The BI(C)ger Picture with Lee Shaw: Chapel Hill and Colchis

When you hear the phrase, “hate crime,” what is the first thought that comes to your mind? Do you think of 9/11? Do you think about the Holocaust that occurred during World War II? Perhaps you think of the KKK or the Black Panthers or the advance of ISIS through Southwest Asia. Despite our increasingly advanced culture, hate crimes remain a very real issue in the United States and in most countries throughout our world. According to the National Crime Prevention Council, “The U.S. Department of Justice defines hate crime as ‘the violence of intolerance and bigotry, intended to hurt and intimidate someone because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability.’” Considering this definition, could one consider the recent shooting and killing of three unarmed Muslims in Chapel Hill, North Carolina to be a hate crime? In order to find out, let’s take a look back at the writings of the legendary Greek historian, Herodotus.

Herodotus was a Greek historian who lived during the fifth century B.C. who systematically compiled hundreds upon hundreds of years of Greek history. It is through Herodotus that modern historians have found the most information regarding the Greco-Persian Wars, the conflict between the Greek city-states of Sparta and Athens, waged from 549 to 494 B.C. against the Persian Empire. According to Herodotus, the general enmity between these cultures is the result of multiple kidnappings. Herodotus states, “ [The Greeks] manned a ship of war, and sailed to Aea, a city of Colchis, on the river Phasis; from whence, after dispatching the rest of the business on which they had come, they carried off Medea, the daughter of the king of the land” (1.2). Many years later, the Persians responded with a similar violence; “Alexander the son of Priam, bearing these events in mind, resolved to procure himself a wife out of Greece by violence, fully persuaded that as the Greeks had not given satisfaction for their outrages so neither would he be forced to make any for his. Accordingly, he made prize of Helen” (1.3). These hostilities only increased over time, resulting in two attempted Persian invasions of the Greek mainland and countless Greek counter-attacks. As such, many cities were destroyed, many soldiers and civilians were killed, and cultural enmity between the Greeks and Persians came to a boil. These conflicts are romanticized and dramatized in Zack Snyder’s films 300 and 300: Rise of an Empire. While the Spartans and Athenians did not go to war shirtless, as these films suggest, the general Persian dislike of the Greeks—and vice-versa—is well expressed in these movies.

As such, it seems that hate crime has been present in a great deal of human history. When the Persians sacked Greek cities it was not because the Greeks had done anything wrong but because of their differing culture. Similarly, when Greeks “liberated” Persian settlements, it was because they deemed Greek culture to be superior to that of the Persians. Such discrimination is still apparent in American culture today, as expressed in the Chapel Hill shootings that occurred last week. An armed gunman made his way into the apartment of his neighbors, a newly wed Islamic couple and shot the two along with the bride’s sister, each in the head. After increasing pressure from the American Muslim community and many nations around the world, most notably through the phrase #muslimlivesmatter on twitter, the FBI has recently begun investigating the killings as a hate crime.

President Obama said in an official statement in regards to the shooting, “No one in the United States of America should ever be targeted because of who they are, what they look like, or how they worship. As we saw with the overwhelming presence at the funeral of these young Americans, we are all one American family.” This now federal case is not completely black and white; while the gunman presented himself as a dedicated antitheist on his Facebook page, the man’s wife claims that he was not driven by a religious hate but by a parking-related conflict between himself and the couple. In the same way, it could be said that the Greco-Persian Wars were a result of deeply-rooted territorial conflict rather than tension between the Greek and Persian cultures. Very few such cases, whether ancient or modern, are strictly black and white. But, as evidence shows, hate crimes have plagued human history since its inception, so we must not be so fast to rule out the possibility that such is the case with the shooting in Chapel Hill.

What do you think? Is this act of aggression a hate crime? Or do you think the gunman had other motives? Leave a comment below.