Essay On Hate Crimes
Imagine walking down the street and someone threatens to kill you because they don’t like the fact you are different, look different or believe in different things. Disliking someone is one thing, but hating someone is another. Understanding that hate is a very powerful word, when someone hates something they tend to show their emotions by presenting multiple hate crimes or speeches. A hate crime is a crime that is committed by a person or a group of people with the intentions to cause offense, threaten and/or murder people because they are different than them. In terms of different, the individual has a different skin color, practices a different religion, their sexual orientation isn’t “right”, their national derivation, have disabilities,
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and many more. A prime example of a hate crime would be the sordid murder of more than 120 people in Paris because they were Muslim, the hate crime involving African American students at the University of Missouri or the nine black church congregants who were killed in Charleston, S.C. The history of hate crime has grown to be the biggest elephant in the room. Hate crime isn’t looked at as a serious issue unless someone is hurt, murdered or commits suicide. The term has expanded into world of technology and offenders participates in online hate speeches as well. Hate crimes and hate speeches are historically and internationally known has a crime that everyone is afraid of. As stated in the textbook, the history of hate speech traces back into the history of the United Kingdom and Germany. For an example, “In Germany the political and cultural trauma of Nazism and anti-Semitism served to focus attention upon forms of expression that might contribute towards the revival of racial intolerance and hatred. In the UK, the tensions and conflicts arising from extensive post-war immigration from British Commonwealth countries created political pressures to address the discrimination and hostility directed towards ‘newcomers’ by segments of the majority white population…. (Yard, 99). Similar to Germany and the United Kingdom, America has a lot of history dealing with hate crimes and hate speech. In the United States, the Civil rights movement of 1960s, motivated an assortment of anti-discrimination events aimed at understanding the goal of social enclosure for African-Americans and overcame a legacy of bias originating from the era of slavery. As of 1999, 45 states had passed “hate crime” or “bias crime” laws, which are also known as laws that create or enhance penalties for crimes driven by the victim’s race, religion, or other protected categories (Gan, 674).
There were many cases that made the United States change their laws. For example,
“In the United States capitol, the District of Columbia, the press labelled two separate crimes as hate crimes in the fall of 2008 with very different prosecutorial outcomes. Within a month, two gay men were attacked in the streets after hours near nightclubs – one a Black gay man, the other a White gay man. The incidents involved Black assailants who spouted homophobic epithets during the violent attacks. In one, the (Black) victim was robbed and killed; in the other, the (White) victim was knocked unconscious (Spielendder, 123).”
Both crimes were horrendous, but the judge didn’t label them as a hate crime, because they judge didn’t know how to properly determine what a “hate crime” was. The United States has taken steps to permit racist speech that was once forbidden, it has also developed hate crime statutes that enhance penalties for crimes ‘motivated by bias toward individuals or groups based on particular status characteristics such as race, religion, ancestry, sexual orientation, or gender’ (Jenness and Grattet 2001
).
Hate crime has drastically changed over the years. For example, during the 21st century, the internet is a commonplace were hate crime offenders express their opinions. An estimation of the number of hate-related websites and pages range from several hundred to more than 10,000 (Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2009). The rise of the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube created greater opportunities for extremist to spread their views. There are also extremist electronic mailing lists, chat groups, blogs who participant on online hate speech (Gretstieled, 117). During the 1980s, most Americans had heard of the internet groups such as WAR, who created electronic bulletin boards to write racial slurs and religion hate comments about any and every one (Gretstieled, 117). The way hate crimes compares to a traditional crime is that it is similar to a traditional criminal offense like murder, arson, invasion of privacy or vandalism with an added element of bias towards a federally protected class of people.
The crime occurs in small towns and large cities. According to the FBI, “the highest percentage of reported hate crimes (32%) occurred on or near residential properties. The FBI also reported that 19% of hate crimes committed took place on highways, roads, alleys, or streets. Another 11% of those crimes took place at schools and colleges, while 28% were widely distributed across different locations.” They involve everything from simple graffiti, online hate speech to brutal murders. They may be called hate crimes, bias crimes, civil rights crimes, or ethnic intimidation. (Gretstienfiled 2).
Hate crimes are committed because of many different reasons and different motives. A person participants in hate crimes because they are emotionally challenge and feel as if their voices aren’t being heard. Some hate crimes occur because the person who is hateful doesn’t understand that there are different opinions and beliefs in the world. Lakhpreet Kaur from the Huffington Post, wrote an article regarding an offenders motives behind committing a hate crime. She stated, “When people face a crisis or feel threatened by "outsiders," some feel they need to "protect" themselves. Some revert to an unfortunate human tendency: to protect their own group while finding a scapegoat to blame the problem on.”
