Only Three States Don't Have Hate Crime Laws. We Need To Ramp Up The Pressure.

     The Black Lives Matter movement underwent a major revolution in 2020. It went from being a movement of simply protesting to end police brutality across American to a movement to dismantle systemic racism. Murders of young black men and women went from being tragedies met with raw anger and mourning to rallying cries for change. The deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor are on track to end carotid holds and no-knock warrants, respectively, even as Floyd's killers, at least, continue their felony criminal cases.

     Like I said, it's not just police brutality. Ahmaud Arbery was lynched by three white men driving a rusty truck with a Confederate flag license plate who called him the N-word and his murder was covered up by a corrupt DA. After this horrifying incident, Georgia, one of only four states in the nation without hate crime laws and Arbery's home, signed hate crime legislations adding modifiers to increase penalties for crimes based on race, sex, religion, etc. This leaves just three states without hate crimes legislation.

     In April 2021, Arkansas signed legislation to mandate that criminals convicted of hate crimes serve 85 percent of their sentences. This isn't a hate crime law; it's a watered-down political play. The law does not define what a hate crime is, nor does it increase penalties for people who commit them. Literally every hate crime law in the country does both of these. 

     Two other states, South Carolina and Wyoming, haven't even pretended to care, and the FBI has taken notice. In August, the FBI launched a hate crime reporting campaign to highlight the enormity of the problem in South Carolina. Now that we have a friendly administration in the White House, we need to ramp up the pressure at the state and federal level.

     We need to make Arkansas, South Carolina, and Wyoming pass hate crime laws, real hate crime laws, and we can start by launching similar FBI pressure campaigns. At the federal level, we need to pass the Emmett Till Antilynching Act to finally classify lynching as a federal crime. If we see Arbery's killers sent to prison, we can say justice was served. If we see the transformation of one of the many aspects that impose additional challenges for Americans of color, we can say that he did not die in vain.