The recent killings of three people in southwest Missouri was being investigated by the FBI within 24 hours and described by local police and media outlets as a Hate Crime. The shootings took place outside of the Jewish Community Center and  parking lot of an assisted Jewish living facility outside Overland Park, salve Missouri. The suspect, buy arrested immediately, sale was described as a 73-year old southwest Missouri man with a long history of anti-Semitism.  After the police arrested F. Glen Cross, he went on a rant in the back of the patrol car yelling “Heil Hitler!” Four hours after the shooting rampage was first reported, police said in a news conference that it was too early to know definitively what the shooter’s motives were, but “We are investigating this as a hate crime.”

That the man accused of these shootings is an anti-Semite is not in question, or even that this particular crime was designated as a Hate Crime. No. It is the haste and efficiency with which those decisions were made, the evidence on which the case is based, and the immediacy with which the FBI became involved that blows my mind. Among the 3 victims of this crime at least 2 were Christian, not Jewish, so the question becomes, was it because of where the crime occurred and the words the suspect spewed out in the police car that the shooter was accused of committing a Hate Crime? If so, I have to question why hundreds of murders where the motives of the shooters were clearly aggravated by racial animus were not given that same designation .  In fact, in those cases, authorities cautioned the public against making those assumptions and types of “serious charges” because the police had no immediate evidence to support those claims.

The lack of consistency with which this “type” of homicide is investigated is mind- boggling and one cannot resist the need to ask the question, “What constitutes a Hate Crime?” Is it the place where the crime takes place or is it the person against whom the crime is committed?  Is it the rants of the perpetrator and hate-filled speech or is it the history of the accused? Is it who the victims of the crime are? If they are of a particular class, race or gender/identity and the shooter is of a certain race, class or gender/identity, the designation Hate Crime is given to certain people for certain crimes and withheld from other people for the same crimes? To put it plainly, is the legacy of Hate and violence so normalized in America against black and brown people that there is no need to call it HATE?  The cases of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis, in both the shooter was shouting racial slurs and/or hurling racially charged hate-filled speech publicly, were never even considered for Hate Crime designation. Perhaps they don’t qualify for consideration because of other reasons. I don’t know, but it is something to consider when the evidence  against F. Glen Cross in the Missouri shootings seems no more filled with hate than the suspects in the aforementioned cases who successfully cast themselves as the victims in both murder cases. Both Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis were murdered and no one has been brought to justice.  They are both dead because they were BLACK and male.   If that doesn’t constitute a Hate Crime what does?

Dr.T
Tawnya Pettiford-Wates, Ph.D.
Founder and Artistic Director
The Conciliation Project and
Associate Professor
Virginia Commonwealth University
DrT@Margins2theCenter.com
www.theconciliationproject.org

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