Death on the Fourth of July: The Story of a Killing, a Trial, and Hate Crime in America

As a former editor of a newspaper in Idaho when it was the home for Neo-Nazis, author David Neiwert brings his tremendous insight and his journalistic skill into his book. His prose is well-written and engaging. His facts are thoroughly researched, and his positions are thoughtful and supported by his research. He is honest with his readers, shy about making generalizations and careful to avoid proselytizing. He lets his research speak for itself. The book succeeds surprisingly well both as a primer for those new to the topic - carefully laying out the basic ideas and rationale behind hate crimes and laws that seek to deal with them - and for those who have experience in the topic. A good read.

The town's derisive nickname "Open Sores" could certainly serve as the subtitle for the book. Out of reams of available subject matter on "hate crimes", but Neiwert chose one episode that was atypical -- the victim survived, the perpetrator didn't -- for a gripping and essay on the meaning of bias crime, and the right and wrong way the law chooses to interpret it. I was hooked right away by an opening narrative that leads you into the lives of the Hong brothers, tourists from Seattle, who wandered into a convenience store, and then found their lives were turning into a Hitchcockian nightmare. He borrows the basic structure of a true-crime genre -- accounts of a trial, brief bios of the lead players -- but his focus ranges widely over the way that the community, and law enforecment, simply failed to notice the trouble that was escalating. Matters that go below the radar for those who are not targets, but which suffice to ruin lives, and turn whole communities, or even states into pariahs. Readers of his blog ("Orcinus") know that Neiwert is paintaking with words, and is careful to parse the distinctions: since many such crimes are NOT the direct result of organized hate groups, the stereotypes ("skinheads" "rednecks") are likely as not to protect the actual perpetrators. His argument suggest better laws are only a step, but what we actually need is better training for law enforcement, and a population less disposed to give a inch to bigotry, before it erupts into violence..