I normally don't rant or even touch on this subject because of how delicate it needs to be handled. (That might just be me being cynical, though.)

[link]

I live in Ohio, and not too far away from the area where this took place. If you're not in the mood for reading, then I'll give you a breakdown of what happened:

A family and some friends were gathered outside one of their homes, when a group of teenagers apparently came from no where. They beat the family and friends (not to death, and the injuries were not serious) and fled the scene. This was apparently an all black group of kids beating on a white family.

Its a very rare case that something like this happens, especially since the attack seemed relatively unprovoked.

I left out some details, but thats the majority of what went down. Since news in this is still under some scrutiny, details that were revealed later may not be present here: so just keep aware that my opinion may be mis-informed. (Though ignorance is not really an excuse)

The biggest part of this is that the police are hesitant to call it a hate crime.

While I normally don't use wikipedia for reference, I think this example is just dandy:

"Hate crimes (also known as bias-motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation."

This means that a black beating a jew is a hate game. Similarly, a Jew beating a Mexican is a hate crime.

This is why I utterly hate this system. Not because of the fact that the group is not being charged with a hate crime, but because of the term hate crime itself.

When a man stabs another man because his wife cheated on him with that other man, is that act not done out of hatred? Granted I'm using the literal meaning of the word, but I think that hate crimes are actually biased themselves, especially considering this case. I hope someday they get removed completely.

To me, this shows me that America is has a very long way to go. Until the government and media, as well as society as a whole, stops looking at things on a race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, etc manner, then we will not be able to move past those tings.

I also find it incredibly ironic that ranting about this issue is holding those things to be true. I'm greatly conflicted- so I will cease this before it goes on too long. My final words are that I hope one day our society starts judging crimes based on the individual, rather than their associated group in cases such as these.

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Two journal entries in one day makes me a weirded out panda. I can't believe I used this place again.