King Downing, attorney and coordinator of the American Civil Liberties Union's (ACLU) nationwide Campaign Against Racial Profiling gave a speech entitled “Axis of Evil: 9/11 and Hate Crimes at Home” in the Weyerhaeuser Chapel on Friday. The speech was the first of a series of events for the fourth annual Diversity Weekend.

The event was hosted by a coalition of student organizations that included Adelante!, Afrika!, Amnesty International, Asian Student Alliance (ASA), Black Liberation Affairs Committee (BLAC), Bridges, Proud Indigenous People For Education (PIPE), Queer Union and the Program Board.

This year’s Diversity Weekend theme addressed hate crimes. The goal of the weekend was “to bring to light an important issue that affects a number of students and eventually to trigger action among the student body on this campus,” said Isabelle Chan ’06, who is co-chair of ASA and who introduced Downing on Friday night.

Downing, who spoke to a racially diverse crowd of about 30, opened his speech by saying it was appropriate that he was speaking on Halloween, since his earliest memory of hate crimes is “seeing pictures of the Ku Klux Klan and thinking ‘Why are they doing this in Halloween costumes?’”

Downing then defined hate crimes as “violent acts against individuals because of the groups they belong to” and later expanded his definition for the crime to include “a disproportionate use of force.”

He said he does not agree that people should receive additional punishment for committing assaults that are classified as hate crimes. “Assaults are assaults, no matter what,” he said.

However, Downing said he believes that federal and local governments perpetuate hate crimes. “When someone commits a hate crime under the authority of the government, that’s when there needs to be a higher level of penalty involved,” he said.

Many of the theories Downing presented for the cause of hate crimes and racial profiling were based on government politics and economics.

The first theory Downing presented is that “personal prejudice forms the basis of economic exploitation. … Whenever I’m looking at a problem and I’m trying to figure out the cause of it, I go right to the economics.”

His second theory is “racism and bias increase with and justify the economic exploitation.” He added that his third theory is “hate crimes reinforce this relationship.”

Downing said his fourth theory is “government’s active participation supports the economic exploitation,” and “omissions by the government also support the exploitation.”

Fifth, Downing said, “Police departments are on the front line of the government’s efforts to maintain this economic exploitation.”

Finally, he said he believes “racial profiling is the result, and hate crimes also result.”

Downing used examples throughout the histories of Africans, Native Americans, Latinos and Asians in the United States to support his theories and show how stereotypes and hate crimes have evolved. He concluded, “We see that every step of the way in every historical period there has been [an economic] reason for these hate crimes.”

Downing then turned his attention to Sept. 11 and addressed the hate crimes that were directed at Arabs, Muslims and Southeast Asians after the attacks, which he described as “a second form of victimization.”

“We have these government policies that are targeting specific groups,” Downing said, citing the USA Patriot Act and the government’s Special Registration Program for certain immigrants. “None of this stuff is new,” he said. “It’s as American as apple pie.”

Downing concluded with a suggestion for what others can do about the problem of hate crimes in the United States. “We can always take the attitude that whatever is happening to someone else is happening to them,” he said. “But I’m going to stand there and defend the person and be that person. We need to defend them because if we don’t, we are not going to solve the problem.”

Multicultural Counselor Sedric McClure, who attended the speech, said, “I generally tend to agree with [Downing’s] theory that hate crime is a systematic thing rather than a singular act. I think the people on the committee that chose him to speak knew that this issue is very pertinent today and to bring this issue up was key.”

Jessie Buendia ’04, who represented Adelante! at the event, said, “He was a lively speaker who really engaged his audience in critical issues about racial profiling.”

Chan agreed. “[Downing] provided a good outline of hate crimes for the audience to know it goes back far in history,” she said. “I liked his message that in order to not repeat history, we need to stand up not only for ourselves but also for each other.”