It's not a survey. It's reported crimes compiled by the department of justice. That's as close as you can get to the truth, which is impossible.
Them's the facts ma'am.

Well it'd be doubly interesting to do a study on why non-white women don't report crimes committed against them by white men then.

Can't help you there, I'm not a black women nor do I rape them.

Well I wouldn't have thought you were either, although this is the internet, so you just never know I guess. ;)

They do. People are often charged with multiple versions of the same crime, and the jury has to decide which, if any, to convict on.

I don't have strong convictions on this but I just don't see the point of making laws more complicated than they already are. It doesn't make sense. What am I missing here?.......xoxoxoBruce

Entropy, xo, entropy......the tendency towards a state of disorder. Attempts to simplify are futile. The introduction of logic to an argument is also unacceptable.

One crime, one charge... pick one and stick with it.

That's not how it works, or how it ought to work.

In a fatal car accident, was it manslaughter, negligent homicide, or murder? How can you tell without hearing from the witnesses? Was the defendant drunk? Speeding? Did they know the victim? Was there bad blood between them? Was the car in good repair? Did the victim leap out in front of the car?

Or someone that just needed killin'.

Exactly- there's another motive-based crime: Justifiable Homicide.

The whole hate crimes idea is crazy. Give equal punishment for assault, murder etc. no matter the victim\'s minority status.

So duck2, if someone put a burning cross on your lawn, and you were the only black family in your entire neighborhood... that should be punished as only littering, arson, whatever?

Again, this whole hate crimes thing is fucked up but definitely not without merit.

It should be arson like any other.

That's a crock of stinking, rotting bullshit.

Some things are more than the sum of their parts.

No, its without merit. The victim of a cross-burning, since that seems to be the poster child for the hate crime folk, has a civil remedy as well.

I mean, if a lawyer can sue a hard-working American family-owned small business for sixty-five farking million freaking dollars then I think the cross burnee should be able to get a little something. This whole hate-crime business is pure, unadulterated legislative bullcrap that will crumple like a wet dishrag when evaluated against the equal protection under the law provisions of the Constitution.

But Constitutional muster has little to do with quite a bit of the legislation being written for and by self-interested, short-sighted vote-whoring politicians who just can't kiss enough minority backside.