What is a Hate Crime? The Christian - Newsom Murders.

The Chicago Tribune’s Howard Witt writes a fair article about the Christian/Newsom abduction, rape and murders. But there is a weak ending. Referencing the statistics he notes that

Blacks are also the overwhelming majority of victims of attacks recorded by the FBI as hate crimes. In 2005, blacks were the victims in 68 percent of nearly 5,000 hate-crime incidents nationwide, while whites were the victims in 20 percent of the cases. Whites accounted for 60 percent of known hate-crime offenders, while blacks accounted for 20 percent.

But earlier in the article he notes that the police in Knoxville insist that the Christian/Newsom murders were not hate crimes because:

We know from our investigation that the people charged in this case were friends with white people, socialized with white people, dated white people. So not only is there no evidence of any racial animus, there's evidence to the contrary

This “some of my best friends are white” excuse does not pass the laugh test. There is virtually no police department in the country that is willing to face the prospect of inflaming racial tensions by claiming a black-on-white crime is racially motivated. In fact, I am surprised that the “official” percentage of white victims of hate crimes is as high as 20%.

Mary Newsom disagrees with the police

"If this wasn't a hate crime, then I don't know how you would define a hate crime," said Mary Newsom, Christopher's mother. "It may have started out as a carjacking, but what it developed into was blacks hating whites. To do the things they did, they would have to hate them to do that."

Here's another statistic from the article:

In 2005, there were more than 645,000 victims of cross-racial violent crimes between blacks and whites in the U.S. In 90 percent of those crimes, black offenders attacked white victims.

At its core, the creation of a special category of “hate crimes” is pernicious because it sets up the criminal justice system not just a determiner of facts but as mind readers. Once we have determined that "A" killed "B," and did so in a particularly brutal manner, that should be the end of the mind reading exercise. Yes, the degree of culpability can be determined: was the act pre-meditated or committed in a moment of passion? Those are facts that can be determined. But introducing the issue of the race of the murderer and his victim is, at its root, racist and has no place in a society whose goal is to become color blind. This should be especially important to the black community because it has a 90% chance (see above statistic) of being accused of a hate crime once the fear of inflaming racial tensions wears off.

That said, I agree with Mary Newsom. No one does what was done to Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom unless a deep hatred is involved. And the only thing the criminals knew about this couple was the color of their skin. Justice must be served.