Prosecute hate crimes equitably

George Zimmerman, who is Hispanic, shoots and kills Trayvon Martin, who is black, while Martin is bashing his head against a concrete walk and the outrage went out: Martin was a victim of white racism! Yet more than a year after the killing, no one can cite a single email tweet, or unguarded racial slur to support the charge that Zimmerman had a racist motive.

Still the racism charge simmers, encouraged by professional race-baiters Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. And the news media were right there, dutifully stirring the caldron, daily pounding out reports on Jesse’s and Al’s pontifications, demonstrations and Martin’s grieving family.

But a jury found Zimmerman not guilty. So the federal government is struggling to find a way to charge him with a hate crime or a civil rights violation. Now comes James Francis Edwards Jr., a black 15-year-old and alleged trigger man who shot in the back and killed white Christopher Lane while he was jogging in Duncan, Okla. Edwards is a racist and no spin can wash away his vile tweets: “90% of white ppl are nasty. #HATE THEM.”

Only a morally bankrupt prosecutor could read those words and contend that this was no hate crime — that Edwards would have pulled the trigger on a black jogger, too. Lane was murdered JWW (jogging while white). Hate crimes, aka thought crimes, by their very nature are repugnant. But if they’re going to be applied, apply them equally.

Where is the outrage now? Where are the photos and interviews with Lane’s grieving family? Where is the federal government? Why haven’t Jesse and Al summoned the news media to Duncan where they could demand justice for Lane?

No one is born a racist. It’s learned. Who taught Edwards to hate?

Don Frost

Rolling Meadows