How can our mayor not speak out and call the cross-burning on the lawn of an African-American family what it is: a hate crime? No matter what the perpetrators may say their motivation was, everyone knows cross-burning is a hate crime. No one is so ignorant that they can conceive of this vile act as anything else.
If they know about cross-burning, they know it has only been used by groups hating blacks and can have no other meaning. And for our mayor to refuse to call it a hate crime is a cowardly act.
This article appears in Mar 24-31, 2011.
