Racism in the Law

Prosecutors need to charge anti-Asian violence as hate crimes. While any violent crime impacts the victim, a crime motivated by hate can impact entire groups of people, be they of a particular race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. To effectively deter future bigots from acting on their worst impulses, the criminal justice system must not only prosecute the violent acts, but also the hateful intent behind them. The need to adopt this approach could not be more urgent. In the wake of COVID-19, there has been an enormous upsurge of some 1,900% increase in hate crime incidents driven by anti-Asian sentiment. Additionally, almost 3,000 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination were reported to the Stop AAPI Hate database. The recent murder of Vichar Ratanapakdee, an 84-year-old Thai immigrant who was slammed to the ground by a 19-year-old, has reminded us of the crucial need to charge these crimes with the acknowledgement of…

Trigger warning: This article discusses sensitive topics including lynching, police brutality, concentration camps, etc. It also uses images regarding these topics that some people may find disturbing. In the United States, it seems that many Americans are under the impression we’ve moved past the old days of explicit racist acts, laws, and beliefs. In American society, it seems that many people are under the impression we’ve moved past the old days of explicit racist acts, laws, and beliefs. The whitewashing of American history sometimes causes such historical amnesia - but the rememberance of racist crimes such as slavery, the forced relocation of indigenous peoples, and the Chinese Exclusion Acts act as legacies of the implicitly prejudiced and racist foundations our country was built upon.  Some people believe that since we’ve moved on from slavery, the forced relocation of indigenous peoples, and clearly discriminatory laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act, that…