On Wednesday, EBONY editor Jamilah Lemieux appeared as a guest on CNN and declared that she was uncomfortable with the label of “hate crime” being used to describe the murder of five white police officers in Dallas last week.
President Barack Obama himself referred to the shooting as a “hate crime” and the killer, Micah Xavier Johnson, told officers during the standoff his reason for doing it.
During a press conference the morning after the attack, Dallas Police Chief David Brown told reporters, “The suspect said he was upset about Black Lives Matter. He said he was upset about the recent police shootings of black suspects. He said he was upset at white people. The suspect stated he wanted to kill white people, especially white officers.”
(Above: Fallen Dallas Police Officers from left, Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa)
But, the word of the black President of the United States, the black Dallas Police Chief, and the black gunman aren’t good enough for Lemieux, who told CNN, “I have to say, I would not describe ‘hate crime’ as the most comfortable word choice, considering these circumstances. There’s so much that we do not know about what took place, what motivated this person. We only have the one account of law enforcement.”
She went on to explain her fundamentally racist argument, stating, “[W]hen we use a phrase like ‘hate crime,’ we’re typically referring to crimes against people of color, people of various religious groups, LGBT people, people who have been historically attacked, abused or disenfranchised on the basis of their identity. To now extend that to the majority group and a group of people that have a history with African-Americans that has been abusive – and we can apply that to either police officers or to Caucasians – I think gets into very tricky territory.”
The other guest on the panel, CNN contributor and former FBI agent Steve Moore, called Lemieux out on her despicable stance.
“You can’t just say that only certain groups are allowed to be hated, only certain groups can have crimes designated as hate crimes against them. That’s racism,” said Moore. “What you’re doing here is saying that the actual truth of the matter is that hate crimes are defined as a crime against a specific race … gender, gender preference group or membership in an organization. That’s how it’s defined. You can’t just say if you’re white nobody can commit a hate crime against you. And this guy said I’m doing it because you’re white and I’m doing it because you’re cops.”
Exit thought warning for Mr. Moore:
