Editor:

Hate-crime legislation helps prosecutors do their job-it does not create any protected classes or special rights, as Julie Wald suggested in her Jan. 21 letter to the editor (“End hate by introspection, not force”) when comparing hate crime legislation to “…the legislation we have against bias when hiring.” Hate-crime laws and anti-discrimination laws are very different in nature.

Affirmative-action laws-like the laws Wald referred to in her letter-do create certain classes of people. Hate-crime laws do not. In fact, this year’s legislation explicitly says otherwise. House Bill 68 reads, in part, “This section does not create any legal status or right not already in existence in statute or common law for a group or a member of a group.”

I agree with Wald that “perhaps instead of trying to promote legislation for people to love instead of hate, we would be more effective to individually promote and demonstrate letting go of hate and choosing something better.”

However, I wonder if the boy Todd Mitchell attacked based on his race would feel safer knowing that Mitchell was introspective while he beat him to a bloody pulp. The boy was the first Caucasian kid Mitchell and his black friends saw after discussing a scene from “Mississippi Burning.”

According to the Supreme Court’s decision in this case, “As the boy walked by, Mitchell said: ‘You all want to f*** somebody up? There goes a white boy; go get him.'” (Mitchell v. Wisconsin, 1993 Supreme Court ruling).

Hate-crime laws allowed the prosecutors in the Mitchell case to enhance the penalties the African American attackers received for beating the boy. The boy Mitchell attacked received no special treatment or rights because of the hate-crime law.

Anne Looser

Junior, Political Science