Swrk 3330 - Hate Crime

Yasmeen Alqahtani

Hate Crime Paper

SWRK-3330

Hate Crime 

An 8000 people who lives in a small town named Jasper, a historical as well as geographical city in Texas. This town guided by their mayor, R. C. Horn, who believes in equality of all races, as it shows in his small town that consist of 45% African American and 48% Anglo. A well-maintained place, a safe place with friendly residents that has all the necessary living material from grocery stores, r that makes homemade food, brand name hotels, and timeless traditions. For example; profitable bass-fishing tournaments.

A good place to raise children, with only three schools in town, one of them is high school. Most of the graduated from high school to continue their higher academic education in nearby big cities Beaumont or Houston Texas.  A what called a dry city, which is mean that no liquor stores available excepts for private house events or parties that serves alcohol, even though there are no alcohol allowed in public, the citizen of Jasper seems to have people who suffers from alcoholism. “if Jasper’s really a dry town and folks can’t buy liquor here, why are there so many alcoholics?” (Hate Crime, part one, page 15).

A small as this town where everyone knows everyone, on a Saturday night, June 6, 1998 a man named Jimmie Mays hosted an old fashion party at his house for his 20th anniversary and his son’s birthday. Like an old-fashion parties there is music, alcohol, and toasts for Mays and his wife. A forty-nine-year-old unemployed man his name is Byrd, Jr who believes from alcoholism but, yet a harmless man who is well known in this town for his beautiful voice were invited along with more than forty people for this party, where they drank, ate a good food, and danced on savory musical mix of Jaz, Hip-Hop, Soul and blues. A music for every taste.

Among the forty people at the party a friendly looking young man named Billy Mahathay, who had a little bit much to drink decides to ride with a more-sober friend Samuel Wiliams to ride with on the way home after the part ended. On their way home Billy saw Byrds walking on the streets alone, but they did not offer him a ride home. The reason why they did not offer him ride home, because they believed he could make it home safe like among other times where he walked himself home alone while intoxicated with alcohol.

Later that night, an ex-con named John William King, a man well known for his bad reputation as hotheaded boy, and his jailhouse body Lawrence Russel Brewer, and his room-mate Shawn Allen Berry the only man among his 2 friend who have a job. The three white men drove off on ashy-gray step-side pickup looking for entertainment in Jasper City, while intoxicated with alcohol.  

That night an ugly hate crime to a black harmless man, who wanted nothing but to go home, this horrible crim changed the Anglican city to become the center of the hate crime town around the world. A hateful murder that chained up a man behind a truck and dragged him across the town in the woods and streets until his body torn apart in paces while still alive. When three young white men dragged African-American Byrd to his death behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, the case outraged America for its savage brutality and unmistakable similarity to past southern race murders.

The term “Hate Crime” was coined in the 1980s by journalists and policy advocates who were attempting to describe a series of incidents directed at Jews, Asians and African-Americans "a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin." An assessment made in 1990s about the racial and ethnic relation in the United States, that the states had become more polarized about the race, and there is still inequality and permanent racism in most American societies specially among African American (Black) and Hispanics.

Sociologist Joe Feagin (1997) recently argued that, “the basic racial problem in the United States is White racism. White racism is a social disease that afflicts the minds, emotions, behaviors, and institutions of Whites. White racism pervades every nook and cranny of U.S. society” (9. Racial Attitudes and Relations at the Close of the Twentieth Century." National Research Council. 2001. America Becoming: Racial Trends and Their Consequences, Volume I. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.).

Social Justice and Human Rights apply that all human have the rights which is inheritance for all regardless of their race, cultural, social, political, religious, gender or other social group membership. And those rights cannot be taken away at any reason, all human entitled to be free, secure, and have a decent living environment.

A young journalist Joyce King have been assigned to cover the story of a hate crime murder of James Byrd, who been dragged for 3 mills on the back of pick-up truck with logging chains to his death. Uncovering the trails of the three white men who murdered Byrd and the climate of the Jasper, Texas prison system. Joyce had just lost her job as the NEWS anchor for

CBS radio, for reason she cannot but her head around except for her being a black-young-women on her league.

This new job of her were to be a street reporter on brutal, racially-motivated murder in small town in East Texas. Nothing prepare her for what she is going to see, she took the route were James Byrd was dragged the Huff Creek, she walked the three-miles and the saw the unspeakable things of dragging the body what left behind. She knew that this mission was more than just reporting.

For her first mission to go to the court house and get closer look at the Texas prison system. She went to the unit where two of them John William King and Lawrence Russel Brewer met and served time. She wanted to get answers about the motivation behind this brutal crime, yet she didn’t get all the answers, but got enough to satisfy her curiosity that legislators need to look at how the prison system is structured. she gave the prison system credit where they set aside some money to study gangs and to try to train the public a little bit. Joyce decided to live in Jasper town for one month, she saw the people of the town without all the media and the trail coverage the true faces of this town were friendly and welcoming.