Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Thinking in Black and White
- 2 Repairing the Slave Reparations Debate
- 3 Advancing the Slave Reparations Debate
- 4 One Cheer for Affirmative Action
- 5 Two Cheers for Affirmative Action
- 6 Why I Used to Hate Hate Speech Restrictions
- 7 Why I Still Hate Hate Speech Restrictions
- 8 How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Hate Crime Laws
- 9 How to Keep on Loving Hate Crime Laws
- 10 Is Racial Profiling Irrational?
- 11 Is Racial Profiling Immoral?
- Notes
- Sources
- Index
8 - How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Hate Crime Laws
Why Objections to Hate Speech Restrictions Don’t Work as Objections to Hate Crime Laws
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- 1 Thinking in Black and White
- 2 Repairing the Slave Reparations Debate
- 3 Advancing the Slave Reparations Debate
- 4 One Cheer for Affirmative Action
- 5 Two Cheers for Affirmative Action
- 6 Why I Used to Hate Hate Speech Restrictions
- 7 Why I Still Hate Hate Speech Restrictions
- 8 How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love Hate Crime Laws
- 9 How to Keep on Loving Hate Crime Laws
- 10 Is Racial Profiling Irrational?
- 11 Is Racial Profiling Immoral?
- Notes
- Sources
- Index
Summary
Two arsonists are walking around town looking for a suitable house to burn down. One ends up selecting a particular house because it is a bit more convenient to get to than those nearby. The other ends up selecting a particular house because the family who lives in it is black. Both are caught, convicted, and punished for their acts. The men live in a state that has a hate crime law. Such laws treat what the second arsonist does as worse than what the first arsonist does. As a result, the second arsonist receives a greater punishment than the first.
Many people are troubled by hate crime laws. And many of those who are troubled by them are troubled for largely the same reasons that they’re troubled by hate speech restrictions. As Dinseh D’Souza has put it in lumping the two cases together, for example, “free speech is subordinated to the goals of sensitivity and diversity, as in so-called hate speech and hate crimes laws.” These are people who will largely agree with what I said about hate speech restrictions in Chapters 6 and 7, but who will think that I haven’t yet gone far enough. The reasons for rejecting hate speech restrictions, they’ll say, are also reasons for rejecting hate crime laws.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Should Race Matter?Unusual Answers to the Usual Questions, pp. 250 - 273Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011