Two Missouri University students have been arrested for throwing cotton balls in front of a black culture center in an act that is being investigated as a hate crime.
The students were initially charged with “Tampering in the second degree”, a class D Felony. This is a curious criminal provision that covers a wide array of possible conduct:
Tampering in the second degree.
569.090. 1. A person commits the crime of tampering in the second degree if he or she:(1) Tampers with property of another for the purpose of causing substantial inconvenience to that person or to another; or
(2) Unlawfully rides in or upon another’s automobile, airplane, motorcycle, motorboat or other motor-propelled vehicle; or
(3) Tampers or makes connection with property of a utility; or
(4) Tampers with, or causes to be tampered with, any meter or other property of an electric, gas, steam or water utility, the effect of which tampering is either:
(a) To prevent the proper measuring of electric, gas, steam or water service; or
(b) To permit the diversion of any electric, gas, steam or water service.
The question is whether leaving cotton balls constitutes a substantial interference. The university paper said that the matter was being investigated as a hate crime, here.
For the full story, click here.
I don’t hate its you who hate by whitewashing this even because your scared, dont care or are a racist. Either way you can come down these parts some time and try quoting Coretta Scott to the people and see how that works out mr know it all.
“thanks but the day I need some racist white folk who are full of themselves to tell me any wisdom is the day I lay down and die.”
*************
I’d suggest you stay on your feet, but suit yourself. Maybe one day you’ll see that hate can work both ways and, as Dr. King tried to explain to you, it corrodes the hater. I’ll leave you with the words of someone with a justifiable personal reason to hate instead of, like you, a vicarious one.
“Hate is too great a burden to bear. It injures the hater more than it injures the hated.”
~Coretta Scott King
And by the way mr know it all calling a couple of nazi looking white thugs who are throwing cotton balls at a black culture center shows how deep your racism runs. So ugly. So sad. To call that a slight shows how ignorant you are besides all your fancy words. The message there was clear to anyone with a brain and that message is go back to picking cotton black people. And someone here who knows a little law too told me to ask you something about intentionally causing stress or durress or somehting like that. Becuase doesn’t the law say you cant cause durress or stress to someone on purpose? Telling a bunch of black people that they should be back as slaves picking the white mans cotton is a hate speech if I ever heard one and that was the message even if you big shot know it all lawyers are too ignorant or too something to admit it. They didn’t pick cotton at random they picked it because its a racial slur telling black folks theyre going to be slaves again and picking cotton for the white master. Well you are ugly man you are ugly and all your degrees cant change that fact. So very sad. Goodbye.
thanks but the day I need some racist white folk who are full of themselves to tell me any wisdom is the day I lay down and die. Thanks but no thanks I think I’ll find a less racist place like the kkk blog or something like that. So sad, you think I’m ugly but you dont see yourself. G’nite and goodbye.
Georgia_Allstar:
It amazes me that you attack those who agree with your sentiments because they refuse to throw logic to the wind and rage with you in some emotion driven group scream. No one condones the insulting, juvenile, and racist actions of these white students. However, the issue is one of law, and not emotion. The precise question is whether their actions violate the law under which they are charged, not whether their actions were “bad.” No one says they were good..that’s the easy question to answer.
As lawyers we are trained to avoid the heat of sometimes righteous emotions and use the part of our brain that reasons and not the part that rages. That’s not racism; that’s keeping this country from degenerating into a Balkanized society where every slight, every insult, leads to violent retribution. The net result of your aggressive self-righteousness is social anarchy. You could learn a lot from a member of our race (the “human” one) who understood this vital fact. Dr. King taught many of us that:
“Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.’
(…)
“Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.”
You can learn a lot from those older, wiser, and more exposed to life’s complexities than yourself. You’ll find those people here — assuming, of course, you want to find them.
And sorry I dont mean to be mean but I don’t think you have a clue what your talking about. I think you just are tired of hearing about it and think it all ended with slavery or Dr King and that couldn’t be further from truth. No one wants to thing about it so they try and pretend they dont know what cotton balls thrown at black people mean and thats really sad. Real sad. Because everyone really has to know what it means but they make jokes about cotton balls and pretend its all a big joke or something hut its not. Its really not and if you knew anything you’d know that.
Excuse me. Are ugly racist actions. Sorry.
When you know what its like to be afraid to drive through your own home town because you might get pulled over just for the color of your skin then you can tell me how racist I am for saying white or white man or white boy. You are a white boy right? So until you know what it feels like to be afraid of white men just because of something you cant change and are stuck with then go head and preach at me with your Dr King lectures like you know something bout it but until then I dont need to hear nothing from you. I dont need any lectures from some whitebread lawyer or whatever you do telling me about racism. Specially one who doens’t know that throwing cotton balls at black people is ugli racist actions.
To the Mike dude. You say no one doubts this was racist well maybe you better read a bit more because thats exactly what some were saying to me and I had to explain to them about their own countries recent history and the relation of cottonpicking and people of color and you must have missed that or something.
To the other racist talking dude I got nothing to say but try that sh$t down here some time and see how quick people explain it to you. Other than that I got nothing to say to your racist self.
Georgia Allstar: Since I posted a comment on this thread prior to your appearance, I conclude that your anger was addressed toward me as well as toward, apparently, everyone else. So, at the risk of repeating what others may have said, I think it appropriate to explain my viewpoint.
