Policing "Hate" Supposedly Protects People -- But It Really Fuels More Violence

[Nevilledog]

https://truthout.org/articles/policing-hate-supposedly-protects-people-but-it-really-fuels-more-violence/

“Hate” may be a real feeling, but it’s a distorting and inaccurate diagnosis for the never-ending violence routinely inflicted on Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, trans, queer, disabled, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, and other marginalized communities. To fully grasp the wrongheadedness of the diagnosis and its consequences, we must look at the political sleight of hand embedded in the hate frame.

“Hate frame” here refers to a conceptual path intended to shape public understanding of an issue — in this case, the root cause of violence — and how society should respond to it. The hate frame identifies sources of violence in ahistorical ways, attributing violence to individuals or groups whose beliefs and actions are extreme and abhorrent to “respectable” society. This frame relies on carceral methods — policing, prosecution, punishment and surveillance — to respond to violence. When we attribute violence to “hate,” we are ignoring or minimizing the structural/systemic violence and inequality that produce unjust racial, class and gender hierarchies. The hate frame particularly ignores the fact that violence and inequality are foundational to the criminal legal system. Ironically, this helps to explain the hate frame’s popularity: It changes nothing in ways that might disrupt the social, economic and political status quo. In brief, the hate frame lets us off the hook: We don’t have to do anything but scream for more police, more training and resources for police.

The flim-flam at the heart of the hate frame becomes evident when we take a closer look at its popularity and political utility. From 1981 to today, the implied promise that hate crime laws will interrupt and exact meaningful retribution for long histories of supremacist-inflicted harassment and vigilante violence has held sway. In that time, the federal government, nearly every state, the District of Columbia and two territories have enacted hate crime laws.

Belief in that false promise is fueled by the pent-up fury, incalculable pain and cavernous senses of loss embedded in those histories. It is driven by good intentions and the sincere hope still held by so many that sufficient policing, prosecution and harsher penalties will somehow put a significant dent in that violence. And it is driven by the conviction that this will mitigate at least some of the grief by “sending a message” that society doesn’t accept it. Finally, as journalist Michelle Chen once critically described the emotional impetus for such laws, “Sometimes it just feels good to punish someone.”

*snip*