In Trump era, fight against hate set back

Monica Rhor says that on the 10th anniversary of the Shepard-Byrd Act, we are going in the wrong direction, as the country is roiled by divisions.

They were killed in the same year — four months and 1,100 miles apart. A 49-year-old black man from Jasper, Texas. A 21-year-old gay Wyoming college student.

Both targeted out of hate, simply because of who they were.

James Byrd Jr. was beaten and chained to the back of a Ford pickup by three white men, who dragged him to death down a three-mile stretch of country road on June 7, 1998. His remains were strewn along the winding path.

Matthew Shepard was robbed, pistolwhipped and tied to a split-rail fence on a dirt road near Laramie, Wyo., by two attackers. He spent 18 hours in the bitter cold before being found hanging, in the words of the cyclist who discovered him, like a scarecrow and died five days later, on Oct. 12, 1998.

At the time, Wyoming and Texas didn’t have hate crime laws and federal laws didn’t include sexual orientation or gender identity, but that’s no longer the case.

In 2001, Texas passed a hate crimes bill named after Byrd and, on Oct. 28, 2009, President Barack Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law.

It was a strike against the bigotry that leads to violence and a victory for the Byrd and Shepard families, who sought to turn unspeakable tragedy into lasting change. Byrd’s family founded the James Byrd Jr. Foundation for Racial Healing, and Shepard’s parents started the Matthew Shepard Foundation. Both worked for more than a decade to get the hate crime legislation passed.

“When you’re a victim of hate of that nature, you can do one of two things. You can retaliate against it or you can make a difference,” Louvon Byrd Harris, one of Byrd’s sisters, who lives in the Houston area, told me recently. “We put our minds to make a change, make a difference, because that’s what James would have wanted.”

Still, on the 10th anniversary of the

Shepard-Byrd Act, those gains seem to be evaporating. Instead of progressing, we are taking a steep slide backward. Instead of healing divisions, our country is being roiled by them. Instead of rejecting the ugliness that leads to violence, political leaders are inciting it.

Hate crimes are on the rise. So are anti-Semitism and other attacks on the gay and transgender community. In the past year alone, white supremacist terrorism, which the FBI has cited as a growing threat, claimed 11 lives at a Pittsburgh synagogue and 22 at an El Paso Walmart.

The administration, Judy Shepard said, is no longer following the “intent” of Shepard-Byrd. Under President Trump, federal prosecutions under the law have dropped — with only six reported each year in 2017 and 2018. In the first nine months of this fiscal year, there have only been four hate crime prosecutions under the act. In 2016, by contrast, 17 cases were prosecuted.

Worse, the rhetoric unleashed daily in tweets, speeches and social media posts by Trump and his supporters is abetting hate.

“It has allowed the cockroaches to come out from beneath rocks,” Judy Shepard said bluntly. “It’s not what our country is based on — equal representation, equal rights.”

After Trump was elected, the Shepards realized they had to start again from ground zero, so they are focusing on urging law enforcement to increase training and enforcement of hate crimes, raising public awareness of the act and pushing people to vote.

In Jasper, where Byrd’s grave had to be fenced after it was vandalized, his family runs cultural diversity training at the Byrd Center, is raising money for a museum and has collected more than 2,000 oral histories from people who have been victims of racism.

“One thing that does give me hope is to see how remarkable these families are,” said Nadia Aziz, interim co-director of the Stop Hate Project run by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. “They show that love is stronger than hate.”

These days, when a torrent of hate so often seems just a tweet away, it is good to hold fast to that thought — and to the message on a bench installed in Byrd’s honor outside the Jasper County courthouse: “Be the change that you want to see in the world.” Lord knows, our world needs it.

Rhor (@monicarhor) is an editorial writer and columnist.