Saturday, June 7, 2008 marks the 10-year anniversary of the hate crime murder of James Byrd, Jr. that took place near Jasper, Texas.
Since that time, the Texas Legislature passed the James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Act in 2001. By the passage of the law, there is an increased penalty for crimes that are deemed to have been committed with "bias and prejudice."
However, as noted by Equality Texas, very few hate crimes qualifying under the "bias and prejudice" requirement have been prosecuted. In fact, of the 1,862 crimes of "bias and prejudice" reported from 2001-2006, only 9 cases were brought for prosecution and, of those, only 8 were convicted.
We are not the only state and country with hate crime issues. However, most race-based crimes are not as horrible as the one committed against James Byrd, Jr. in Texas ten years ago. On more than one occasion when I was a student in upstate New York, I had to explain that this it is not common practice in Texas to drag people from the backs of pickup trucks (or to shoot them when they are in your front yard).
Other countries, such as Holland, have hate crimes, too, of course. But those crimes usually do not end in death of the parties. Maybe they are beaten up a little, as fist fighting is bigger there than here. In my other blog, Thinking in Dutch, I wrote an article in 2006 about some youth violence against police officers, in which rock-throwing took place, rather than something worse. While that example was not related to hate crimes, it does speak about the differing ways people express their frustration in differing coutries. Gun control plays a large part in the reason why death is the less likely result of hate crimes in other countries, such as Holland.
Here in the United States and Texas, in particular, we would do well to see how those in other countries deal with their individual frustrations about life. Killing others is obviously not the way to handle it well. It would be better to live and let live.
The Hate Crimes poster photo was taken by Br3nda of Flickr. Some Rights Reserved.
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