September 8, 2025
A hate crime survivor is calling on South Carolina senators to pass statewide hate crime legislation.
A Black man targeted in an alleged racially motivated attack is urging South Carolina lawmakers to pass hate crime legislation.
In July, around 5:30 a.m., Jarvis McKenzie was waiting outside his home for his supervisor to pick him up for work, a part of his daily routine, AP reports. That morning, however, turned into a harrowing ordeal when a white man, filled with hatred, raised an assault rifle out of his car window, fired over McKenzie’s head, and shouted, “You better get running, boy!”
Richland County, where McKenzie lives, is one of about two dozen local governments in South Carolina that have enacted their own hate crime ordinances. As a result, the man who attacked McKenzie was charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, carrying a potential sentence of up to 20 years if convicted.
However, McKenzie is speaking out because South Carolina, along with Wyoming, is one of only two states without statewide hate crime laws, and some local ordinances are limited to misdemeanors with maximum sentences of just one month in jail.
For the past decade, business leaders, survivors of the 2015 Charleston church massacre that left nine dead, and a handful of Republican lawmakers have been unsuccessful in pressuring state senators to pass hate crime legislation.
Following the surge in racial tensions in 2020, business leaders made passing hate crime legislation a priority, and the South Carolina House approved its version in 2021. Yet in both 2021 and 2023, the proposal stalled in the Senate without a vote.
Supporters argue that Republican leadership knows the bill would pass, as moderate members of their own party support it, but they keep it buried on the calendar through procedural maneuvers. In May 2023, during a debate on history curriculum guidelines covering topics like slavery and segregation, a longtime Democratic lawmaker even asked Senate Majority Leader Shane Massey why hate crime legislation still hadn’t received a vote.
“The problem right now is that there is a number of people who think that not only is it feel-good legislation, but it is bad legislation. It is bad policy not because people support hate but because it furthers division,” Massey said on the Senate floor.
Although McKenzie’s attacker has been charged, he continues to live in fear as a Black resident in a state that has yet to pass comprehensive hate crime legislation.
“The subliminal message that says if you’re racist and you want to commit a crime and target somebody for their race, gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or whatever it is, you can do it here,” McKenzie’s attorney, Tyler Bailey, said.
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