protections for black kids or latinos against getting their asses kicked by a white kid.
Because, you know, them darkies, they gotta be protected, all of the lesser creatures are our responsibility, after all.
The state representative in question understands the concept quite well, actually: here's what she said.
Bogdanoff, reached in her Tallahassee office, said she would not use selective language to define who should be protected because she does not want to uphold the safety of one child over another. "They are saying there are certain children who deserve more protection than others," said Bogdanoff. "I want to protect all children."
