Day: March 25, 2018

In Dean Spade’s essay, “What’s Wrong With Rights?”, Dean Spade identifies the shortcomings of both current law reforms and shortcomings of hate crime laws. For example, current law reform such as discrimination laws takes into account what is called the perpetrator perspective. This perspective fails to take into account the historical context of discrimination such as racism. Additionally, it seeks out those who are overtly biased rather than those who discriminate due to systemic or institutional systems in place. It fails to take into account daily disparities due to race, class, gender, disabilities, etc. These discrimination laws also increase the idea of colorblindness which does not take into account the systemic issues that shape this discrimination. Spade goes on to argue that the perpetrator perspective creates a false sense that marginalized groups are now equal and will be treated fairly. This does a disservice to the individuals the laws are trying to protect.

Spade goes on to highlight the shortcomings of hate crime laws. Hate crime laws oversimplify the issue and have no deterrent effects on criminals who commit the crimes against marginalized groups. Spade goes on to argue that people do not read law books and choose not to engage in bias motivated violence before committing a crime just because it carries a harsher sentence. Therefore, these laws do not increase the life chances of the people they aim to protect. Further, hate crime laws strengthen and legitimize the criminals that target the individuals and communities that these laws are made to protect.

Citations

Dean Spade, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2015), selected pages.

With respect to recent anti-discrimination law reform for trans people, Dean Spade identifies several reasons why anti-discrimination laws are ineffective in actually improving the quality of trans lives.  Working off of Alan Freeman’s critique of the perpetrator perspective, Spade notes how the imposed view of discrimination as something which occurs between a perpetrator and a victim completely ignores larger structures of discrimination which have existed in the past and will continue to exist without more powerful reform.  Spade argues that anti-discrimination laws cannot address disparities in life conditions “that we know stem from and reflect long term patterns of exclusion and exploitation cannot be understood as ‘violations’ under the discrimination principle, and thus remedies cannot be won” (Spade 43).

With regard to hate crime laws, Spades primary critique is that ultimately these laws do more to reinforce and expand the prison system which so often falsely holds and abuses trans people.  Simply put: “Criminal punishment cannot be the method we use to stop transphobia when the criminal punishment system is the most significant perpetrator of violence against trans people” (Spade 47).  Spade notes, “Could [the veterans of Stonewall] have imagined that the police would be claimed protectors of queer and trans people against violence, while imprisonment and police brutality were skyrocketing?” (Spade 46).  Prison abolitionists argue that prison reform, rather than addressing unfairness and injustice in prisons, more often lead to prison expansion than anything else.

 

Citations:

Spade, Dean.  Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law.  Durham & London: Duke University Press. 2015.