Death on the Fourth of July : The Story of a Killing, A Trial, and Hate Crime in America

Rating:
Summary: Don't Forget Your Paring Knife
Review: The Bible teaches us to watch out for who's well-connected. Damnit, how were we supposed to actually know who Jesus was related to? This Neiwert book has a simpler message. Neiwert didn't intend it but the Bible is filled with unintended messages so bear with me. Arm yourself if you're a real jerk. That's the message. If you don't, some joker is going to shoplift paring knives from a gas station store and stab you in the chest 23 times while your "dangerous, skinhead running buddies" stand around like Mamelukes. You'll be gurgling in a pool of your own blood lamenting that you'll never have the chance to dictate your bullyboy memoirs. The victors write the history, Buster. Word to you.

Rating:
Summary: I was hooked
Review: The town's derisive nickname "Open Sores" could certainly serve as the subtitle for the book.

Out of reams of available subject matter on "hate crimes", but Neiwert chose one episode that was atypical -- the victim survived, the perpetrator didn't -- for a gripping and essay on the meaning of bias crime, and the right and wrong way the law chooses to interpret it.




I was hooked right away by an opening narrative that leads you into the lives of the Hong brothers, tourists from Seattle, who wandered into a convenience store, and then found their lives were turning into a Hitchcockian nightmare.

He borrows the basic structure of a true-crime genre -- accounts of a trial, brief bios of the lead players -- but his focus ranges widely over the way that the community, and law enforecment, simply failed to notice the trouble that was escalating.

Matters that go below the radar for those who are not targets, but which suffice to ruin lives, and turn whole communities, or even states into pariahs.





Readers of his blog ("Orcinus") know that Neiwert is paintaking with words, and is careful to parse the distinctions: since many such crimes are NOT the direct result of organized hate groups, the stereotypes ("skinheads" "rednecks") are likely as not to protect the actual perpetrators. His argument suggest better laws are only a step, but what we actually need is better training for law enforcement, and a population less disposed to give a inch to bigotry, before it erupts into violence..