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Hate Crimes

What is a hate crime?

  • While legal definitions vary state by state, hate crimes are criminal acts motivated, in whole or in part, by bias against the perceived race, religion, national origin, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, age, or disability of the victim

  • Perpetrators commonly use hate speech - slang, slurs, or other derogatory language -in the course of committing their crimes

  • Hate crimes include
    • Personal crimes of violence such as physical assaults, assaults with weapons, robbery, rape, murder, harassment and intimidation
    • Crimes against property such as vandalism and arson - against homes, businesses, and places of worship etc

  • Hate crimes may be committed anywhere - in homes, schools, offices, public buildings, parks, streets etc

Understanding Hate Crimes

  • Crimes motivated by bias and hate are always rooted in intolerance and ignorance, if not bigotry and racism

  • A critical hallmark of these crimes is the adoption by perpetrators of negative stereotypes - the attribution of negative characteristics to all members of a group - to enable them to turn innocent people into legitimate targets for attack at will.

  • Hostile stereotyping allows perpetrators to impose collective blame on a whole group for harm, incidents, or situations committed (or allegedly committed) by a few of its members. Persons innocent of all wrongdoing are held guilty by association, simply by virtue of their identity as members the group.

  • Hate crimes are part of the daily experience of many immigrant, ethnic, religious, and other minority groups in America, but fear and anger provoked by external events can quickly increase the number of incidents that particular groups experience. For example, in the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, hundreds of South Asians, Arabs, and Muslims reportedly became targets of violence, harassment, and intimidation.

  • Individuals singled out for attack are not always correctly identified - Sikhs and Hindus may be taken for Muslims, South Asians for Arabs, heterosexual men for gay men - but the violence and intimidation, nonetheless, constitute hate crimes.

  • Hate crimes affect whole communities - sending messages not only to individual victims, but to the all members of the victim's particular community. They create widespread fear in targeted populations through violence and intimidation perpetrated against individuals.

  • Hate crimes affect society as a whole in a fundamental way because they attack America's democratic principles and threaten to undermine our ideals of tolerance, religious freedom, diversity, and equal treatment.

Are hate crimes a serious problem in America?

  • Hate crimes are widespread although they often go unreported, unrecorded, and uninvestigated

  • In 1999, a total of 7,876 hate crime incidents were reported to law enforcement (2)
    • The overwhelming majority (4,295) of these crimes were racially motivated
    • The second two largest categories were crimes motivated (1) by hatred of the victim's religion and (2) by the victim's presumed sexual orientation

  • There were 457 active hate groups in the United States in 1999 (1)
    • 138 can be categorized as Ku Klux Klan groups
    • 130 as Neo Nazis, 40 as Racist Skinheads
    • 46 as Christian Identity groups
    • 21 as Black Separatists the remaining
    • 82 as "other"

  • There were a total of 305 hate web sites on the Internet in early 2000 (2)

  • There have been disturbing news reports about increases in the incidence of hate crimes perpetrated against Arab-Americans, Muslims, and South Asians since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. There were similar attacks on members of these communities at the time of the Gulf war against Iraq.

Victim Reactions to Hate Crimes

  • The responses of individual victims vary

  • Victim reactions are likely to be influenced by a variety of factors including the nature and duration of the crime, the victim's age, prior history of victimization, personal resilience, family and social environment, access to support networks (including victim services), the response of law enforcement, and many others.

  • Responses of victims are similar to those of victims of any crime, and include:
    • Fear - for themselves, their families, their communities, their livelihoods, their way of life
    • Suspicion - for example, of phone calls, strangers at the door
    • Sadness
    • Anxiety
    • Depression
    • Anger
    • Alienation
    • Feelings of powerlessness and vulnerability
    • Loss of trust
    • Feelings of betrayal and injustice
    • Loss of confidence in law enforcement/whole criminal justice system
    • Fear that the criminal justice system is also biased against the group the victim belongs to
    • Changes of life-style - limiting their activities and where they go, staying at home as much as possible, not going out alone, not letting children go out alone
    • Feelings of stress
    • Self-blame
    • Self-hatred

How to help victims and combat hate crime

  • Show victims - and their communities - you care about what happened to them

  • Promote racial and religious tolerance and cross-cultural understanding and respect

  • Be alert to their needs for help, support, and encouragement

  • Reach out and reassure victims, their families, and their communities that they aren't alone

  • Encourage victims to make decisions that may help them regain a sense of safety and control - for example
    • Reporting the crime to the police
    • Working with local law enforcement to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrator
    • Investigating local resources/accessing services that might help them recover and rebuild their lives
    • Becoming involved with community organizations to improve community safety
    • Helping to educate the public about hate crimes, becoming an activist in the fight against hate crimes

  • Encourage local law enforcement to treat hate crimes with the seriousness they deserve

  • Stand against any form of "vigilante justice"

  • Join forces with individuals and groups in your community who are speaking out against intolerance and bigotry

  • Help educate the public to be respectful of those whose race, religious beliefs, cultural traditions, lifestyles, and values differ from their own

  • Help improve community relations by creating new forums/systems to resolve inter-group conflicts peacefully

  • Educate yourself and raise awareness about the goals and activities of organized hate groups

  • Actively reaffirm your belief in America's democratic principles and ideals of tolerance, diversity, and social equality

1 Southern Poverty Law Center, Spring 2000
2 Ibid.

©2001 The National Center for Victims of Crime
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