posted
An episode of Law and Order got me thinking (and yes, it hurt!) about hate crimes and insanity pleas. I won't rewrite the whole episode, but basically a white guy was charged with a hate crime for murdering a black man and pled insanity. One expert argued that racism is a mental illness and should be treated. This was an interesting idea to me; while I don't think the arguement worked in this situation, it kind of has me wondering.
First off, does the idea that racism is a mental illness hold water? Do the ideas that minorities are "all the same" or "out to get me" qualify as delusional thinking?
My gut reaction when I hear stories of hate crimes or extreme cases of racism is "That's nuts," but I don't think that really qualifies :\. One of the problems I had with the expert on the show is that he was claiming that racism is only a mental illness if you act on those beliefs. That's a frustrating opinion to me, but the other end of that spectrum is classifying anyone who holds certain opinions as being mentally ill.
Anyway, if racism could be considered a mental illness, how could it be treated? In the show the idea that racism could be treated was pretty much poo pooed, but *shrugs* I dunno, thought you guys might have some ideas.
Finally, regardless of whether or not racism is a mental illness, what would happen if it were considered a mental illness? Would hate crimes lessen if racist people were encouraged to seek treatment for their disease? Would it reduce accountabilty for hate criminals? A lot of possiblities are stewing around in my head, but I'm frustrated because I'm doing a lot of thinking in circles and not drawing any conclusions, so I thought maybe some discussion would help.
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posted
The only problem I have with stiffer penalties for Hate Crimes is that you are legislating against what's in a person's head. I mean, should you get stiffer penalities for selling cocaine to high school students than selling to their bourgeois parents?
Does it really matter why you commit a violent crime? I'm not sure.
posted
I dunno . . . I find the thought that people should be able to escape punishment for their crimes by blaming them on psychological issues to be wrong, so the possibility of defining racist people as insane doesn't really affect my view of things.
To approach the issue apart from the crime and punishment angle, I don't think so. I mean, it's certainly possible or even likely that some people are racist because of paranoid delusions. But I think most are racist because they are ignorant, or because they feel threatened (without necessarily being paranoid) by that which is different. Above all, I think racism is a learned attitude . . . in my experience most racists learned racism from their parents.
Posts: 1001 | Registered: Dec 2002
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posted
Neither pleas of insanity nor hate crime legislation make any sense to continue as they are in our justice system.
Insanity is a condition in which one is not in control of their own actions. I think that temporary insanity does not exist. How can one temporarily lose the ability to control themselves and then regain that ability? It doesn't make sense.
Hate crimes legislation is foolish because it says that violent crime for one reason is worse than violent crime for a different reason. A crime is a crime. The punishment should be proportional to the crime committed, not the reasoning behind the crime.
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posted
I believe racism that is caused by fear (ie. if someone you loved, or you, were wounded very badly by somebody of a different skin color) could be considered a mental illness, just like Multiple Personality Disorder is considered a mental illness and is usually caused by abuse.
Now, racism that is caused by a conformation to society in general's views - that's not a mental illness, no matter how seemingly idiotic it might be. That's like purposefully listening to country music.
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posted
Racism is ignorence. Some racists who express themselves violently may be insane, but most racists are just monumentaly ignorent.
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quote:That's like purposefully listening to country music.
whew.
I guess I should have guessed that there would be discussion about the validity of insanity pleas and hate crimes to begin with, heh. I'm not trying to shove any "givens" down anyone's throat here. The show captured my imagination I guess-I wonder what it would be like to live in a country where racism is a disease.
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That's an interesting question, and one I think about often as I go through my days. I know that I fundamentally believe there are different types and spectrums of murder. I have no research, no empirical evidence to support my conclusions but I fundamentally believe in a difference between, say, Polly Klaas's murder, and a mother back in the early nineties who wacked the man who raped her young son.
I've always felt this with every fiber of my being, and nearly everyone in my family feels the same way, and no supply of sociolgy, psychology, and philosophy classes could tear out this sort of bloody concept of justice I carry with me. This intense feeling, and knowing, that the law is not and can't be synonomous with justice, that sometimes justice can demand committing a crime like murder.
