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N.C. Lawmakers Will Refile Hate Crimes Legislation

State Senator Jay Chaudhuri of Raleigh will co-sponsor hate crimes legislation, which will also be considered in the North Carolina House. Photo courtesy NCGA

North Carolina lawmakers are planning on reintroducing hate crimes legislation this session. This comes after eight people, most of them Asian women, were killed in Atlanta this week.

Democratic Sen. Jay Chaudhuri is one of the only Asian Americans ever elected to the North Carolina General Assembly. Chaudhuri has filed a hate crime bill every session he's served in the state Senate, with none of them coming to fruition.

Now he will be joined by two other state Senators in refiling the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, a version of which will also be presented in the House.

Previous versions of the bill were inspired in part by the 2015 murders of three young Muslim people in Chapel Hill by their white neighbor.

Chaudhuri tells The News & Observer that while the Atlanta shootings have not officially been deemed a hate crime, Asian Americans have faced a long history of discrimination.

The Senate bill would create a hate crimes database, expand protections against hate crimes, and increase the penalty for those crimes. It would also require training for police and prosecutors to better understand what constitutes a hate crime. 

Neal Charnoff joined 88.5 WFDD as Morning Edition host in 2014. Raised in the Catskill region of upstate New York, he graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1983. Armed with a liberal arts degree, Neal was fully equipped to be a waiter. So he prolonged his arrested development bouncing around New York and L.A. until discovering that people enjoyed listening to his voice on the radio. After a few years doing overnight shifts at a local rock station, Neal spent most of his career at Vermont Public Radio. He began as host of a nightly jazz program, where he was proud to interview many of his idols, including Dave Brubeck and Sonny Rollins. Neal graduated to the news department, where he was the local host for NPR's All Things Considered for 14 years. In addition to news interviews and features, he originated and produced the Weekly Conversation On The Arts, as well as VPR Backstage, which profiled theater productions around the state. He contributed several stories to NPR, including coverage of a devastating ice storm. Neal now sees the value of that liberal arts degree, and approaches life with the knowledge that all subjects and all art forms are connected to each other. Neal and his wife Judy are enjoying exploring North Carolina and points south. They would both be happy to never experience a Vermont winter again.

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