Is hanging a rope noose from a tree a hate crime?
(audio not available) Jane Siberry, a musician who now goes by the name “Issa”, had a song years ago, whose chorus went something like “Dyke, Fag, Nigger, Jew/Get off the world the storm is coming.” These words, out of anyone’s mouth, are clearly understood to be demeaning and hateful. Perhaps ‘Jew’ is the only ambivalent term as it is usually accompanied with a modifier (dirty) to be properly used as hateful. Supplanting the word with the image of the Nazi swastika would be a far simpler way to express your intent. Siberry’s song was not a litany of hate. In fact, the story of the lyrics was about a woman walking at night that gets jumped and beaten. As the song points out, she is someone’s mother, someone’s child, a human being and not a cardboard representation of all these terms. Her attackers though, dehumanize her and justify their actions by calling her these names. A ‘faggot’ is a thing, an ideal to hate. A ‘Nigger’ is a catchall term for behavior and race. You cannot get more
