the new hate crime laws (1). While reading through Issues and Controversies on file I also found out that some of the “policy makers” believe that all crimes are committed with some form of hate in mind. They say that if this is true then hate crime laws are “therefore redundant and unnecessary.” These people believe that all crimes are already fully punishable “regardless of why they were committed”(506).In response to these comments, I can see where some of theses people are coming from. For instance many of these experts that I read about said that it is just the minorities that get the protection from bias motivated crimes. This is really not completely true. In Elena Grigera’s article she says that “it is important to keep in mind that, while hate crime legislation is often viewed as a vehicle of protection for such minority groups as blacks and Jews, such laws also protect the white majority from bias-motivated violence”(2). These people seem to think that it is just the minorities that can become victims of these hate crimes, but in reality that is not the case at all. A white heterosexual male can just as easily become a victim of a hate crime as a black heterosexual male can. For example in the Wisconsin v. Mitchell case in 1993 a group of “black youths severely beat a schoolboy” because he was white. “The youths received enhanced prison sentences” under the state hate crime laws (Hate-Crime 512). This is only one of the many reasons why these hate crime laws are so badly needed, so everyone can be protected not just the minorities.Another argument that has been brought up in this very controversial issue is whether or not the new hate crime laws are constitutional or not. I believe that for the people that oppose hate crime laws this is their best argument. These people say that the laws violate the first amendment. “In order to prove that a cr...
