The coverage of the Chapel Hill shooting has focused on two primary interpretations of events. The first one is the "parking dispute" narrative from the initial reports of the local police, and supported by the suggestions of mental illness given by his wife and others who knew him. The second is the insistence of the victims' family that this should be treated as a hate crime, accompanied by the many calls for a hate crime investigation by religious and other groups. The media seems to portray these like oil and water, as if bias were either the central reason for the crime or no reason at all, and this bothers me.
I fully support holding a hate crime investigation. However, there is already some indication that the evidence may not rise to the level needed to legally convict Hicks of a hate crime. Unfortunately, I think there's a collective tendency to take a lack of a guilty verdict as if it were moral absolution, and allow conversations about the role of prejudice to dry up in its wake.
So here's the question I posed to myself, and I'd like to pose to you: If he is not found guilty of a hate crime, does that mean that bias played no role? Would it imply that the perception of prejudice by the victims' family and community is overblown?
My answer: Absolutely not.
Here are some of the facts we know, taken from the links above: Hicks "obsessed over parking spaces and always appeared angry." This could indicate generalized aggression that just happened to flare up with these particular neighbors. However, testimony from the women's father based on conversations after Yusor Mohammad moved in with her husband indicate that harassment intensified first when she entered the picture. The family has pointed repeatedly to the hijabs the sisters wear as a reason for them being singled out.
It may never be proven that prejudice against religion or clothing was part of the motive for the crime. Consider that bias, even subconscious bias, may have gotten in the way of other mitigating factors. Perhaps Hicks harassed this family about parking more than others, because he allowed his perception of their differences to agitate him. Maybe those differences prevented him from having friendly conversations, stopping by to borrow sugar, or any number of positive interactions that could have mellowed out their conflict. We can't know everything that went on in his head, but it seems likely that some kind of bias contributed to Hicks unloading his violence on this family and not on another.
In a society where lots of people have guns, even those with mental and emotional issues, explicit and implicit biases have the potential to tip a lot of violence in the direction of minority communities. It behooves us, especially those of us who are part of a privileged group, to listen to this Muslim family in their time of crisis, and to do what we can to stamp out bias in our conduct and conversations.
The best way to counter our biases, especially implicit ones, is exposure. Let's each of us make an effort to get to know those of our neighbors whom we find to be different. Who knows, if Craig Hicks had done so, perhaps this horrible tragedy may not have happened.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments; I would love for this post to be a conversation starter. As this is a sensitive issue, let's remember to exercise an extra dose of patience and care with each other.