Blue Lives Matter and Hate Crime Law

• Author: Gail Mason
• DOI: 10.1177/2153368720933665
• Published date: 01 April 2022
• Date: 01 April 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

Blue Lives Matter and

Hate Crime Law

Gail Mason

1

Abstract

The Blue Lives Matter movement began in 2014 as a rejoinder to accusations of police

racism in the United States. Blue Lives Matter advocates for the expansion of hate

crime statutes to include police and other first responders as protected victim

categories. Four US states have enacted such reforms: Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi

and Texas. With some minor exceptions, this is the first time that hate crime laws

have been extended to a victim category that represents an authoritative arm of the

state. This article examines the social significance of these laws. Drawing on the results

of a critical discourse analysis of legislative debates surrounding the enactment and

attempted enactment of blue hate crime laws, the article argues that these laws pit

police and Black citizens against each other. In situating new legal protections for

police within hate crime statutes, blue reforms contain an implicit attempt to reframe

the history of police brutality toward Black Americans by claiming that police are a

subjugated and targeted minority at the hands of a Black community of dangerous and

biased perpetrators: a new black/blue relation of power.

Keywords

hate/bias crimes, victimization, race and policing, police brutality, race and policing,

criminological theories, critical race theory, criminological theories

Introduction

The Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement emerged in 2013 in response to the killing

of Black citizens by police in the United States (US). One of the most controversial

challenges to BLM is the Blue Lives Matter counter-movement. The stated goal of

1

Sydney Law School (F10), The University of Sydney, Camperdown, New South Wales, Australia

Corresponding Author:

Gail Mason, Sydney Law School (F10), The University of Sydney, Camperdown, New South Wales 2006,

Australia.

Email: gail.mason@sydney.edu.au

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2022, Vol. 12(2) 411–\ 430

Blue Lives Matter is to “honor and recognize the actions” of police (Blue Lives

Matter, 2017a). Blue Lives Matter has called for police and other first responders to be

included as protected victim categories in hate crime statutes. Four US states have

enacted such reforms: Louisiana, Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas. With some minor

exceptions, this is the first time that hate crime laws have been extended to a victim

category that represents an authoritative arm of the state.

There is only a small body of academic research on blue hate crime laws. This

research focuses on whether these reforms are consistent with the purpose of hate

crime laws, which is to address the harm caused by criminal manifestations of bigotry

(Gray, 2017; Olson, 2017). What is missing from this literature is an analysis of the

larger social significance of blue reforms. This article aims to address this gap by

presenting the results of a study into the discursive messages or codes embedded

within blue hate crime laws. Like all criminal law, hate crime legislation contains

ideological claims about wider norms and standards (Jenness & Grattet, 2001). It

sends a message about the need to balance injustice between majority and minority

groups (Gray, 2017). The inclusion of police as a legitimate victim category invites us

to look at police through the same lens as other victim categories, that is, as a vul-

nerable minority group deserving of extra state protection from bigoted animosity and

disrespect.

From whom do police need protection? Unlike most other protected categories,

there is no obvious majority group that persecutes police. We could identify a

potential source of danger for law enforcement in communities of “the policed”

(Skolnick, 1994) but this article argues that there is a dualism at work in blue hate

crime laws that cuts deeper than this generic “cops versus robbers” narrative. Drawing

on a critical discourse analysis of legislative debates surrounding the enactment and

attempted enactment of blue hate crime laws, the article argues that the social sig-

nificance of these ostensibly neutral laws lies in their implicit attempt to reframe the

history of police brutality and disrespect toward the Black community, that is, to

reverse what we might call a blue/black relation of inequality. In situating new legal

protections for police within hate crime statutes, blue reforms effectively claim that

US culture suffers from a hierarchical regime within which police are a vulnerable and

subjugated minority at the hands of a Black community of dangerous and biased

perpetrators: a new black/blue relation of power.

Blue Lives, Black Lives and Hate Crime Law

BLM was founded in reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the shooting

of Trayvon Martin in Florida. Further protests were sparked by the Ferguson shooting

in 2014, which BLM framed as a case study for “virulent anti-Black racism” and a

“call to action” against police violence (BLM, 2017). The loose organizational

structure of BLM has allowed inflammatory behavior (eg: protesters chanting “pigs in

a blanket, fry them like bacon”) to be attributed to the movement (CBS, 2015). Among

detractors, this has led to the characterization of BLM as a hate group, providing

impetus for the retaliatory Blue Lives Matter movement.

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Race and Justice 12(2)