When Equality Isn’t Really Equality
Here’s an interesting bit of law from Virginia that was brought to my attention today:
ยง 18.2-57. Assault and battery.
A. Any person who commits a simple assault or assault and battery shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor, and if the person intentionally selects the person against whom a simple assault is committed because of his race, religious conviction, color or national origin, the penalty upon conviction shall include a term of confinement of at least six months, 30 days of which shall be a mandatory minimum term of confinement.
B. However, if a person intentionally selects the person against whom an assault and battery resulting in bodily injury is committed because of his race, religious conviction, color or national origin, the person shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony, and the penalty upon conviction shall include a term of confinement of at least six months, 30 days of which shall be a mandatory minimum term of confinement.
Doesn’t that seem a bit silly to you? It does to me. After all if you beat somebody up, whether it be because they’re a color you don’t like or maybe just because they looked at you funny, isn’t the crime the same? Do we really want to start saying that crimes against specific demographics are somehow more serious than crimes against others?
There was a time in this country when blacks weren’t considered full citizens. Their votes, when counted up for elections, only counted for a fraction of that of a white citizen. Which was an abhorrent thing. Our Declaration of Independence stated, explicitly, that “all men are created equal.” If all men are created equal than certainly their votes should count equally. And if we carry that same reasoning to the situation described above then we must conclude that all men are also equal under the criminal code and that there is no distinction between committing a crime against a white, affluent male, against a middle-class Hispanic lesbian or a poor Jewish factory worker.
Sadly, though, in our rush to be politically correct in every facet of our lives we’ve overlooked the fact that reacting to prejudice and bias with disparate equality under the law is no solution to the problems of racism and hate crimes. Rather, it is a path that will lead us to more class warfare and more dissension between the races.
If we want things to be equal, then they must be truly equal without exception.
In regards to KurtP and The Whistler.
This thing about black Americans counting only as 3/5 of a man is a great canard that just doesn’t seem to die. Every half-educated, good-hearted person I know loves to cite it.
As far as I know, nobody’s vote in this country has ever counted for a percentage of a vote. A vote either counted as a whole vote or not at all.
Whistler has it nearly right.
In the Constitution as it was originally adopted black slaves counted as 3/5 of a person when counted by the Census for representation purposes in Federal elections.
Southern slaveholders wanted their slaves to count as whole persons for representation purposes. Since slaves were never allowed to vote, that would give white voters from the Southern slave-holding disproportionately greater power.
As a sidebar, counting slaves as whole persons in terms of voting would therefore be an incentive for increasing the total number of slaves.
On the other hand, the anti-slavery forces in the North did not wanted to count slaves at all in terms of Federal elections.
Since such a relatively high proportion of the South’s population was made up of slaves, this would cut down the slave-holding states’ representation in the House of Representatives and in the Electoral College.
This, in turn, would eventually lead to the ending of slavery peacefully, they hoped.
The Southerners wanted their cake and eat it too.
They did not want to acknowledge slave’s as citizens, but they wanted to count them as persons when it came to representation in Congress. So the 3/5’s compromise was born to create the union.
The important thing to remember is that up to the time of the constitution slavery had existed for thousands of years. Within two generations slavery in this country was ended.
In fact slavery was brought here by our “mother countries” when we were colonies.
All we did was end it in a historical short time.
The percentage was 6/10 (if I remember right). The southerners wanted them to be counted as a whole person, but the east coast Yankees (Kennedy and Kerry’s people) wanted them not to be counted at all.
Just thought I’d throw that in.
Absolutely, Rob. Political Correctness is just another form of discrimination – thoughts are being judged, not actions. Should you receive a jail sentence for thinking those thoughts without acting upon them? What if you hate the person you attack because of their religion, but you actually assaulted them for the money? Should your sentence be longer even though that wasn’t the reason? How about if you thought you were attacking someone because they were Jewish, but they’re really Methodist? Does that mitigate a “hate crime?” It becomes silly very early on.
Wouldn’t it help with the perception of equality everywhere if a criminal’s sentence were the same no matter his/her color, national origin or religion and no matter the color/national origin/gender/religion of the victim? This brings up the old Animal Farm slogan: All animals are created equal, but some are more equal than others.
I’d much rather go with Horton: A person’s a person, no matter how small.
Anytime this is brought up, I’m reminded of a piece from (I think) Larry Elder’s The Ten Things You Can’t Say in America. He said that if a member of the KKK sneaks up behind him and hits him in the head with a brick, the word he’s most worried about in that sentence isn’t “KKK”, it’s “brick”.
Yay, Neofarmer! It’s always good to explode liberal myths with the facts!
One of the biggest problems with this kind of “hate crime” law is that it is not enforced uniformly.
Let’s face it, this is Thought Crime pure and simple.
If you assault someone, you should be prosecuted the same regardless of your/their race, religion, etc. I understand making a distinction along the lines of whether you used your bare hands or a chainsaw or even whether you knocked the person out or gave them brain damage, but the crime is the same.