An American guy was thoroughly beaten on Friday for dating a Nigerian lady. The Nigeria-born Georgian woman, Olufisayo Bakare, said her boyfriend, 23-year-old Andrew Quade, was brutally beaten because the couple is inter-racial.
Bakare said that she and Quade were walking through Ellis Square in the evening when a trio of black men started making “racial comments” and “blowing kisses” at them. According to her, the men then attacked Quade.
“He was basically left for dead,” she said.
The couple said the discrimination is not new, but had never risen to the level of a physical altercation.
Bakare expressed surprise at the discrimination, with a strong hope for justice.
“I just hope justice prevails at the end of the day. This should not happen in this day and age. I know we’re in the South, but it is time for a change,” she said.
The local police said it had not confirmed whether the squabble was racially motivated.
“Some of the family members are saying it was a hate crime,” the police representative said. “But police have not determined that. The investigation is still ongoing.”
However, if police do determine that the assault was racially motivated, state prosecutors cannot charge the defendants with a hate crime.
Georgia is one of five American states that does not have hate crime laws on the books, according to the Human Rights Commission.
In 2004, the Georgian Supreme Court threw out the state’s hate crime law, calling it “unconstitutionally vague”.
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