hate crime informative essay

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Overview of Hate Crime

Hate crimes (also known as “bias crimes”) are recognized as a distinct category of crimes that have a broader effect than most other kinds of crimes because the victims are not only the crime’s immediate target but also others like them.

The FBI defines hate crimes as “criminal offense[s] against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” [1] Most states and U.S. territories have hate crime statutes enforced by state and local law enforcement; however, the laws and definitions vary widely across jurisdictions with regard to bias motivations (e.g. religion, race, sexual orientation, gender identity, the crimes covered, and the penalty enhancements. [2] For example, forty-seven states and the District of Columbia include race/color as a bias category, while 15 states and the District of Columbia include gender identity.

In 2019, 15,588 law enforcement agencies reported 7,103 single-bias incidents (incidents motivated by one bias) that involved 8,302 offenses and 8,552 victims, and 211 multiple-bias incidents (incidents motivated by two or more biases) that involved 257 offenses 260 victims. [3]

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is dedicated to preventing and fighting hate crimes. DOJ works to prevent hate crimes by supporting community education and dialogue, and providing support, technical assistance, and funding to state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies and service providers. DOJ investigates and prosecutes federal hate crimes, which are defined through five federal statutes: [5]

The Shepard Byrd Act, 18 U.S.C § 249.
Criminal Interference with Right to Fair Housing, 42 U.S.C. § 3631.
Church Arson Prevention Act, 18 U.S.C. § 247.
Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights, 18 U.S.C. §245.
Conspiracy Against Rights, 18 U.S.C. 241 .

From October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2019, U.S. attorneys investigated 1,864 suspects in federal hate crime matters. [6] Additionally, DOJ collects national hate crime data in accordance with the Hate Crimes Statistics Act , 28 U.S.C. § 534 , through two data collections:

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
The National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) , formerly the Uniform Crime Reporting UCR) Program.

Research on Hate Crimes

In 2005, NIJ commissioned a report reviewing hate crime literature and legislation and convened experts to identify key gaps in research. [7] Building on this report, NIJ has supported research and evaluation on hate crimes within several priority areas, including:

Hate crime measurement.
Victimization research with specific, localized populations of interest.
Exploring the use of non-traditional data sources to examine trends and predict hate crimes.
Identifying the characteristics of persons who commit hate crimes.
Research to assist police and prosecutors in responding to, investigating, and prosecuting hate crimes.

[note 1] “Defining a Hate Crime,” FBI.gov, accessed August 29, 2021, https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/civil-rights/hate-crimes#Definition .

[note 2] “Federal Laws and Statutes,” United States Department of Justice, accessed August 29, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/laws-and-policies# .

[note 3] “2019 Hate Crime Statistics: Incidents and Offenses,” FBI: UCR, accessed August 29, 2021, https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses .

[note 4] “2019 Hate Crime Statistics: Victims,” FBI: UCR, accessed, August 29, 2021, https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/victims

[note 5] “Federal Laws and Statutes,” United States Department of Justice, accessed August 29, 2021, https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/laws-and-policies

[note 6] Motivans, Mark, “Federal Hate Crime Prosecutions, 2005 – 19” , Bureau of Justice Statistics, July 2021.

[note 7] Shively, M. " Study of Literature and Legislation on Hate Crime in America ." Final report submitted to the National Institute of Justice, June 2005, NCJ 210300.

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Essays on Hate Crime

Writing a hate crime essay in today's world is more relevant to the current situation than ever. Societies around the world have been battling hate crimes for decades, but despite small victories along the way, the war remains very much ongoing. The reasons behind most hate crimes are racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religion – many hate crime essays are concerned with these topics. Our samples of essays on hate crimes help students to become more acquainted with the subject and benefit their writing considerably. Check out different hate crime essay samples below for basic guidelines on your essay. We also prepare essays for those who are unfamiliar with the topic or unable to dedicate enough time to complete the task on a high level.

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Justice and fairness are predicated on the concept of natural and equal rights for all men and women, rather than on the characteristics they exhibit. A hate crime does not always refer to criminal behaviors motivated by hatred, but rather violent crimes motivated by sexual, racial, or other forms of...

