Jamilah Lemieux, an editor at the all-African-American website Ebony, is not comfortable with calling the Dallas shooting a 'hate crime' and believes that there is "so much we don't know" or "what motivated this person" and that we only have the Dallas Police Department's side of the story.
“I have to say, I would not describe ‘hate crime’ as the most comfortable word choice, considering these circumstances,” Lemieux said. “There is so much we don’t know about what took place, what motivated this person.”
She also went on to ensue that 'hate crimes' usually only involve white people abusing minorities.
“When we use a phrase like ‘hate crime,’ we’re typically referring to crimes against people of color, people of various religious groups, LGBT people, people who have been historically attacked, abused or disenfranchised on the basis of their identity,” she added.
“To now extend that to the majority group and a group of people that have a history with African-Americans that has been abusive – and we can apply that to either police officers or to Caucasians – I think gets into very tricky territory. So I’d like to know if he was referring to the hate crime because he singled them out by race or because they were police officers.”
She sent out this tweet to clear up any debate on what she really meant to say.
Here's the entire transcript, for @foxnation and other outlets being dishonest: pic.twitter.com/TK6vHaSzL7
— jamilah lemieux (@JamilahLemieux) July 14, 2016