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   After assaulting a woman "because she was white," a black man in   
   New York was charged with a hate crime. We asked a lawyer to   
   explain how the controversial law is applied.   
      
   On March 10, 2016, a 25-year-old black man named Gregory Alfred   
   allegedly assaulted a white woman while she was walking in the   
   Brooklyn neighborhood of Ditmas Park. Like a vision out of New   
   York at its worst, reports say that Alfred's face was covered in   
   an American flag bandana when he slashed 53-year-old Janina   
   Popko across the back of her neck. Yesterday, the New York Daily   
   News confirmed that Alfred has been charged with multiple counts   
   of assault and attempted murder as a hate crime. The publication   
   reports that Alfred confessed to the crime after his mother   
   turned him in to the police.   
      
   "I cut her because she was white," Alfred told the authorities.   
   Police sources also told the New York Post that Alfred had "set   
   out to slash white people because he blamed them and 'the   
   system' for preventing him from freely smoking weed."   
      
   Because his statements to police that defined his crime as   
   racially motivated, Alfred, if convicted, faces harsher   
   sentencing because his actions fit the legal definition of a   
   "hate crime." And while it's intuitively shocking to see a black   
   man tried for a hate crime, there's nothing within the law that   
   precludes it.   
      
   State hate crime laws were widely enacted in the 1980s with the   
   idea of protecting the civil rights of minority groups. Since   
   then, the FBI has published a survey on all reported hate crimes   
   in the United States. The majority, as one could imagine, are   
   racially motivated. According to the survey, 47 percent of the   
   5,462 bias-motivated crimes reported in 2014 were based on race.   
   The FBI statistics don't specify a further racial breakdown.   
      
   As defined by the state of New York, a hate crime occurs when a   
   person "intentionally selects the person against whom the   
   offense is committed or intended to be committed in whole or in   
   substantial part because of a belief or perception regarding the   
   race, color, national origin, ancestry, gender, religion,   
   religious practice, age, disability or sexual orientation of a   
   person, regardless of whether the belief or perception is   
   correct."   
      
   Under this definition, a member of a minority group can commit a   
   hate crime against a member of a privileged group. Indeed, the   
   landmark case that set a precedent for hate crime laws as being   
   not in opposition to free speech involved a group of young black   
   Wisconsin teenagers who—after watching Mississippi Burning, a   
   1988 film about a hate crime committed against black Civil   
   Rights activists—assaulted a 14-year-old white boy in 1989.   
   Before the act took place, one of the boys, Todd Mitchell,   
   turned to his friends and asked, "Do you feel all hyped up to   
   move on some white people?''   
      
   Mitchell was sentenced to two years for aggravated battery and   
   given an additional two years under the state's hate crime   
   statue. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin overturned the ruling on   
   the grounds of free speech, but it was ultimately upheld in the   
   United States Supreme Court. The ACLU, an organization long   
   recognized for its commitment to civil rights, praised the   
   decision: "The ACLU, as amicus curiae, urged reversal of the   
   judgment of the Supreme Court of Wisconsin; the Supreme Court   
   reversed in a 9-0 vote, giving the ACLU an apparent win."   
      
   As demonstrated with Mitchell v. Wisconsin and Alfred's   
   justifications for his crime, black people have a historically   
   fraught relationship with hate crimes. In a paper titled, "Hate   
   Crimes, Stress and Bigotry in the Late Twentieth Century: Where   
   Are We Headed?," Tony Brown, an associate professor at   
   Vanderbilt University, writes, "African Americans are the only   
   group of persons categorized in significant numbers as both   
   victims and perpetrators of hate crimes."   
      
   Although the racial prejudice that would drive a white person to   
   commit a hate crime against a black person is the same tension   
   that would drive a black person to commit a hate crime against a   
   white person, James Jacobs, a professor of constitutional law at   
   New York University and the courts director for the Center for   
   Research in Crime and Justice, confirms that the term goes both   
   ways. "There's nothing unusual about applying hate crime laws to   
   black defendants who harbor racist motivations against their   
   victims. That's never really been controversial," said Jacobs   
   told Broadly over the phone.   
      
   In the case of Alfred, however, there may be one unusual factor:   
      
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