Month: September 2025

While most states have hate crime statutes, only  about five include law enforcement officers as a protected category. Utah is one of these states. After a 2021 traffic stop for speeding, Lauren Gibson is alleged to have stomped on a “Back the Blue” sign while “smirking in an intimidating manner” at a deputy. She was charged with a hate crime for her actions. These leads to two issues. The first is a specific matter: did her actions constitute a hate crime? The second is a general matter: should law enforcement be a protected category in the context of hate crime?

While the legal debate is best left to legal experts, I can consider the text of the law and assess whether it seems reasonable to interpret her actions as a hate crime. According to the Utah law, a hate crime occurs when a person commits an offense “with the intent to intimidate or terrorize another person or with reason to believe that his action would intimidate or terrorize that person.” And, of course, the person must be in a protected category. So, for example, if I went to Utah and was recognized as a philosophy professor and a crowd attempted to terrorize or intimidate me because of this, it would not be a hate crime, since philosophy professors are not a protected category. If the same crowd did the same sort of thing to a police officer who was with me, then that would be a hate crime. That is how protected categories work.

Given that Gibson was a 19-year-old unarmed woman at the time of the incident, it seems unlikely she believed she could intimidate an armed deputy. While she probably did not know it at the time, the deputy is a veteran of the department and had seen combat duty while serving in the military. One could, of course, argue that she did think she could intimidate and terrorize him by stomping on a sign and smirking; but those would be rather odd ways to try to intimidate and terrorize an armed deputy.

Determining intent can be tricky since as this requires speculating on internal psychological states. Naturally, a person can make their alleged intent clear by words or deeds. But stomping on a sign and smirking in this context seem to be based on an intention to express anger and displeasure rather than expressing an intention to intimidate and terrorize. One can, of course, say that she exercised poor judgment in antagonizing the deputy, but she probably did not expect to be charged with committing a hate crime. Smirking, after all, is generally not a crime. In the case of the sign, it had apparently been found abandoned by the side of the road. Stomping on an abandoned sign is also usually not a crime. While ignorance of the law is not an excuse, unless she was aware of the statute, she would have no reason to think that her actions would constitute a hate crime. After all, her actions are not what a person would intuitively think of as falling under a hate crime. While the legal judgment was up to the judge, it would be absurd to convict her of a hate crime—even under the statute. This leads to the question of whether law enforcement should be considered a protected category in the context of hate crimes.

While people can and do hate the police, hate crimes are not defined based on the emotion. After all, if a mob in Utah tried to kill me because they hate my ontological commitments, then they would be acting from hate but not committing a hate crime. As noted above, a hate crime involves intimidation and terrorizing aimed at a protected category. From a moral standpoint, a reasonable justification for focusing on intimidation and terrorizing is to distinguish crimes that might be committed against a person who just so happens to be in a certain category and crimes aimed at a person because they are in that category. So, if Ted embezzles money from Sally because he hates her for being a cruel boss, and Sally is in a protected category, then that would generally not be a hate crime. After all, Ted is not trying to intimidate or terrorize her. He is trying to steal money and just happens to hate her. But if Ted attacks Sally because she is in a protected category and intends to intimidate or terrorize her because of that category, then that could be a hate crime. As far as why a hate crime would be worse than a normal crime, one moral factor is that a hate crime also harms other members of the category. This is because the hate crime is not aimed just at intimidating or terrorizing a person but also aimed at intimidation and terrorizing them because they are within that category. So, if Ted commits a crime against Sally aimed at intimidating and terrorizing her because she is a woman, then he is also acting against other women and thus the consequences are usually greater than for a “normal” crime. Or so one might argue.

In the case of law enforcement, it is true that a person can be targeted for a crime because of their profession. While it is fortunately a rare occurrence, there are cases where police are targeted for assassination. But this is also true of many other professions. For example, journalists are subject to attacks because they are journalists (sometimes by the police). Thanks to Trump and his fellows, these attacks increased and are still an ongoing concern. Speaking of Trump and his fellows, their lies also contributed to increased attacks on public health officials. As such, if law enforcement should be protected by hate crime laws, then the same protection should be extended to other professions as well, especially journalists and public health officials. In this case, one might see an interesting case in which a journalist commits a hate crime against a police officer by “intimidating” them by filming them committing a hate crime by intimidating and terrorizing the journalist by shooting them with “less than lethal” munition and whacking them in the face with a club. One could, of course, argue that professions should not be the basis for being in a protected category.

Also from a moral standpoint, hate crime definitions often tend to focus on intimidation and terrorizing because of ethical concerns about power disparities between categories of people and not just between individuals. While individuals do vary in power, certain categories enjoy relative power advantages over others. To use an obvious example, men as a category have more power than women as a category. I, as a man can run through the park in the dark with no fear; the same is not true for most women. While there are individual women who can physically intimidate and overpower individual men, men as a category have the advantage when it comes to terrorizing and intimidating.   As another example, white Americans as a category have more power than other Americans. This is not to deny that an individual white American can be intimidated or terrorized by, for example, an African American. But white Americans generally have the advantage here when it comes to inflicting terror and intimidation. For example, Amy Cooper seemed to know exactly what she was doing when she attempted to use the police to intimidate Christian Cooper. In this specific case, her efforts backfired, and she got in trouble, but this is because the encounter was recorded. In other cases, the intimidation works as intended.