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Hate crime laws continue to exist to protect citizens in the United States from bias. This treatment of people of diverse religious beliefs, race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, and handicap (Ralph, Capewell, and Bonnett, 2016) is still illegal under federal law. Furthermore, law enforcement remains under the jurisdiction of the...

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Omar Mateen, a twenty-nine-year-old security guard, opened fire on a gay club in Orlando in June 2016, killing 49 people and injured 58 more. This incident was extensively characterized in the media as a hate crime or a terrorist attack, prompting the law enforcement authorities on the scene to shoot...

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Terrorism and Motivations: Behavioral and Psychological Perspectives Terrorism stands out as a global pandemic with a level one security priority. The unfavorable outcome of terror plots raises more questions about the motivations and identities of the perpetrators. One major speculation appears to be the innate motivations for terrorism. Regardless, the investigation...

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Religion is described as the collection of dogmas, values, practices, and feelings that describe the relationship between divinity and humans. The majority of religious sects are founded on an idealized account of a country or a prophet who taught his disciples the ideals of life (Atheisme.free.fr, 2018). Hindus, Muslims, Christians,...

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Hate Crime and its Impact on Society Hate crime is described as a violent act in which the victim is motivated by an intention to harm others of a certain faith, ethnicity, or gender. There has been a substantial rise in terrorist attacks across the world over the last three decades,...

Misogyny is described as disdain for, disgust for, or prejudice toward girls or women. Racial objectification, brutality against females, disenfranchisement of minorities, belittling of women, male privilege, sexism, androcentrism, hatred, sex discernment, and gender inequality are both manifestations of misogyny. A hate crime is described as a partiality-driven misconduct that...

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The Anxiety of Being Asian American: Hate Crimes and Negative Biases During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Published: 10 June 2020
Volume 45 , pages 636–646, ( 2020 )

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Hannah Tessler 1 ,
Meera Choi 1 &
Grace Kao 1

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In this essay, we review how the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic that began in the United States in early 2020 has elevated the risks of Asian Americans to hate crimes and Asian American businesses to vandalism. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the incidents of negative bias and microaggressions against Asian Americans have also increased. COVID-19 is directly linked to China, not just in terms of the origins of the disease, but also in the coverage of it. Because Asian Americans have historically been viewed as perpetually foreign no matter how long they have lived in the United States, we posit that it has been relatively easy for people to treat Chinese or Asian Americans as the physical embodiment of foreignness and disease. We examine the historical antecedents that link Asian Americans to infectious diseases. Finally, we contemplate the possibility that these experiences will lead to a reinvigoration of a panethnic Asian American identity and social movement.

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Introduction

COVID-19 (or the coronavirus) is a global pandemic that has affected the everyday lives of hundreds of millions of people. At the time we write this, there have been over four million cases across over 200 countries worldwide (Pettersson, Manley, & Hern, 2020 ) . Moreover, pervasive stay-at-home orders and calls for social distancing, as well as the disruptions to every facet of our lives make it difficult to overstate the importance of COVID-19. As the beginning of the outbreak has been traced to China (and Wuhan in particular), both in the United States and elsewhere, people who are Chinese or seen as East Asian have become associated with this contagious disease. Early reports in the United States were often accompanied by stock photos of Asians in masks (Burton, 2020 ; Walker, 2020 ). Many of the first reports labeled the disease as the “Wuhan Virus,” or “Chinese Virus,” and the Trump administration has also used these terms (Levenson, 2020 ; Maitra, 2020 ; Marquardt & Hansler, 2020 ; Rogers, Jakes, & Swanson, 2020 ; Schwartz, 2020 ). News media coverage in the United States focused on the hygiene of the seafood market in Wuhan and wild animal consumption as a possible cause of coronavirus (Gomera, 2020 ; Mackenzie & Smith, 2020 ). Memes and jokes about bats and China flooded social media, including posts by our peers online. These reports provide the American public a straightforward narrative that focuses on China as the origin of COVID-19.

