Hate Crimes Up Around America But Down in Virginia

Since the election of Donald Trump, a/k/a Der Trumpenführer, to the White House, hate crimes nationwide have increased as Trump has continued to signal that racism and bigotry are acceptable behavior.  Curiously, in Virginia, for 2016, hate crimes are actually down notwithstanding the fact that they increased across the rest of the nation as a whole.  As to why such is the case, there seem to be no obvious answer although I suspect that some might point to the messaging from the governor's mansion that Virginia is accepting and open to all.  On November 7, 2017, Virginians strongly rejected the Gillespie/Adams/Vogel ticket's call to racism and bigotry.   A piece in the Daily Press looks at the phenomenon.  Here are excerpts:

While hate crimes are up about five percent nationally, the number of hate crimes in Virginia decreased about 12 percent.  That’s according to the FBI’s 2016 hate crime statistics released this week. The data comes from the Uniform Crime Reporting Program — a system by which law enforcement collects crime data. About 15,200 agencies participated in the Hate Crime Statistics Program last year.

FBI and Virginia’s data shows hate crimes predominantly were driven by racial bias. Virginia lists religion and sexual orientation as the next most common motivators; vice versa for the FBI. Anti-black, anti-white, anti-Jewish and anti-gay (male) were the four most frequent types of hate crimes around the nation.

Experts quickly warn against jumping to conclusions. Virginia law recognizes hate crimes that target someone’s race, religion or national origin. That leaves out sexual orientation, gender and disability.

In other words, if a woman presumed her car was vandalized because of her gender identity, local police would only investigate the vandalism. The case would be turned over to a federal agency to investigate, said Dana Schrad, executive director of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police.

“They’re going to investigate that, obviously they can prosecute that, but they can’t call it a hate crime if it’s outside those areas in Virginia law,” Schrad said.

“It’s a social justice issue, so I think folks would have to go to the General Assembly and say we have evidence of these hate crimes but we have to go to feds to prosecute because we don’t have an avenue in the state system,” Schrad said.

The data only reflects incidents in 2016, and only covers crimes — not hate incidents.

The Anti-Defamation League, which keeps its own data, reported a 67 percent uptick in anti-semitic incidents between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, 2017, and the same time period last year. Anti-LGBTQ homicides rose by 17 percent between 2015 and 2016, according to a report released by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs. There were 1,036 incidents of hate violence reported, the majority of which targeted people who identified as gay, below the age of 39 or were people of color.

Doron Ezickson, regional director for the ADL, advocated for consistent legislation across the country, and more training for police and prosecutors. And, Vecchietti said, a move away from victim blaming.

“When we talk about greater prevalence rate it's not like the nature of the individual that’s the problem,” Vecchietti said. “It’s the culture that's the problem.”  Hate crimes don’t just target an individual, Ezickson said. They target and seek to silence an entire community.

GOP Civil War Looming as Trump Slides Toward Fascism?

As Donald Trumps slides increasingly down a path that makes one think of Adolph Hitler and/or Benito Mussolini and outright fascism, New Day For America PAC, which supports John Kasich, has launched a new ad that is displayed above that has assembled some of Donald Trump’s more extreme and vile statements. (Another source has fact checked and found that the majority of "facts" that Trump cites are not true). New Day for America is reporting that Trump is already threatening to sue them.  Meanwhile, a piece in The Week looks at The Donald's slide toward fascism.  Here are some highlights:

I made the case just a couple months back that Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump is a sort of fledgling Mussolini, nurturing an incipient fascist movement. As the first primaries approach, and Trump's lead in the polls is actually widening, his development toward outright fascism is progressing faster than I feared.

As of August, Trump had most of the ingredients for a fascist movement: the victim complex, the fervent nationalism, the obsession with national purity and cleansing purges, and the cult of personality. He was missing the organized violence, a left-wing challenge strong enough to push traditional conservative elites into his camp, support for wars of aggression, and a full-bore attack on democracy itself. He's made much progress on all but the last one.

It's clear now that the Paris attacks enormously energized the Trumpist movement. He's now speculating openly about invading Syria. Trump's proposals have gone from overt prejudice to things literally taken out of late Weimar history — closure of mosques and a national Muslim database. The rank-and-file have both fed off and stoked this behavior. When a lone protester started chanting "black lives matter" at a Trump rally, Trumpists jumped him (he was luckily not badly injured).  Trump later said, "Maybe he should have been roughed up." Hours later he lied about witnessing Muslim crowds celebrating 9/11, and retweeted nonsense racist garbage from a literal neo-Nazi.

Conditions are clearly fertile to start organizing a Trumpist paramilitary wing, a key fascist institution.  . . . . With an incomprehensible number of guns floating around the country, all Trump needs is a Röhm to get the organizing started — except probably with Carhartts and camouflage instead of imitation military uniforms.

Will other decent Republicans (those few that are left) join Kasich and call Trump out?  One can only hope so.

Donald Trump's Racist Revival

Donald Trump is rapidly rebranding the GOP, or at least solidifying what has been a GOP staple in motivating voters to vote against their own and often America's best interest.  Trump has taken outright blatant racism main stream as he has encouraged crowds to rough up non-white protesters and played the race card against Hispanics and now those of Middle Eastern origin.  The man is a loud mouthed demagogue, yet he seems to be exactly what a large core of the GOP base wants because he is playing to their ugliest prejudices.  Sadly, Trump is providing fodder for ISIS' propaganda efforts but seemingly doesn't care.  With Trump, self-aggrandizement is all that matters. a Piece in Salon looks at Trump's naked racism.  Here are highlights:

Over the weekend, a group of Donald Trump supporters punched and kicked a Black man who attended a Trump rally, and disrupted the event with cries of “Black Lives Matter.” When asked later about his fans’ deplorable and violent behavior, Trump remarked that “maybe [the man] should have been roughed up, because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing.” There have been no cries of outrage about how this man’s right to free speech was violated through use of intimidation and violence.

