An Ebony magazine editor isn’t comfortable with President Obama using the term “hate crime” to describe last week’s mass shooting in Dallas, and said not enough is known about the killer or the victims for that type of language to be used.
“I have to say, I would not describe ‘hate crime’ as the most comfortable word choice, considering these circumstances,” Ebony’s Jamilah Lemieux said in a CNN interview.
The deadly shooting spree in Dallas last week, which claimed the lives of five law enforcement agents, took place shortly after an anti-police brutality demonstration had concluded.
The shooter, 25-year-old Micah Xavier Johnson, who is black, reportedly said he wanted revenge for the recent deaths of two unarmed black men at the hands of police officers. The gunman also reportedly said he was targeting white people specifically.
Johnson, a former U.S. Army reservist, was eventually cornered and killed by authorities early Friday morning.
On Tuesday, Obama referred to the attacks as a “hate crime,” but Lemieux didn’t care for that.
“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 said.
“When 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,” she added.
“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.”
Fellow CNN contributor, former FBI agent Steve Moore, did not appear all that impressed with her remarks.
“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,” he said. “That’s racism.”