In this paper, we review current patterns of hate crimes, microaggressions, and other negative responses against Asian individuals and businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. These hate crimes and bias incidents occur in the landscape of American racism in which Asian Americans are seen as the embodiment of China and potential carriers of COVID-19, regardless of their ethnicity or generational status. We believe that Asian Americans not only are not “honorary whites,” but their very status as Americans is, at best, precarious, and at worst, in doubt during the COVID-19 crisis. We suggest that what we witness today is an extension of the history of Asians in the United States and that this experience may lead to the reemergence of a vibrant panethnic Asian American identity.

Hate Crimes Against Asian Americans During COVID-19

As of early May 2020, there have been over 1.8 million individuals who have tested positive for and over 105,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States alone and the numbers are growing rapidly every day (“Cases in the U.S.,” 2020 ). Although researchers have traced cases of the virus in the United States to travelers from Europe (Gonzalez-Reiche et al., 2020 ) and to travelers within the United States (Fauver et al., 2020 ), some members of the general public regard Asian Americans with suspicion and as carriers of the disease. On April 28th, 2020, NBC News reported that 30% of Americans have personally witnessed someone blaming Asians for the coronavirus (Ellerbeck, 2020 ).

The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the negative perceptions of Asian Americans that have long been prevalent in American society. Many individuals in the United States see the virus as foreign and condemn phenotypically Asian bodies as the spreaders of the virus (Ellerbeck, 2020 ). Consistent with Claire Jean Kim’s theory on racial triangulation (Kim, 1999 ) and the concept of Asians as perpetual foreigners (Ancheta, 2006 ; Saito, 1997 ; Tuan, 1998 ; E. D. Wu, 2015 ) , we posit that during COVID-19, the racial positionality of Asian Americans as foreign and Other persists, and that this pernicious designation may be a threat to the safety and mental health of Asian Americans. They are not only at risk of exposure to COVID-19, but they must contend with the additional risk of victimization, which may increase their anxiety. Historically, from the late 19th through the mid twentieth century, popular culture and news media portrayed Asians in America as the “Yellow Peril,” which symbolized the Western fear of uncivilized, nonwhite Asian invasion and domination (Okihiro, 2014 ; Saito, 1997 ) . It is possible that the perceived threat of the Yellow Peril has reemerged in the time of COVID-19.

The spread of the coronavirus and the increased severity of the pandemic has caused fear and panic for most Americans, as COVID-19 has brought about physical restrictions and financial hardships. So far, forty-two states have issued stay-at-home orders, which has resulted in 95% of the American population facing restrictions that impact their daily lives (Woodward, 2020 ). Novel efforts to end the pandemic across the states have led businesses to shut down. As a result, more than 30 million people in the United States have filed for unemployment since the onset of the coronavirus crisis (Gura, 2020 ). Because this virus has been identified as foreign, for some individuals, their feelings have been expressed as xenophobia, prejudice, and violence against Asian Americans. These negative perceptions and actions have gained traction due to the unprecedented impact COVID-19 has on people’s lives, and institutions such as UC Berkeley have even normalized these reactions (Chiu, 2020 ). However, racism and xenophobia are not a “natural” reaction to the threat of the virus; rather, we speculate that the historical legacies of whiteness and citizenship have produced these reactions, where many individuals may interpret Asian Americans as foreign and presenting a higher risk of transmission of the disease.

Already, the FBI has issued a warning that due to COVID-19, there may be increased hate crimes against Asian Americans, because “a portion of the US public will associate COVID-19 with China and Asian American populations” (Margolin, 2020 ). News reports, police departments, and community organizations have been documenting these incidents. Evidence suggests that the FBI’s warning was warranted. Based on reporting from Stop AAPI Hate , in the one-month period from March 19th to April 23rd, there were nearly 1500 alleged instances of anti-Asian bias (Jeung & Nham, 2020 ). The reported incidents have been concentrated in New York and California, with 42% of the reports hailing from California and 17% of reports from New York, but Asian Americans in 45 states across the nation have reported incidents (Jeung & Nham, 2020 ).

