A white Macy’s employee was brutally assaulted by a black man in the middle of the store a few days ago. Video shows the assailant, Damire Palmer, punching the man in the head as he crawls on the ground begging Palmer to stop. The assailant’s brother, who filmed the crime and posted it proudly to social media, claims that the victim used the N-word. Even if true, that wouldn’t remotely justify felony assault. But it isn’t true. Macy’s investigated and confirmed that the attack was “unprovoked.” Also, the N-word claim is absurd on its face. A Macy’s employee is not going to casually refer to his black customers as racial slurs. If he had that habit, he would have been fired a long time ago.
What actually happened, from the looks of it, is that the Palmer brothers selected a victim based on his race, beat him mercilessly, and then slandered him. They damaged him physically and then tried to ruin his life. If the “hate crime” designation has any meaning, this should fit the bill. Yet, to this point, no hate crime charges have been filed, nor has there been any public discussion about filing them.
It should be noted that a man who assaulted a Macy’s employee last year was charged with a hate crime because he used anti-gay slurs during the attack. The prosecutor in that case said that the attacker “subjected [the victim] to offensive physical contact” and that this was done “because of his perception of the victim’s sexual orientation.”
Well, was this latest Macy’s assault not “offensive physical contact” due to the attacker’s perception of the victim’s race?
This guy brutally assaulted a Macy’s employee because of his race and then slandered him by claiming he said the n-word, which was a lie. This is a horrific hate crime and if the races were reversed it would be the only thing we talk about for days.
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) June 22, 2020
This, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. Recently there has been a slew of horrific physical attacks against white people. Last week, a group of African-American men attacked a white man in a gas station parking lot in Texas, punching him, knocking him to the ground, and then stomping on his head. In New York, a black man pushed a 92-year-old woman to the ground. She bashed her head against a fire hydrant as she fell. No hate crime charges have been filed.
In another attack against the elderly, Jaden T. Hayden of Michigan repeatedly beat a 75-year-old nursing home patient in the head as he lay helpless on his bed. Hayden has YouTube videos where he claims that “the black race is supposed to rule the Earth.” No hate crime charges were filed, but try to imagine the same outcome if a white man with similar professed views about the white race were to film himself brutalizing an elderly black man.
There are more examples. During the riots in Rochester a few weeks ago, a white woman was attacked by a group of black men. She was punched in the face repeatedly and beaten with a wooden board. In Ocean City, where violence has been rampant of late, a white man was knocked out while sitting on a park bench. Again, no hate crime charges.
And hate crime charges aren’t the only thing missing. There has been little public attention to, or condemnation of, these attacks.
I am not personally a proponent of the hate crime designation. I don’t think prosecutors can look into a criminal’s heart and accurately assess whether a crime was motivated by hatred or not. And even if they could, I’m not sure why a crime of hate should be considered any more severe than a crime of greed, jealousy, anger, or boredom and indifference. Is it really worse to shoot a man for his race than for his wallet? Haven’t you treated him as less than human either way? Isn’t his family mourning him just the same?
But if we are going down this road, and if we have gotten into the business of doling out special punishments for hate-based crime, then equal justice under the law means prosecuting crimes against white people with all the same gusto as crimes against non-whites.