Hate crimes are terrible. They are done to people due to race, color, faith, physical trait and more. But are we degrading the overall crime. Is not assault an assault and a murder a murder?
Hate is a motivation: We have taken a motivation to harm another human being and turned it into a crime. Hate is a combination of thought and emotion. It is no more or less. Such hate is brought upon by societal circumstances, and is taught to the younger generations by their elders. As such, this is the reason hatred for Blacks, Jews, Christians, etc. still exists. Yes, every group has someone hating on them. And at some point in time, each group will make a victim out of the other group. It is an endless cycle.
Why make it a crime: This is only my opinion, but I believe that they made it a crime so that it would force hatred out of society. It co-insides with the idea of political correctness (developed by the early socialists to create a certain line of thought). I speculate that they made this a crime so that new generations of people would associate the very thought of hating another person as a crime. But, I do not believe that this has been successful. Hate overrides typical common sense reasoning. If a Jewish (or any person from a recognizable group) kid beats you every day all the way through high school, you will have a poor opinion of Jewish people. That is until someone who is Jewish (or a group of Jews) changes your mind with their own behavior toward you. But it will take time for the victim to think of the original perpetrator of their torment as an exception and not the norm. Unfortunately, fear plays a role in causing the victim who now hates Jews due to his torment to avoid members of the Jewish community. Propaganda feeds his/her fear to think that all Jews are bad. At the end all that is left is anger. By making it a crime to hate all you do is legitimize the hatred by recognizing it as the norm. You make it acceptable to a counter culture. Even then, the hatred will simply fall to the back ground and be talked about in secret. Those haters will no longer have an outlet to express themselves. As such they will seek out ways to express how they feel. This means evil acts like tormenting people, assaulting people and possibly committing murder.
The True crime: An assault is just that an assault. A murder is simply a murder. These are part of the obviously wrongful acts that mankind must not perpetuate against one another. Hate is simply a motivation and belongs in the realm of motive and opportunity. Punishing thought will never solve this issue. Giving greater punishments to those whose motivation is hatred for the crime will not stop the crime from occurring. Punish the deed, not the ramblings of fools.
Conclusion: If my opinion is correct, then they created the classification of hate crimes to make it so that society will view hatred as something evil. However, people already know this. There is also potential for abuse with crimes being elevated to hate crimes simply to get a person into a courtroom and even get a guilty verdict (depends on how each law is written). I see no reason as to why a murderer should get a lighter sentence than a person who murdered someone out of hate. They should be punished equally for with hate crimes, we are giving more value toward one victim over another. And I find that to be wrong.
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