The story posted by Prof. Turley intended to raise a legal issue. There is no doubt in my mind, nor in the mind of any reasonable person, that the actions of the students in question were motivated by racism. The cotton ball connection seemed pretty obvious to me. However, the problem posed by the story was not whether the students were racist, but whether their actions fall within the parameters of the criminal statute under which they were charged. My view is that the charges make no sense for the reasons I stated.
Secondly, it is important to recognize that attitudes and belief systems are not, and should not be, subject to criminal sanctions under our Constitution. The right of free speech is not limited to communications which are considered acceptable in polite company or which a majority of people find unobjectionable. Its importance lies principally in the fact that it protects the unacceptable and the highly objectionable. Racial bigotry, religious intolerance and a myriad of other forms of irrational hatred may anger and disgust me, but the protection of their expression is absolutely essential to freedom for everyone. Therefore, we do not criminalize speech or the thinking behind it. What we criminalize are actions which cause physical injury to other persons. If those violent actions are found to have been motivated by racism, they fall within the classification of “hate crimes.”
Were the actions of the Missouri students a form of harassment? Of course they were. If instead of tossing cotton balls, they had stood outside and shouted “nigger,” that too would have been a form of harassment. But it would not have been a crime. We allow the expression of racial bigotry and other forms of intolerance because the Founding Fathers understood from their own experiences and their knowledge of history that as soon as we begin to regulate thoughts and attitudes, we create a society in which those groups or religions or ideas which may find disfavor from time to time among the majority will be put at risk of suppression, oppression or worse. Once a nation determines that ideas are a proper subject for control by the legislative branch, the inevitable result is the banning of unpopular ideas. And we know that any freedom whose foundation is formed on the vagaries of popular will is no freedom at all.
GA Allstar,
It’s called “focus” and “the law”.
Thanks for illustrating that people of all races and creeds are capable of racism. Because that’s EXACTLY the behavior you are displaying. Believe it or not the whole world does not revolve around your “blackness”. Oooooooo. I know. Shocking, isn’t it. But if you cannot see that you are advocating a disproportionate penalty based on race of the accused?
As I said, it’s not against the law to be a douche bag. Even a racist one with a chip on their shoulder.
Georgia:
no one has said it wasnt racism, it was. What they disagree with is the punishment.
Whites picked cotton? I don’t remember whites being brought over in chains from Africa to pick it. Cotton picking has always been associated with colored folks and is used to taunt them in school growing up and its just like calling them n#$$#rs cuz it means the same thing. Why do you think these two nazi looking white dudes chose to throw cotton balls at the black folks building? You think they didn’t know what it meant? You think the black folks in that building didn’t know what it meant? Like I already said if your going to wear a sheet over your head you better poke some eyeholes in it so as you can see. Cuz you can’t see nothing right now if you can’t see that this was pure racism on every level.
Georgia,
Thank you! Once you decided to call me a “whitebread boy” you exposed yourself to be the true racist in this conversation.
Have a nice day.
Georgia_Allstar:
If a couple of white boys are stupid enough to stand outside the Black Student Union shouting the n word, I should think the doctor treating them would probably think the punishment fit the crime.
Georgia_Allstar:
Are you taking this a bit to seriously? Isn’t our society just a little bit to pc? We have to be careful about not insulting this group or that group, we have to remember what offends and what doesn’t offend.
Whites picked cotton as well, read John Grisham’s book titled a “Painted House” about white sharecroppers, in the Arkansas I believe. Blacks also picked cotton as free people.
Gimp, Spic, Kike, Dago, Polock, Chinc, Gook, Cracker all non-black. Are you going to get mad if someone places a marionette outside the house of a handicapped person, or hair gel outside of an Hispanic persons house, or some gefelta fish in front of the Jewish Student Union or crackers in front of a white persons house? Has about the same impact as cotton balls.
When I went to Mizzou the blacks would segregate themselves at black only tables. Ever wonder how that made whites feel? Whitey not good enough to have lunch with?
I am sick to death of all this racist talk, we are all f…ing human beings. Whites, blacks and hispanics are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans I might add and you are upset over some cotton balls? Go get a life.
Aint there something in the law that says you can’t intentionally cause distress to someone or something like that? If there purpose was to harass these people then harassments a crime right? So if they were harassing them with racist hate speech isn’t that a hate crime?
Ok maybe not a racist just a whitebread boy living in a white tower somewhere cuz I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know about the relation of cotton picking to the black slaves picking that cotton on the white mans plantations. They picked other stuff too but cotton picking has always been the one used as a slur like the n word. To most black persons its the same thing so let me ask you this. If they stood outside the hall shouting n####r, would you think thats a crime?
Georgia,
I admit that I didn’t relate cottonballs to the act of picking cotton. Because of your input, I now see the corelation. It is ridiculous to consider me a racist simply because I didn’t associate the two.
“[T]hrowing cotton balls at a bunch of black folks”? That is not what took place. Maybe that’s why you’re so angry. Even if it would have happened that way, I would consider it a racist act, but not a “hate crime”. I’ve never been the vicitm of a cottonball assault, but I doubt it would consist of bodily harm. Are you suggesting we change from sticks and stones to now include cottonballs?
Probably so? You people act like you never heard of Eli Whitney or slaves picking cotton all day. Ever hear the old ‘negro song “jump down turn around pick a bail of cotton”? You people must live in whitesville USA or something because if you ever came down here preaching about how throwing cotton balls at a bunch of black folks ain’t hate speech or preaching to us about Dr King man would you be in for a rude awakening. Now I know why racism still exists thanks.