One study found that perpetrators of hate crimes had four general motivations: thrill-seeking defensive, retaliatory and mission. According to the FBI, the majority of perpetrators are white men. Furthermore, psychologist Dr. Edward Dunbar found that those who commit hate crimes have high levels of aggression and antisocial behavior. These offenders are psychologically disturbed individuals with a childhood history of abuse says Dunbar. They are "...very problematic members of our community who pose a huge risk for future violence." Another study found that a subsection of offenders of hate crimes view non-whites as a threat to white hegemony and their idea of American cultural integrity (Kaur, 2015).
The victims of hate crimes can be any and every one. The victim’s characteristics ranges from different races, to different beliefs, different political beliefs and many more. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, race is the most common motivating factor in hate crime offending reported to the police (61 percent), followed by religion (14 percent), sexual orientation (13 percent), ethnicity (11 percent), and victim disability (1 percent). In racially motivated offenses, 60 percent targeted blacks and 30 percent targeted whites. Therefore, the individual or the group of people take their anger out on a victim(s) because they feel as if that is the only solution to their problem. The physical, psychological and emotional harm that hate crimes and hate speeches causes on the victims ranges from PTSD all the way to committing suicide. As stated by Doug Meyer, “Subsequent research has found that victims of hate crime report more trauma-related symptoms…..Psychological studies of hate crime victims have undoubtedly revealed the degree to which hate-motivated violence may have traumatic psychological effects. Nevertheless, these studies generally suggest that hate crime may ‘hurt more’ than other forms of violence….” (Meyer, 981).
In in 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was passed. This Act required greater penalties for violent crimes, including hate crimes, which were based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of the victims. However, this Act only increased the penalties for hate crimes but did not eliminate the restriction stated in the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Law, which required that the victims must be engaged in a federally protected activity when such violations occur. In 1998, 3 years after the enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Matthew Shepard incident occurred. Eleven years after Shepard’s death, on October 28, 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This Act expanded the existing U.S. hate crime laws to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability. There are a lot of organizations that work with victims of hate crime and are also against it. For example, Partners Against Hate, is an organization that works with the Anti-Defamation team, the Leadership Conference Education Fund, and the Center for Preventing Hate to help education teenagers and adults about the seriousness of hate crimes in general. There are also a lot of college campuses that have focus groups to help everyone of any race, discuss the issues of hate crime because anyone can be a victim.
and many more. A prime example of a hate crime would be the sordid murder of more than 120 people in Paris because they were Muslim, the hate crime involving African American students at the University of Missouri or the nine black church congregants who were killed in Charleston, S.C. The history of hate crime has grown to be the biggest elephant in the room. Hate crime isn’t looked at as a serious issue unless someone is hurt, murdered or commits suicide. The term has expanded into world of technology and offenders participates in online hate speeches as well. Hate crimes and hate speeches are historically and internationally known has a crime that everyone is afraid of. As stated in the textbook, the history of hate speech traces back into the history of the United Kingdom and Germany. For an example, “In Germany the political and cultural trauma of Nazism and anti-Semitism served to focus attention upon forms of expression that might contribute towards the revival of racial intolerance and hatred. In the UK, the tensions and conflicts arising from extensive post-war immigration from British Commonwealth countries created political pressures to address the discrimination and hostility directed towards ‘newcomers’ by segments of the majority white population…. (Yard, 99). Similar to Germany and the United Kingdom, America has a lot of history dealing with hate crimes and hate speech. In the United States, the Civil rights movement of 1960s, motivated an assortment of anti-discrimination events aimed at understanding the goal of social enclosure for African-Americans and overcame a legacy of bias originating from the era of slavery. As of 1999, 45 states had passed “hate crime” or “bias crime” laws, which are also known as laws that create or enhance penalties for crimes driven by the victim’s race, religion, or other protected categories (Gan, 674).
There were many cases that made the United States change their laws. For example,
“In the United States capitol, the District of Columbia, the press labelled two separate crimes as hate crimes in the fall of 2008 with very different prosecutorial outcomes. Within a month, two gay men were attacked in the streets after hours near nightclubs – one a Black gay man, the other a White gay man. The incidents involved Black assailants who spouted homophobic epithets during the violent attacks. In one, the (Black) victim was robbed and killed; in the other, the (White) victim was knocked unconscious (Spielendder, 123).”
