If it looks like a duck...

By J -


You say "tomayto." I say "tomotto." You say crime of economic opportunity. I say hate crime:

"Hate crime" means a criminal act committed, in whole or in part, because of one or more of the following actual or perceived
characteristics of the victim:
(1) Disability.
(2) Gender.
(3) Nationality.
(4) Race or ethnicity.
(5) Religion.
(6) Sexual orientation.
(7) Association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics.

People want to obscure the truth with a comfortable, easy euphemism: "economic opportunity." But if it looks like racism, acts like racism and talks like racism, then it probably is racism. It doesn't matter what your motivation is for the racism, whether its economic opportunity or hatred.

Here's an interesting comment on the Hyphen blog that puts things in perspective:

I love how everyone is approaching this as though it were a conflict with two equally culpable parties,

Regardless of how blacks feel about Asians or vice versa, I don't see any reports of systematic Asian on black violence. The conflict seems to me to be entirely one sided.

Instead of everyone attempting to skirt around the issue, I'll just state it quite explicitly. No one is willing to call out this black on Asian bigotry because in this country we have a neurotic sensibility which leads us to freak out against criticizing blacks in any way whatsoever, because my god that would make us seem racist.

So instead of calling a spade a spade, we try to concoct the most convoluted explanation for the simply fact that certain individuals in the black community are quite capable of harboring racial animus and bigotry.

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Comments

MojoRider said…
It reinforces the notion that Asians don't matter when authorities try to sweep the issue under the carpet.

There is a clear double standard and people abdicate their responsibility when they fear that raising an issue will bring about racial tensions. Which is nuts. By doing nothing, and saying "oh, it's only a crime of opportunity, there's no racist component", you actually create the very racial tensions you were trying to avoid!

There's ALREADY racial resentment and suspicions. Especially when you get folks saying stuff like, "go back to your country".
May 12, 2010 at 1:36 PM
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