Hate Crime Prevention or Totalitarian Experimentation?

            Today the Oregonian (a local news organization in the NW United States) published a story with this headline: Portland Offers Grants to Combat City’s Rising Hate Crimes. Of course a million questions come to mind when reading this, first among them, what is a ‘hate crime’? A quick Google search reveals that a hate crime is ‘a crime motivated by racial, sexual, or other prejudice, typically one involving violence.’ Yet this is not the only definition you can find, leaving the definition being used by the city of Portland ambiguous at best.

The article goes on to report that:

 

“The grant calls on community groups, collectively eligible for $350,000 in city grants, to act as a point of contact for those who have experienced hate crimes, to train individuals or groups how to resist hate crime, or to gather, analyze and publicize data about such crimes.”

 

The city of Portland wants to give money, taken from tax payers, and give it to community groups so those groups can train individuals or groups to resist hate crime. This brings to mind a billion questions, such as: what kind of training will these groups receive? What does it mean to resist hate crime? What actions will they be able to legally take in order to resist hate crimes? It also says that these community groups will be able to gather, analyze, and publicize data about such crimes. Meaning the city is basically going to be funding people to share private information publicly on individuals these community groups deem guilty of hate crimes.

            In a time when someone is labelled a racist for being Republican or for advocating for enforcement of our immigration policy or a sexist for debunking the wage gap or Islamphobic for speaking out against Islamic Terrorism or called a transphobe for citing biology when it comes to gender, it is very easy to see how this sort of program can be abused very rapidly. It reminds me of programs they had in the Soviet Union to report anti soviet agitation, which was a crime. Just replace anti soviet agitation with hate crime and you’ll have the same thing. In this case city funded groups reporting to the government on the private actions of individuals who say or do something that can be seen as a hate crime.

            The biggest flaw in this plan is that it will most likely backfire and create more division among the people of Portland. It will put the power of dispensing justice into the hands of community groups. This will cause everyone to identify themselves based on race or gender or whatever and join with one of these groups. This basically breaks everyone down into tribes and when you have several tribes in one area you will get conflict. For the sake of the good people in Portland I hope that the city government will abandon this irrational plan and find a better more productive use for that money.

 

A link to the original Oregonian Story:

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2017/07/portland_offers_grants_to_comb.html