Both crimes were horrendous, but the judge didn’t label them as a hate crime, because they judge didn’t know how to properly determine what a “hate crime” was. The United States has taken steps to permit racist speech that was once forbidden, it has also developed hate crime statutes that enhance penalties for crimes ‘motivated by bias toward individuals or groups based on particular status characteristics such as race, religion, ancestry, sexual orientation, or gender’ (Jenness and Grattet 2001
).
Hate crime has drastically changed over the years. For example, during the 21st century, the internet is a commonplace were hate crime offenders express their opinions. An estimation of the number of hate-related websites and pages range from several hundred to more than 10,000 (Simon Wiesenthal Center, 2009). The rise of the use of social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and YouTube created greater opportunities for extremist to spread their views. There are also extremist electronic mailing lists, chat groups, blogs who participant on online hate speech (Gretstieled, 117). During the 1980s, most Americans had heard of the internet groups such as WAR, who created electronic bulletin boards to write racial slurs and religion hate comments about any and every one (Gretstieled, 117). The way hate crimes compares to a traditional crime is that it is similar to a traditional criminal offense like murder, arson, invasion of privacy or vandalism with an added element of bias towards a federally protected class of people.
The crime occurs in small towns and large cities. According to the FBI, “the highest percentage of reported hate crimes (32%) occurred on or near residential properties. The FBI also reported that 19% of hate crimes committed took place on highways, roads, alleys, or streets. Another 11% of those crimes took place at schools and colleges, while 28% were widely distributed across different locations.” They involve everything from simple graffiti, online hate speech to brutal murders. They may be called hate crimes, bias crimes, civil rights crimes, or ethnic intimidation. (Gretstienfiled 2).
Hate crimes are committed because of many different reasons and different motives. A person participants in hate crimes because they are emotionally challenge and feel as if their voices aren’t being heard. Some hate crimes occur because the person who is hateful doesn’t understand that there are different opinions and beliefs in the world. Lakhpreet Kaur from the Huffington Post, wrote an article regarding an offenders motives behind committing a hate crime. She stated, “When people face a crisis or feel threatened by "outsiders," some feel they need to "protect" themselves. Some revert to an unfortunate human tendency: to protect their own group while finding a scapegoat to blame the problem on.”
One study found that perpetrators of hate crimes had four general motivations: thrill-seeking defensive, retaliatory and mission. According to the FBI, the majority of perpetrators are white men. Furthermore, psychologist Dr. Edward Dunbar found that those who commit hate crimes have high levels of aggression and antisocial behavior. These offenders are psychologically disturbed individuals with a childhood history of abuse says Dunbar. They are "...very problematic members of our community who pose a huge risk for future violence." Another study found that a subsection of offenders of hate crimes view non-whites as a threat to white hegemony and their idea of American cultural integrity (Kaur, 2015).
The victims of hate crimes can be any and every one. The victim’s characteristics ranges from different races, to different beliefs, different political beliefs and many more. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, race is the most common motivating factor in hate crime offending reported to the police (61 percent), followed by religion (14 percent), sexual orientation (13 percent), ethnicity (11 percent), and victim disability (1 percent). In racially motivated offenses, 60 percent targeted blacks and 30 percent targeted whites. Therefore, the individual or the group of people take their anger out on a victim(s) because they feel as if that is the only solution to their problem. The physical, psychological and emotional harm that hate crimes and hate speeches causes on the victims ranges from PTSD all the way to committing suicide. As stated by Doug Meyer, “Subsequent research has found that victims of hate crime report more trauma-related symptoms…..Psychological studies of hate crime victims have undoubtedly revealed the degree to which hate-motivated violence may have traumatic psychological effects. Nevertheless, these studies generally suggest that hate crime may ‘hurt more’ than other forms of violence….” (Meyer, 981).
In in 1994, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act was passed. This Act required greater penalties for violent crimes, including hate crimes, which were based on the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of the victims. However, this Act only increased the penalties for hate crimes but did not eliminate the restriction stated in the 1964 Federal Civil Rights Law, which required that the victims must be engaged in a federally protected activity when such violations occur. In 1998, 3 years after the enactment of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, the Matthew Shepard incident occurred. Eleven years after Shepard’s death, on October 28, 2009, President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. This Act expanded the existing U.S. hate crime laws to include crimes motivated by a victim’s actual or perceived gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability. There are a lot of organizations that work with victims of hate crime and are also against it. For example, Partners Against Hate, is an organization that works with the Anti-Defamation team, the Leadership Conference Education Fund, and the Center for Preventing Hate to help education teenagers and adults about the seriousness of hate crimes in general. There are also a lot of college campuses that have focus groups to help everyone of any race, discuss the issues of hate crime because anyone can be a victim.