From the letter Alecto cited:
Quote:
Compared to white men, Black men are disproportionately arrested for race-based hate crimes. The second-largest category of race-based hate crimes tracked by the FBI is crimes committed against white people. Every year, the FBI reports a number of so-called “anti-heterosexual” hate crimes—incidents where members of the LGBT community have been prosecuted for supposedly targeting straight people with criminal acts.
If GENDA is passed with the hate crime component intact, trans people could be subject to “enhanced penalties” for crimes against non-trans people. The possibility of hate crime charges could arise in any dispute that involves gender identity or expression. In the case of the “New Jersey 4,” a group of young queer women of color were incarcerated for defending themselves against the homophobic attacks and slurs of a straight man, who accused them of committing a “hate crime” against him. It is all too easy for a prejudice-motivated attack to become a fight for survival, and for a fight to be turned against oppressed communities.
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Notwithstanding the faults of the criminal "justice" system, some of the rest of the letter has some apparent factual problems.
I have checked the FBI statistics on hate crimes on numerous occasions and cannot sunstantiate the claim made that black men are charged disproportionately with race-based hate crimes. There is a lamentable lack of hate-crime reporting, anyway. But I have not found this statement to be true.
The next statement about anti-heterosexual hate crimes is also suspect. Sexuality, as yet, is not a basis for hate crimes and, to the best of my knowledge is not tracked by the FBI because of that. I would certainly like to proven wrong if, in fact, I am, but this seems like scare tactics to me. There are, I am sure, GLBT people charged with offenses against straight people, but the extent and nature of those offenses would have to come from another source, and I would need to see proof of the "hate crime" status.
Likewise, the claim that, if GENDA passes in New York, trans people would be charged with hate crimes against non-trans seems to be in the same vein as claiming that bestiality would be legalized if same-sex marriage became law. It is unverifiable prognostication and I would need to see some evidence that could support the claim.
While many aspects of the New Jersey 4 crime are already debatable, there are facts still coming out about what actually occurred. They were convicted on the basis of using violence to defend themselves against verbal assualt - that is, a disproportionate use of violence. Whether that is true is unclear as yet. This is hardly the case, however, to substantiate the claims made above, as it is so rare as to be laughable as a general example.
All in all, I found that there were some credible arguments in the letter - credible, but not convincing when examined under light. I still beleive the problem is the injustice system that convicts trans and people of color for all kinds of crimes, except white collar crimes, at a rate that is disproportionate. This is the result of bias. I would hope that, eventually, the courts would be held to the same standards as the rest of society and pay a price for that bias.