Rhetorical Critique on Andrew Sullivan's "What's So Bad About Hate?"

"The Black Beast That Lives Within Us All"

            Hate is such a powerful and ugly term. I actually can’t stand the word. I do everything in my power to say “strongly dislike” or “despise” before I actually drop the “H-bomb.” These words all refer to the same despair that associates with “hate” yet they feel a little gentler to me. And although the uninhibited use of this word is something I strongly disdain; it exists whether I, or anyone else, approves of it or not. After reading Andrew Sullivan’s “What’s So Bad About Hate?” I began to realize that hate does not possess the same meaning as it did in the past. With the fear of hate came new laws that have taken away the right of free deduction. Not only are they classified as hate crimes, but they are now even classified as “thought crimes” as well. This article persuaded me to believe that hate crimes should not exist in modern society. Sullivan allured me by using arguments mainly derived from the practice of logos and ethos. In addition, he drew up some dramatic imagery using pathos influenced stories.

            This article sucked me in within the first and second paragraph. Sullivan starts off using a pathos driven example of the death of James Byrd Jr. “Pathologists at King’s trial testified that Byrd was probably alive and conscious until his body finally hit a culvert and split in two.” I was this happen to Byrd in my own mind as I read this. It was a poignant way to approach the beginning of Sullivan’s argument. He goes on to say, “…the moment when fear and loathing became hate, the instant of transformation when King became hunter and Byrd became prey.” This spoke to me because I am always drawn to the emotional approach used by an author. Aren’t we all prey when victim of a crime? Whether it is a racially biased crime or just a “crime,” we are all prey. There are so many bad people out there ready to commit malicious acts and we must be aware of it whatever race we may be. This Pathos driven example he used set up the article well to me.

Sullivan is not condoning hate in this article. I can see how some might perceive it that way, but I believe he is defending our right to possess our First Amendment right to freedom of speech. I have always used concrete facts to change my mind when undecided about certain things. I’ve been torn over how I feel about hate crime laws for some time now and this article helped to open my eyes. I have to say that Sullivan uses some persuasive logos appeals which grabbed my attention. One example he uses talks about a group of men from Jamaica Bay, Queens. Sullivan elaborates that, “Almost everyone there is white, and in recent years a group of local volunteer firefighters has taken to decorating a pickup truck for the parade in order to win the prize for ‘funniest float.’ Their themes have tended toward the outrageously provocative. Last year, they called their float ‘Black to the Future, Broad Channel 2098.’ They imagined their community a century hence as a largely black enclave, with every stereotype imaginable: watermelons, basketballs and so on. It was caught on videotape, and before long the entire community was depicted as a cauldron of hate.” These honest (but maybe a little clueless) men, who had no record of bigotry, were accused of being racists. As tasteless as their float may have seemed, to label them as racists without proof is supremely unreasonable and presumptuous. This story showed me that when dealing hate and the ideals that go along with it, we have to pay the price of assumed prejudice. People have become overly sensitive to things that used to be deemed as silly and fun. Although it did seem a bit tacky, I don’t believe those men were wearing white cloaks in their spare time. Sullivan was using this example to explain that there is a certain backlash to bringing so much attention to race laws and such. All he was saying was now a gaudy (and possibly insensitive) parade float turns even innocent men into racists. It seems kind of unfair to place such extreme judgment on people no one really knows.

Furthermore, to bring race into the picture when examining an everyday crime only divides us as a society even more. Hate is part of being a human being and it comes with a myriad of other emotions as well. As ugly and sinister as this emotion is, it exists within us all. This hate divides nations and even families and drawing massive attention to it with hate crime laws is fueling us to be increasingly skeptical of other people different than us. It simply draws focus to a feeling that needs no additional attention. Sullivan states with ethos driven rhetoric, “Hate is everywhere. Human beings generalize all the time, ahead of time, about everyone and everything. A large part of it may even be hard-wired. At some point in our evolution, being able to know beforehand who was friend or foe was not merely a matter of philosophical reflection. It was a matter of survival. And even today it seems impossible to feel a loyalty without also feeling a disloyalty, a sense of belonging without an equal sense of unbelonging. We’re social beings. We associate. Therefore we disassociate. And although it would be comforting to think that the one could happen without the other, we know in reality that it doesn’t.” This is the paragraph that persuaded me to understand how hate is demonstrated in a logical thought process. It made me realize that it is simply part of who we are. So then why is hate put into so many needless categories?

An interesting tidbit of information I found on the Internet proclaimed to me that a crime against another human being is just that; a crime against another person, not a specific race. The hard evidence submitted to us by the FBI in 2009 states, “…61.1 percent of all hate crimes were committed against persons, while 38.1 percent were crimes against property.” To me, this is staggering proof that bias-motivated crimes are purely nothing but man against man if you take race out of the equation. Murder is murder and a crime is a crime. To classify it as something else is a waste of our judicial systems time and money.

In addition, hate crime laws extend prison time by increasing sentencing and further congest the system. Our jails are overcrowded enough and hate laws are most certainly not helping. Furthermore, these laws categorize us into even deeper separation as a species. This in turn ignites increased backlash in the race war itself on the streets and in schools. To place us into sub-categories is preposterous and a waste of time. We are all derived from the same genetic make-up for the most part and it’s time that laws against violent crimes go back to their simplest form. I understood what Sullivan was trying to say in that although hate is inherent in humans, it’s time we stopped placing so much attention on it to possibly eradicate it. It’s not that he was advocating the acceptance of hate; it’s simply that he believes we need to accept it as part of who we are.

Overall, this article helped me to understand hate laws a little better through ethos, pathos and logos driven appeal. I came to the conclusion that hate laws probably aren’t helping things as much as we would have liked. And the U.S. government isn’t going to get rid of them. I’m sure Andrew Sullivan ruffled some feathers when this article was published and I didn’t agree with everything he said. However, I did concur with the overall message that he was trying to convey. He states, “…there is no solution to the problem. There is only a transcendence of it. For all our rhetoric, hate will never be destroyed. Hate, as our predecessors knew better, can merely be overcome.” I loved this final statement, and this may sound strange, but hate must exist to keep us going. I know for a fact that it will never be eradicated, just as war will probably never cease between mankind. I am a realist, and to pretend that a crime against another human is anything more than a primal act is unrealistic. We must stop further distancing ourselves from each other and truly embrace that we are all the same color inside. As Thomas Jefferson once said, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”