IT'S VALENTINE'S day, which means that there's one thing on everyone's mind: hate crimes. Yes, David Duke, the former ringleader of the Ku Klux Kircus and now president of the European-American Unity and Rights Organization (EURO), was in town last week, protesting the refusal of local officials to proceed with hate crimes charges for a group of blacks accused of targeting whites.
As much as it sickens me, I have to agree to some extent with Duke; hate crime laws should equally be applied to whites and blacks. But he ignores an important detail in the debate over hate crimes, one that rarely is mentioned: the difference between motive and intent. The issue of motive versus intent is an often-overlooked distinction, and one that is difficult to prove in court. However, this is the criterion we should apply when examining such criminal acts.
While motive and intent practically are synonyms, there is a significant difference, one that becomes all the more important when looking at purported hate crimes. With the incident in Charlottesville, the motive of the alleged assailants is clear, but the intent still is unknown.
According to local officials, this was a crime of racism. In a EURO press release, Charlotteville Police Lt. J.W. Gibson admitted, "The assailants did say the victims were chosen on the basis of race." But David Duke and his ultra-conservative cronies are wrong - this does not automatically qualify the incidents as hate crimes. They may be trying to find equal application of the law for both races, but they are confusing terminology and oversimplifying the debate on hate crime legislation.
In the Charlottesville case, valid arguments can be made on either side, but this is for the police and prosecutors to delve into in deciding whether or not to press charges. But racial targeting, of whites or of blacks, does not necessarily amount to a hate crime.
Defined simply, motive is the reason behind any crime. A motive may be greed, love, hatred, revenge or racism. While motive may be the "why" behind a crime, it does not affect the act itself. A crime is a crime, regardless of why it is done.
But distinctions between motives are meaningless unless they affect the crimes themselves. Intent, on the other hand, is the larger goal of the criminal. In most hate crimes, they are done to send a message to a particular community. By lynching a black man, vandalizing a mosque or - in a case last week in Montana - burning a lesbian couple's house down, people try to send a message to a minority that they are unsafe and unwelcome.
Take the fictional example of Mr. Smith and Mr. Jones. Smith, who is white, finds his lawn covered in toilet paper. He is the victim of vandalism, by a group of youths who don't particularly care for the man. On the other hand, Jones, who is black, finds a burning cross on his lawn. The crime is the same - vandalism - but the intent is different.
When the intent is to send a message of intimidation against any particular race, religion, etc., the crime moves beyond simple vandalism or assault. It becomes tantamount to terrorism.
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This becomes very difficult to prove in a court setting. How do we read one's mind? Intent to one person may be motive to another. While intent may be obvious in some cases, such as a Ku Klux Klan lynching of a black man, in others it becomes trickier to discern.
Conservatives have tried to over-simplify the argument, with catch-phrases like "every crime is a hate crime" and "you can't read people's minds." The issue is more complex than that. The Sept. 11 attacks were more than just murder and destruction of property - they were terrorist acts. Similarly, burning a cross is not just vandalism - it is a hate crime.
This certainly does not exempt liberals from criticism. In many cases, they are all too eager to call any attack on a minority a "hate crime." When someone shouts out an ethnic slur when committing a crime, this might be a mindless slur, it even may expose motive. But it does not necessarily apply to intent.
This dilutes the meaning of the term "hate crime." It should apply only to incidents where there is a larger message or goal that the criminals were trying to attain. In the Charlottesville assaults, as with many cases, this is difficult to ascertain. But for the most part, the political banter from both sides on the issue is misguided at best, and grossly ignorant at worst.
(Brian Cook is a Cavalier Daily opinion editor. He can be reached at bcook@cavalierdaily.com.)
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