Only whites can commit hate-crimes, and only minorites can be the victims

Am I the only one who sees the double standard when it comes to hate-crimes?

LEXINGTON, Ky. -- A University of Kentucky student and another man were arrested Thursday, accused of hanging a life-sized likeness of Barack Obama from a tree on the campus.
The incident was one of several in recent weeks involving effigies of the presidential candidates or their running mates. No charges have been filed in four other cases that have made national headlines.

If it's wrong to hang in effigy, The Obamessiah by a noose from a tree, it's wrong to do the same thing to a Sarah Palin figure. But the media, and apparently local cops, don't see it that way. Because of the historical significance of blacks and hanging, they wrongly reason, it's more wrong to pretend to hang a black than a white. In fact, that makes it a hate crime.

Why isn't it simply either, a hate crime to pretend to hang anybody, or not a crime at all for anybody, but free, political speech? When you define a crime against a minority as a hate crime, you are criminalizing thought. Why aren't black on white crimes considered hate crimes? Are whites the only people who can be hateful? Are blacks automatically absolved of the vice known as hate, just because they are a minority? It's the same argument as with the "N" word. If it's not OK for some people to use it, it's shouldn't be OK for anybody to use it. Liberals love to say that they are striving for a color-blind society, yet they are the first ones to point out race when it suits them. If we are indeed a colorblind society, and we should strive to be by every measure, then hate crimes shouldn't even exist. Hate crimes elevate the favored race(blacks) above the disfavored race(whites). No American should be elevated or favored by government over any other American on the basis if race.