Instead, Trump condones white violence against a non-violent protestor. And in doing so, he demonstrates not only the complete hypocrisy of the right wing on questions of race but also the extent to which a deep desire and will to do violence toward Black people exists just beneath the surface of most right-wing political discourse. Many White Americans carry seething racial resentment toward Americans of color, with special enmity reserved for Black folks and those of ostensible Middle Eastern descent whom they would hastily deem “terrorists.”

Trump continues to be a formidable candidate for the Republican nomination because he grants legitimacy to most basely racist notions of the GOP base.  Many of us in the African American striver class had been convinced that while our society was still rife with covert racism and dogwhistle politics, that white Americans had evolved past the moment where they would dare express such explicit racial animus with no expectation of serious repercussion.

White rage freely expressed in a system of white dominance is a wholly dangerous thing, largely because it proceeds unchecked by riding the coattails of calls for honest, pull-no-punches political discourse.  The White Americans who love Donald Trump finally feel like they can breathe free oxygen again, like there might be a return to some semblance of an America they know. 

That Donald Trump continues to hold his ground in the presidential race suggests that we are in an era in which too many white folks can’t even be shamed into anti-racist pretension. In our endless discussions about post-racial discourse over the last 7 years, those of us who study race had been frustrated that this era seemed to be marked by an inability to nail down racism because the language of racism had become nebulous and indeterminate even though the policies continued to be as concrete and immovable as ever.

This moment, however (hopefully) fleeting, is both new and old. We see explicit racist discourse re-emerging boldly and shamelessly in public life. The rub is that the American public on the whole has been no more responsive to Trumpian racism than it has been to post-racial, covert, racism. And that is downright shameful.

 

Hillary Clinton Slams Jeb Bush on Racial Issues

The annual convention of the National Urban League provided Hillary Clinton with a venue to call out Jeb "Jebbie" Bush on the inherent racism of the economic policies he favors which, as noted before, are just a warmed over version of the GOP's voodoo economics which have not worked at all over the last 35 years.  At least not for black and average Americans.  Instead, the policies have benefited the 1% and pushed America toward a new Gilded Age where the few have fabulous wealth and the rest of us struggle to hang on to what we have with increasing difficulty.  The New York Times looks at the salvos that Hillary rightly delivered at Jebbie (she should have also attacked the GOP's anti-union agenda in my view).  Here are highlights:

Jeb Bush and his aides had envisioned a big, inclusive, high-minded speech about race on Friday in his home state of Florida, a chance to bring his message of colorblind opportunity to a prestigious group of African-American leaders.

In a rare gesture of bipartisanship, Mr. Bush even planned to warmly quote President Obama, usually the object of his derision.

Then Hillary Rodham Clinton stomped all over those plans.

In a biting surprise attack, delivered as Mr. Bush, the former Florida governor, waited backstage here at the annual convention of the National Urban League, Mrs. Clinton portrayed him as a hypocrite who had set back the cause of black Americans.

It was an unexpected moment of political theater that seemed to presage what could be a bitter general-election rivalry between two of the biggest names in American politics.

Mrs. Clinton, a Democratic candidate for president, latched onto Mr. Bush’s campaign slogan and the name of his “super PAC” —Right to Rise, his shorthand for a conservative agenda of self-reliance and hope — and turned it into a verbal spear.

“People can’t rise if they can’t afford health care,” Mrs. Clinton said to applause from conventiongoers, a dig at Mr. Bush’s opposition to the Affordable Care Act.

“They can’t rise if the minimum wage is too low to live on,” she said, a jab at his opposition to raising the federal minimum wage.

“They can’t rise if their governor makes it harder for them to get a college education,” she said, a critique of Mr. Bush’s decision as governor to eliminate affirmative action in college admissions.

Mr. Bush appeared unprepared to respond, thanking Mrs. Clinton for joining him at the event but otherwise leaving her criticism unanswered in his own speech. 

[H]e did not directly address the rash of police shootings of unarmed black men that dominated discussions at the Urban League conference this week. Instead, he called more obliquely for rebuilding trust in “America’s vital institutions.”

Clinton took a more direct approach, ticking off the names of African-Americans who have died after interactions with law enforcement — including Eric Garner, Walter L. Scott and Freddie Gray — to knowing nods in the audience.

“These names are emblazoned on our hearts,” she said. “We’ve seen their faces; we’ve heard their grieving families.”  She spoke explicitly about racial discrimination, saying it still played a major role in determining “who gets ahead in America and who gets left behind.”

She added: “We can’t go on like this. We are better than this. Things must change.”

Toward the end of her speech, Mrs. Clinton turned to those who, in her telling, do not live up to their own words on the subject of racial injustice, singling out Mr. Bush, not by name but by implication, over and over.

Cherie LaCour-Duckworth, a Clinton supporter, said she had paid little attention to what Mr. Bush said. Mrs. Clinton, she said, “set the stage for him.”

Ben Carson, a Republican who was the sole black candidate to speak here, took a tough-love approach that seemed to inspire little enthusiasm from the crowd. Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, never mentioned the high-profile deaths of unarmed black men and women in police custody and held himself up as a model of how ambition and education could rescue poor African-Americans from poverty.  He called on black parents to talk to their sons “about how they conduct themselves.”

Herman Wallace, an attendee from Kansas City, Mo., was unmoved. “Carson,” he said, “talked about himself.”