During the 1980s, the AIDS crisis unleashed a torrent of animosity against gays and lesbians. As hatred rose, so too did physical assaults. Most of the perpetrators were teenagers, who did not just torment queer adults – they also directed their anger and hatred at their peers. As a result, a substantial percentage of gay and lesbian youth dropped out of school, abused alcohol and drugs, and attempted suicide. Two types of violence consequently plagued queer life: violence from attackers and self-harm. Some advocates responded by focusing on preventing attacks on the streets. They worked with police to improve their responses and lobbied legislators to enact hate crimes protections, which helped make antiqueer violence visible. Others, typically teachers and parents of queer children, focused on creating support systems in schools, so that gay and lesbian teens would not give up hope for a better future.

Gay and lesbian rights groups had tried to combat violence by legislating against hate and supporting queer students in schools, but these projects did not address the root of the violence – the prejudice and hatred that children learned at an early age. To forestall hate crimes, queer rights advocates consequently turned their attention to educational curricula, lobbying schools to identify same-sex sexuality as a matter of benign difference. These advocates met with intense resistance, which restricted their ability to secure even limited reforms. What ultimately transformed the social and legal landscape were the straight family members of gays and lesbians, who came out in droves in the 1990s. These mothers and fathers drew national attention to the plight of their sons and daughters, helping make violence visible. They also helped the country see that support for families and support for gay and lesbian rights were one and the same.

Part Three: “Solidarity/Disavowal,” looks at how Asian Americans developed a distinct political subjectivity during the Asian American movement, against the backdrop of emergent Black Power and the nation’s imminent turn toward mass incarceration. Asian American activists and thinkers denounced white supremacy and expressed solidarity with Black people under the Third World rubric, but they did not theorize structural anti-Blackness or recognize their own not-Blackness. Reproducing the fallacy of minority equivalence, their half-finished critique has hampered Asian Americans’ ability to understand and respond to numerous Asian–Black conflicts that have unfolded in the post-movement era—including the Los Angeles rebellion of 1992, the controversy around NYPD Officer Peter Liang’s killing of Akai Gurley in New York City in 2014, and protracted tensions over race-conscious admissions in secondary and higher education, culminating in the anti-affirmative action lawsuit Students For Fair Admissions v. Harvard. With the dramatic rise of a right-wing Chinese immigrant politics that seeks to dismantle affirmative action once and for all, the ethical–political crisis that has always faced Asian Americans—namely, what they should do about being participant–beneficiaries in an anti-Black order—has become more urgent than ever.

This chapter explores philosophical contributions to international criminal law, focusing in particular on analyses of the concept of a crime against humanity and the justifiability of universal jurisdiction over those who commit such a crime.In what sense, if any, are crimes against humanity wrongs done to “humanity?”Does the label "crime against humanity" refer to a distinctive wrong committed by those who perform such acts?If not, what distinguishes crimes against humanity from other types of crime?The first half of this chapter critically examines several competing accounts of the concept of a crime against humanity and the answers they provide to these questions.The remainder of the chapter considers two approaches to justifying the international prosecution of crimes against humanity.The first grounds it in the dangers that such crimes pose to all human beings, while the second appeals to an (emerging) moral or political global community that makes perpetrators of crimes against humanity answerable to courts that act on behalf of all humanity.