Questions

• Is there a difference between hate crimes and non-hate crimes?
• Is hate a crime?
• Why do people hate other people?

Response

            Is there a difference between hate crimes and non-hate crimes? In “What’s So Bad About Hate?” by Andrew Sullivan, he talks about this very topic bringing up an interesting point about hate crimes and how it is not a defined legal term, and is to broad of a term. I was thinking that there is no real difference because lets say for example some kills a cat well you could very well argue that that crime committed was a hate crime because they way the killing was done was to brutal not to have hatred as one their motives. Hate crimes can literally be any crime, do to the fact that you can literally hate anything for any reason so that means committing insurance fraud or selling pot could be considered a hate crime. This is because you could hate the name of the insurance company or the reason you sell pot is because you hate the government laws against cannabis. The point I’m making is there is a limitless amount of possibilities due to hate crimes. So instead of hate crimes they should rename it to crimes and if there is evidence that someone is attacking a black person because of their skin color then charge them for gang affiliation like in the case of James Byrd Jr. You can’t charge someone for hate because you truly can not know if they truly hate someone and there is no evidence that can support your claim unless you can somehow read minds. So to answer the question is there a difference between hate crimes and non-hate crimes I say no. They are both crimes one is just committed on a minority so all of a sudden it turns into a hate crime. Hate crimes are unjust and should be rid of in our judicial system.