While an individual law enforcement officer could be intimidated or terrorized by someone outside of the profession, as a category law enforcement has an absurd level of advantage over civilians. Police are armed, often with military grade equipment, they usually wear some form of armor, and they have at least basic training in combat. They also have the advantage of being able to call on the power of the state, both in the form of reinforcements and in inflicting punishment through the legal system. They also often get away with using excessive, even lethal violence. There have been, of course, some famous exceptions that show if the violence is recorded and witnessed by many people and the incident gains national and international attention during the right phase of public opinion, then an officer might be held accountable. As such, law enforcement as a category is unlikely to be intimidated or terrorized by civilians. The weight of terror and intimidation is entirely on their side. As such, there seems to be no moral need to single out law enforcement for special protection under hate crime laws. To pre-empt likely straw man attacks, I am obviously not claiming that police should not be protected by the law; a crime against a person who is in law enforcement is still a crime but would not be a hate crime. So, why are their such statutes?

The easy and obvious answer is that the intention is to, ironically, intimidate and terrorize people who might come into conflict with the police. This could be during an arrest or during a protest. On the face of it, one could argue that a person who resists arrest is committing a hate crime under this statute. If stomping on a sign and smirking count as threats or intimidation, then protesting the police would also fall under this category. Protesting anything while police are merely present could fall under this sort of statute. An officer might, for example, see a protestor smirking at them and decide that was an attempt to intimidate them.

I must, of course, grudgingly admit that the right is devilishly clever to repurpose hate crime laws intended to protect marginalized communities and vulnerable groups. They are weaponizing these laws against these communities and groups; just as they have weaponized free speech. In closing, while law enforcement does deserve the full protection of the law, making them a protected category is obviously intended to weaponize hate crime statutes and do so largely against the people they were originally intended to protect.

A few years ago, PragerU tried to push back on Twitter (now X) against arguments by young Americans about racism. In general, getting involved in social media battles is a bad idea. To use an AD&D analogy, these fights are like punching green slime: the more you attack, the more you hurt yourself. And you end up covered in slime. It is usually best to avoid rather than engage. 

In the case of PragerU, they fired off what they presumed would be a sick burn of the youth: “Young people are enamored with ‘anti-racist’ rhetoric because they think they are fighting racist systems in America.  The TRUTH is they are fighting America itself and the very values the country was founded on.” Ironically, PragerU could have used some schooling in clear writing.

Their intended meaning, given the ideology evident in their videos, is that the youth think they are fighting racism, but they are wrong about this. Instead, they are fighting America and its founding values. Which are supposedly not racist. However, the tweet as written states that the youth think they are fighting racist systems in America, but they do not realize that the racist systems are America itself and its founding values. That is, PragerU seems have tweeted openly what they were supposed to keep quiet: they believe that America was founded on racism and that the racist systems are America. Sometimes they are willing to acknowledge that there were a few racist things in America’s past, but quickly rush to explain that they were not so bad and, of course, have no meaningful consequences for the present day.

 These are the same people who defend “Civil War” statues on the grounds that history must be preserved. This is a bad faith argument for obvious reasons. While a statue can be an historical artifact, a statue is not history. As comedians have noted, we do not have statues of Bin Laden in New York City, even though he is historically significant to the city. We do not do this because such statues are political statements. There is also the obvious problem that the history presented by PragerU and its ilk generally try to whitewash the past and ignore the truth. Attacking Critical Race Theory has become a key part of this strategic attack on history and facts. This is a fight that the right is currently winning, a backlash from a time when Black Lives Mattered.

 Ironically, PragerU (and those who share their ideology) agree with key factual claims accepted by most Critical Race Theorists about racism. These include the fact that the United States political, economic, and social systems have been dominated by white Americans to their advantage.  The difference is that Critical Race Theorists generally see the racism (systematic and otherwise) as morally wrong and something that needs to be addressed. PragerU and their fellows see these systems as generally good, although they were reluctant to openly assert this claim. Instead, they have engaged in revisionist history and take great effort to block criticism of the existing system.

PragerU is (as is usually the case) is mistaken in its key claims. While the United States founding values include racist values (they are explicitly laid out in the Constitution, political philosophy, and laws) there are other professed values that are not racist and some are even anti-racist. As Dr. King noted, the Declaration of Independence makes promises to all Americans, whether those promises were sincere or not. While America is racist, it is also anti-racist as America is not monolithic, and we have a complicated moral history. There are those, like PragerU, who fight for racist elements of the system and those, like the young Americans they tried to attack, who are fighting racism. In the face of the backlash, anti-racism is fighting a defensive battle with open racism in the ascendence. But as the racism becomes more open and extreme, America will probably push back towards the center. Probably.

PragerU, like many other right-wing propaganda engines, is engaged in a project worthy of a comic book villain, but all too real. While they do admit America had some racism in the past, they contend that it was not that bad. They take special pains to present slavery in a positive light and present many Confederates as heroic figures. They refuse to accept that past racism has had any significant systematic effect on the present. While sometimes willing to admit that there might a racist bad apple or two, they refuse to accept that racism exists in a significant and systematic form. They do all this while defending and enhancing racism, even “cleverly” accusing those critical of racism of being “the real racists.” As always, I am unsure if ordinary citizens who profess to believe these things are unwitting victims or accomplices who know the lies are lies but pretend to believe. One must thus either think them ignorant or dishonest; neither of which is a pleasant. I prefer to think that many believe out of ignorance, if only because ignorance is easier to overcome than dishonesty.