I think that makes me less of a man in a way, I have often felt myself pulled to the teachings of Jesus in this manner, of forgivness, and turning the other cheek. But the raging desire for justice and even vengeance in me is just as strong, probably even moreso.
So I believe that murders (like sexuality, but that's a tired topic for another day to be started by a newbie) follow a spectrum, from murders that a killer takes a perverse joy in committing, often serially, to murders simply in the conveyance of a crime, to murders as a method of serving perhaps a twisted sense of justice, whether it's the murder of a rapist, or a child killer, or someone who killed a family member. It's a quietly acknowledged fact that several people very close to me and within my family wholly subscribe to the latter of the possibilities.
Hmmm....probably shouldn't have said that out loud, but its an interesting scene in my apartment, or parents house when during say, an episode of Law and Order, a murderer gets off on some sort of technicality. The majority of us find it a bit odd, that there isn't a family member in the family circle who wouldn't serve the justice that the state failed to do (in our eyes). Perhaps that's sick, and/or twisted, but I don't think my family, is the only family that tends to subscribe to an eye for an eye when it comes to certain types of violent crime (Btw-Whenever I think about this, I'm always reminded of the classic storyline involving this topic on Homicide, with Bayliss and the internet killer. Did anyone see that treatment of the subject?)
But as I mentioned, I don't have any research, or proof, or empirical evidence to support my view that the why's of violent crime and murder in general exist on a spectrum. It's a firm belief of mine, that I feel to my very core, but it's certainly a view point that I can't back up with much of anything other than faith, and personal belief. What our other peoples perspectives on Irami's thoughtful statement/question?
As for Ladyday's original topic, I don't think it's a form of mental illness, it's far too endemic to all human cultures to be something of that sort. When I was younger I use to wonder if it was some bizarre human version of the territorialism animals exhibit. Could it be simply a defense mechanism cultures set up to protect themselves from outside influence? I don't know, that sounds like a whole lot of hooey at this point, it's been so thoroughly ingrained in human cultures that I don't even know how to classify it, or how to explain it, and today we may even have a bigger problem then ever before as our societies cultural etiquette deems it thoroughly inappropriate, and unacceptable in general and particularly in public. But does this mean it's gone, or has even receeded to a strong degree? It may have, but how on earth would we know now? In the past people didn't pay much of any price for wearing white hoods, and acting like ignorant, racist, murderous wicked fiends at night and committing the worst sort of crimes. In the forties the holocaust was aided by deep anti-semitism that existed nearly everywhere, ditto segregation (and the incarceration of the Japanese) whose absurd effects rendered our geopolitical stance for freedom in fighting WWII look not just disengenuous, but also criminally stupid and dangerous. Today there is a heavy price for public displays of racism, but why should one believe it's vanished since the Civil Rights movement, when it was so deeply ingrained in our culture for hundreds and hundreds of years, and thousands of years with our ancestors.
There is a madness to racism, but when a madness afflicts so many people, and can't be talked about openly, whether in groups of leftists, or rightists, or moderates, I'm not so sure we know how to even deal with it's reality, let alone defining what its reality means when racism is declared openly.
Now I'm just babbling. Anyway, I guess I'm tied up in knots just as Lady Day was about the subject. In the end, I think the only way to deal with it, and solve the problem is on a family by family basis, and by doing what we have been doing, but in a more open environment where we can really talk out the issues. I don't think we can take someone as an adult and excise the racism with anything like regularity, but I can't be sure. I know that the Holocaust in the forties, and Bull Conner and his fire hoses and police dogs did more to excise and or treat our countries problems with racism, and anti-semitism than any random ethnic studies class could ever do, what does that tell us?
I don't know Lady Day, I don't think I have answers, I just have more questions, and of course, some scary views (to some anyway) about violent crime and murder.
posted
Where is the drug or therapy that cures the mental illness of racism? Or did they argue that it's a subset of Obsessive Compulsive disorder?
Racism is Pride. Pride in one's own race is not the same as feeling joy for who one is. Saying all people who look like me are in some way better is saying all others are in some way worse, and that is racism.
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