What would the new hate crimes law do?
Introduced by Representative Grace Meng of New York and Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act is a short bill with two main provisions:
It requires the attorney general to put a Justice Department official in charge of reviewing reports of Covid-19-related hate crimes for at least a year.
It requires the Justice Department to issue guidance to state and local law enforcement agencies on how to establish an online hate crime reporting system in multiple languages, expand public education campaigns to encourage reporting of cases and provide guidance on how to mitigate racially discriminatory language in descriptions of the pandemic.
The bill could go some way toward improving the country’s unreliable system of tracking hate crimes, which has long been a source of consternation for victims and activists: While the F.B.I. is required to document hate crimes, it relies on local law enforcement agencies for data, many of which do not comply. Underreporting is also an issue: An estimated 250,000 hate crimes were committed each year between 2004 and 2015 in the United States, according to the Justice Department, but a majority were not reported to law enforcement.
“The first step in addressing hate violence is to know its full scope and magnitude,” Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, wrote in a letter to The Times. “Our state legislatures and law enforcement agencies need to ensure that these crimes are being fully reported and taken seriously.”
But regardless of where people stand on the hate crime debate, they seem to agree that protecting Asian-Americans from these kinds of attacks will require much more than one bill. “I want us to stop building and organizing in reaction to when people die,” Nguyen said on the podcast “Time to Say Goodbye.” “I want us to organize to keep people alive. I want you to care when people are still alive.”
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“The Atlanta Massacre and the Media’s Morality Plays” [The New York Times]
The New York Times