The Emmett Till Antilynching Act of 2022 passed the Senate this week. The bill, which President Joe Biden will soon sign, designates lynching as a federal hate crime. It was co-sponsored in the Senate by Cory Booker, Tim Scott, Raphael Warnock, and Rand Paul. The combined work of these senators is a shining example of the good that can come from bipartisanship in the Senate, instead of the political gridlock and tribalism that has hampered government in recent years.
“I’m pleased to have worked with Sens. Cory Booker and Tim Scott to strengthen the language of this bill, which will ensure that federal law will define lynching as the absolutely heinous crime that it is,” Paul said. “I’m glad to co-sponsor this bipartisan effort, and I applaud the Senate for quickly passing this important legislation.”
The bill is long overdue, especially since the last lynching occurred over 41 years ago in 1981. It could even be argued that the bill is merely symbolic. However, even if the bill was symbolic, the bipartisan efforts were not. Anything that can be beneficial to the country and the result of political cooperation is a positive action.
“The effort to pass anti-lynching legislation has spanned more than a century. After 200 failed attempts, Congress is now finally prepared to reckon with America’s history of racialized violence,” Booker said. “I am proud to announce Sens. Paul and Warnock as co-sponsors of the Emmett Till Antilynching Act. Their support underscores the bipartisan backing that we have to finally meet this moment and help our nation move forward from some of its darkest chapters.”
Despite this bipartisanship, Booker’s rhetoric is disappointingly divisive as usual. It’s also demeaning to the numerous white people who were victims of lynchings. While the majority of lynching victims were indeed black, hundreds of white people were lynched in this country — a part of history that is often ignored. In fact, Italian Americans were the victims of one of the largest lynchings in U.S. history.
Lynching is a horrific crime regardless of the skin color of the victim. Paul, Scott, Booker, and Warnock should be commended for putting their political differences aside to deal with this — even if only serving a symbolic purpose, showing bipartisanship for this bill is good for all people in the country.
“And so, a Republican and a Democrat from different backgrounds, different parts of the country, and different perspectives, sat down and did the hard work entrusted to us by our constituents,” Paul wrote in an op-ed for the Courier-Journal. “Our exchange of ideas was at times passionate, but always respectful and with our common goal sharply in mind. In short, we came up with a compromise. That compromise took over a year to finalize. But the result of that compromise will be a historic law that finally recognizes lynching as a federal hate crime.”