Reports of Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents

There have been a large number of physical assaults against Asian Americans and ethnically Asian individuals in the United States directly related to COVID-19. While the majority of Americans are sheltering-in-place and staying at home, 80% of the self-reported anti-Asian incidents have taken place outside people’s private residences, in grocery stores, local businesses, and public places (Jeung & Nham, 2020 ). We suggest that these hate crimes and other incidents of bias have historical roots that have placed Asians outside the boundaries of whiteness and American citizenship. In addition, we believe that the current COVID-19 crisis draws attention to ongoing racial issues and provides a lens through which to challenge the notion of America as a post-racial society (Bonilla-Silva, 2006 ).

One of the incidents under investigation as a hate crime includes the attempted murder of a Burmese-American family at a Sam’s Club in Midland, Texas (Yam, 2020a ). The suspect said that he stabbed the father, a four-year-old child, and a two-year-old child because he “thought the family was Chinese, and infecting people with coronavirus” (Yam, 2020a ). Police are investigating numerous other physical incidents including attacks with acid (Moore & Cassady, 2020 ), an umbrella (Madani, 2020 ), and a log (Kang, 2020 ). There have been a number of physical altercations at bus stops (Bensimon, 2020 ; Madani, 2020 ), subway stations (Parnell, 2020 ), convenience stores (Oliveira, 2020 ), and on the street (Jeung & Nham, 2020 ; Sheldon, 2020 ). Asian Americans are also reporting physical threats being made against them (Driscoll, 2020 ; Parascandola, 2020 ). Based on Stop AAPI Hate statistics, 127 Asian Americans filed reports of physical assaults in four weeks (Jeung & Nham, 2020 ), and it is likely that other Asians have not reported their experiences out of fear or concern about the legal process.

In addition to the physical attacks and threats against Asian Americans, individuals have also filed reports of vandalism and property damage targeted at Asian businesses. One Korean restaurant in New York City had the graffiti “stop eating dogs” written on its window (Adams, 2020 ). Perpetrators have also made explicit references to COVID-19 in their vandalism, where phrases such as “take the corona back you ch*nk” (Goodell & Mann, 2020 ), and “watch out for corona” (Wang, 2020 ) have been documented on Asian-owned restaurants. Some of these incidents were not reported to the police and therefore will not be investigated as hate crimes, as business owners reasoned that it would be difficult to track the vandals (Adams, 2020 ; Buscher, 2020 ). These incidents of vandalism demonstrate the association some people make between Asian American businesses and COVID-19.

Beyond the narrow definition of the incidents that can be classified as punishable hate crimes, Asian Americans have also documented a large number of alleged bias and hate incidents. Stop AAPI Hate reports indicate that 70% of coronavirus discrimination against Asian Americans has involved verbal harassment, with over 1000 incidents of verbal harassment reported in just four weeks (Jeung & Nham, 2020 ). In addition, there have been over 90 reports of Asian Americans being coughed or spat on. One prevalent theme in the verbal incidents is the linking of Asian bodies to COVID-19, where the aggressors are purportedly calling Asians “coronavirus,” “Chinese virus,” or “diseased,” and telling them that they should “be quarantined,” or “go back to China” (ADL 2020 ). In all of these incidents, the perpetrators consistently use anti-Asian racial slurs (Buscher, 2020 ; Goodell & Mann, 2020 ; Sheldon, 2020 ). This hateful language that targets all Asians (and not just Chinese Americans) demonstrates the racialization of Asian Americans.

The threat of a global pandemic to people’s everyday lives is something that most Americans have not experienced before. However, the act of interpreting the current national crisis as an external threat and ascribing this danger to Chinese bodies and more broadly Asian bodies should not surprise scholars of Asian Americans. In fact, this deeply-rooted cognitive association of Asian Americans to Asia and to disease has a long history. Hence, we examine the phenomenon of xenophobia against Asian Americans in the context of historical racial dynamics in the United States.

