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Marcelo Lucero, Angie Zapata, Jorge Steven Mercado, Brisenia Flores, Jose Sucuzhañay, Luis Ramirez. These are just a handful of names of some hate crimes that got some coverage over the last year. Pero what makes a hate crime a hate crime? Who decides and what “standards” have to met? Will a national hate crimes bill, with harsher sentencing guidelines solve the root causes? How do we as radicals or even as “progressives” rationalize a desire to enforce longer sentences in prison, especially when a member of one of our communities is killed by another member of our communities (because we fit into multiple communities built around concepts of gender identity, race, ability, nationality, class, sexual identity, etc)?

According to the FBI’s recently released statistics on hate crimes in the United States, 64% of the hate crimes based on perceived ethnicity or national origin targeted Latinos. This is out of 7,783 hate crime incidents involving 9,168 offenses reported by 13,690 law enforcement agencies in 2008. Here are some more stats since people seem to like stats.

Single-bias incidents

Of the 7,780 single-bias incidents reported in 2008:

* 51.3 percent were racially motivated.
* 19.5 percent were motivated by religious bias.
* 16.7 percent stemmed from sexual-orientation bias.
* 11.5 percent resulted from ethnicity/national origin bias.
* 1.0 percent were motivated by disability bias.

Offenses by bias motivation within incidents

There were 9,160 single-bias hate crime offenses reported in the above incidents. Of these:

* 51.4 percent stemmed from racial bias.
* 17.7 percent were motivated by sexual-orientation bias.
* 17.5 percent resulted from religious bias.
* 12.5 percent were motivated by ethnicity/national origin bias.
* 0.9 percent resulted from biases against disabilities.

But when the so called progressive community looks at hate crimes, are we too easily swallowing the narrative given to us by a government that brandishes it’s own version of hate driven violence? For example, how do we confront the fact that a large number of hate crimes are never reported. Hate crimes often are not reported because of a very real fear of retaliation, and/or a fear that law enforcement agencies won’t do anything or worse, victimize the victim again. Additionally, because there is no universal standard for what constitutes a hate crime, some hate crimes are reported but not for what they really are. For example, in some jurisdictions a very explicit use of a slur needs to be present in order for a crime to be labeled a hate crime. Not taken into account is the context of where the crime took place and an often pre-existing pattern and practice of violence against certain communities.

Also many hate crimes aren’t attacks against just one part of a person. They are an attack against multiple identities, perceived or real. When we as progressives choose to only acknowledge one aspect of a crime while, in my opinion, willfully ignoring another piece. For example, in the press release on hate crimes released by the National Council of la Raza, they mentioned the attack on Jose Sucuzhanay as an anti-Latino attack but not as a homophobic attack when it was both. What does it mean when orgs that claim to represent us choose to only represent one aspect of who we are or who people think we are?

I first thought about this in the context of the outrage that followed the death of Jorge Steven Lopez Mercado. In the days that followed his murder, I read with concern some debates on websites, mostly coming from people outside of Puerto Rico, how the answer was to get the Federal Department of Justice involved with no analysis of the role that the Federal government has played in creating violence in the U.S colony of Puerto Rico. In much of the commentary there also seemed to be an inherent distrust of sources coming out of Puerto Rico. Was this because of a belief that Latin America is more homophobic than the U.S? Was it because of the fact that the news coming out of Puerto Rico, part of Latin America, was in Spanish? How much of this distrust is rooted in an imperialist interpretation of Puerto Rico and it’s inhabitants? Another debate surrounding Jorge Steven that concerned me was the speculation on whether he was gay, trans or both. While the disgusting, horrific crime that took Jorge Steven from our world can be looked at as homophobic and transphobic, I saw a willful ignoring by many LGBT orgs and outlets on what the Rican LGBT community was saying how Jorge Steven identified himself. There was this tone again of not being able to trust what was coming out of Puerto Rico, specifically Jorge Steven’s own family.

This to me is also linked to the whole marriage equality vote and NY State Senator Hiram Monserrate. While I think that Monserrate has betrayed a huge portion of his constituency, myself included, and should be voted out and protested against, I am concerned with how some LGBT groups are using his domestic violence conviction as a rallying cry to incarcerate him. As if that will protect women or the LBGT community.

And what about what often never gets mentioned as hate crimes? For example, it is relatively easy to find a discussion on hate crimes based on ethnicity, race, and/or sexual identity. As Abby Jean writes, “the majority of crimes committed against people with disabilities are not considered or categorized as hate crimes on the basis of disability.” And I have to admit to my ablism here. It was something I never thought about in the weeks I have been thinking about this post.

Whether crimes against people with disabilities should be considered hate crimes is a difficult and complicated question. One on hand, the DOJ report demonstrates that the rate of nonfatal violent crimes against PWD was 1.5 higher than the rate for TABs, with the rate of crimes against women with disabilities almost twice the rate for TAB women. It is hard to imagine that disparities this significant are unrelated to disability status.

At the same time, I am concerned about giving more power to the criminal justice system.

And then I think of Juarez, and how through U.S. dominant lens we are so focused on what we think hate looks like and who we put into corporate sponsored prisons and overwhelmingly we ignore how capitalist global policy intersects with violence that is both racial and gendered.

At least 4,000 people — the same number of people killed in two years in Juárez — united in Mexico’s deadliest city Sunday.

Their message was clear: peace.

Adults and children carried white flags, white flowers and signs asking for a stop to the violence. They chanted, “Paz por Juárez (peace for Juárez)” and “Juárez unido, jamás será vencido! (Juárez united will never be defeated).”

How do we achieve peace with justice? With justice that isn’t based on another form of hate or that feeds institutions that were created based on hate.

Via / FWD/Forward, El Paso Times