The Horror of Hate Crimes

I saw this terrible story yesterday and it has really been on my mind.

The thing I keep coming back to is what Sozobe calls a "hot state", a frame of mind where the consequences of ones actions never enter into the decision making process.

I don't think we've become desensitized to it at all. This is outrageous and I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't think so.

I have to admit I'm really surprised you are the only person who has said anything about it. I think I know how you feel. I am still in a state of shock about it. I don't know any other way to explain it. How do children get that way? How can a 17 year old child do such a thing? It's a bit easier to digest when it is adults, though it shouldn't be, but he's a child! I am so grateful I never had children. That may sound horrible but it's the truth. I don't know that I could live through it. I admire anyone that can. This is just so shocking.

They get that way because they were raised that way.

There are racists all over the place. Most of them do a good job of hiding it. I had a girl who worked for me for years and years. It was only after she vanished and went into hiding that I learned, quite by accident, that her husband was the leader of a very large skinhead organization based in the Pacific Northwest. She vanished to hide from him. I would have never guessed. Never in a million years. At first I didn't believe it but the proof was proof.

I'm no longer surprised by things like this. Outraged? Yes. Surprised? No.

The sneaky, hidden racists are the worst kind.

It's hard to comprehend how a person that young can think like that. You have to beleive the parents have alot fault in what happened and probably belong in jail with him, before they can corrupt another childs mind with hate.

I don't know how many times I hear how much mankind has progressed. Progressed? This is progress? As horrible as what those kids did is, I still feel sorry for them. Someone had to teach them that kind of hatred. Someone showed them that kind of hatred.

Seriously? You don't see progress? Really?

The man who was killed was 49 -- just a year younger than me. I've seen tons of progress and I'll wager he had too. I'll bet his mom and dad can recall tons of progress from the time they couldn't eat at restaurants or drink from water fountains or do a million other things.

This is incomprehensible, tragic and infuriating but the simple fact that we're upset about it shows a lot of progress.

It seems to me, and it's strictly my opinion, that society is disgressing now and not progressing. People tell me that it's just that we have the media now and we didn't hear about as many events like these happening before. I'm just not sure I agree with that.

This really threw me. I honestly cannot tell you why this particular event hit me so hard. Maybe it's because of the video. I don't know.

Yep.... there is a lot of research about teens, risk, and peers, too. Teens are much more likely to engage in risky behavior if other teens are around -- they even engaged in riskier behavior when they thought their friends were outside a room, watching them, when in fact they weren't.

Mobs are all about mass hot states, where individuals do things that they would never consciously set out to do (and may be horrified by once they've returned to a rational "cold state.")

I haven't watched the video, have some kids here and don't want them seeing it. (Just saw this topic for the first time.)

I agree with boomerang too that the fact that we find it so horrible is itself progress. It wasn't really that long ago that lynchings weren't that unusual.

I do have to agree about the lynching comment. I'm probably not all that "don't know the right word" in my thinking on this yet. Still kind of out there about it I guess.

There have been lots of crimes committed by people they say would not have done it had they been alone. Perry Smith and Richard Hickock for instance. Two men that probably never would have wiped out a family on their own. A line in the movie "In Cold Blood" went something like "the two of them together created a third entity."

Arella, there is talk of this on many other threads within all the discussions about the riots in England.

Oh okay, osso. Thanx for telling me. I tried searching the topic before I posted it because I didn't want to duplicate but I didn't come up with anything. No wonder there isn't all that much posting to this thread. I'll check that one out!

I don't have a list. There's been a lot of discussion on the British thread for a few days, though not all of the posts exactly about this incident within all the incidents. Not that you shouldn't have started this thread, threads are good, just that other people have commented in other places within their posts.

I understand what you mean Osso. I didn't take it you thought I shouldn't have started this thread. I really was surprised when I didn't see a thread specifically about this. I am actually glad to know others are discussing it somewhere. I was kind of looking for "at a loss for a word again" by talking to others about it. So, I am going to check that other thread out and get in on the convo.

I haven't seen this Alabama incident discussed in the riot threads.

This is THE thing that scares me. Mo has a couple of friends that make my "danger" alarms clang. I can't quite put my finger on why but it sometimes seems that Mo is a completely different person when he's around them.

Humans had been doing awful things to each other since the human race had existed and in fact that is the default condition of the animal when dealing with none members of the tribe/pack. This is even more true of young males, that is why they had always been consider great cannon fodder down through history by every military that had ever existed.

Now there are plentiful examples of black and white young men viewing members of the other "race" as aliens.

An example of this that come to mind on the other side of the "race" divide is in the last major race riot in California where a white truck drive was drag out of his truck and almost beaten to death for the crime of being white and in the wrong placed at the wrong time.

If memory also serve me correctly it was also mature blacks men who interfere with the beating of this white truck driver.

It is only society conditioning that keep our young warriors age males in check and that conditioning is not perfect to say the least.

The teens gangs problems is another example of this.

Why do you always sound so devoid of emotion IMO? It's not a science experiment we are talking about here. We are discussing CHILDREN commiting montrous crimes against other human beings.

I don't think it is all that easy to "explain" why these things happen unless you categorize it under "evil". Yet, knowing evil exists does'nt make it any easier to accept its existence.

I can certainly understand boomerrang's fear when it comes to Mo. This kind of thing happening must be so very difficult for parents to deal with.

Oh! I apologize, my mistake.

Right, exactly.

There's some interesting stuff on the other side of this too, cops and how they react to situations when it's a pair of them rather than a single cop. (A single one is more careful and less reactive, a pair can subtly goad each other into reading things all wrong.)

Anyway, I know what you mean about being different around friends, boomer. I've definitely seen this (on an infinitely smaller scale of course) with some of sozlet's friends. There are kids I have learned that I can't have over at the same time, even though they're fine individually -- they just have some sort of chemical reaction that makes them both bad news.