The Color Line and the Positionality of Asian Americans

Race has been posited as a socio-historical concept, and while many race scholars in the United States have focused on the black/white binary, others have documented how Asian Americans have also been racialized over time (Omi & Winant, 2014 ). These scholars have examined how the racialization of Asian Americans has developed in relation to African Americans and white Americans (Bonilla-Silva, 2004 ; Kim, 1999 ). One of the dominant stereotypes of Asian Americans is that they are perpetual foreigners , where individuals directly link phenotypical Asian ethnic appearance with foreignness, regardless of Asian immigrant or generational status (Ancheta, 2006 ; Tuan, 1998 ; F. H. Wu, 2002 ). This stereotype is longstanding in American history and has forcefully re-emerged during the COVID-19 crisis. The perception of an Asian-looking person as simultaneously Chinese, Asian, and foreign underscores how this racial categorization affects all Asian Americans. Thus, we suggest that the concept of Asian American panethnicity (Okamoto & Mora, 2014 ) may be particularly applicable during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The legacy of white supremacy equates white bodies with purity and innocence, while nonwhite bodies are designated as unclean, uncivilized, and dangerous. White supremacy and its tactic of othering Asian bodies has been a consistent recurrence over earlier pandemics. Dating back to the nineteenth century, the bubonic plague was framed as a “racial disease” which only Asian bodies could be infected by whereas white bodies were seen as immune (Randall, 2019 ). In 1899, Honolulu officials quarantined and burned Chinatown as a precaution against the bubonic plague (Mohr, 2004 ). In 1900, San Francisco authorities quarantined Chinatown residents, and regulated food and people in and out of Chinatown, believing that the unclean food and Asian people were the cause of the epidemic (Shah, 2001 ; Trauner, 1978 ). The history of the Yellow Peril has continued throughout the 20th and 21st centuries in the embodied perceptions of Asian immigrants as the spreaders of disease (Molina, 2006 ).

More recently, during the 2003 SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) epidemic, the discourse in the United States focused on Chinatown as the epicenter of the disease (Eichelberger, 2007 ). Studies suggest that 14 % of Americans reported avoiding Asian businesses and Asian Americans experienced increased threat and anxiety during SARS (Blendon, Benson, DesRoches, Raleigh, & Taylor-Clark, 2004 ). We suspect the negative impact of COVID-19 on Asian Americans has been far greater than the impact of SARS. In New York City’s Chinatown, restaurants suffered immediately after the first reports of COVID-19, as some restaurants and businesses experienced up to an 85% drop in profits for the two months prior to March 16th, 2020 – far before any stay-at-home orders were given (Roberts, 2020 ). When moral panic arises, foreign bodies, typically the undesirable and “un-American” yellow bodies, may be seen as a threat that can harm pure white bodies.

The cycle of elevated risk, followed by fearing and blaming what is foreign is not just limited to disease outbreaks, but also occurs during economic downturns. In 1982, Vincent Chin was beaten to death by two men who blamed him for the influx of Japanese cars into the United States auto market. Vincent Chin was attacked with racial slurs and specifically targeted because of his race. Although Chin was Chinese American, in the minds of these two men, he represented the downturn of the auto industry in Detroit and the increased imports of Japanese automobiles (Choy & Tajima-Pena, 1987 ).

Similarly, after the 9/11 attacks in the United States, retaliatory aggressions were not limited to attacks against Arabs or Muslims (Perry, 2003 ). Violence and hatred against the perceived enemy resulted in incidents targeting Sikhs, second and third generation Indian Americans, and even Lebanese and Greeks (Perry, 2003 ). More recently, the hate crime murder of Srinivas Kuchibhotla, an Indian immigrant falsely assumed to be an Iranian terrorist and told “get out of my country” before being shot to death, illustrates the association between racialized perceptions of threat and incidents of violence (Fuchs 2018 ). With the COVID-19 pandemic, violent attacks and racial discrimination against Asian Americans have emerged as non-Asian Americans look for someone or something Asian to blame for their anger and fear about illness, economic insecurity, and stay-at-home orders.

Fear and the Mental Health of Asian Americans

The current perceptions of China and more broadly East Asia as both economic and public health threats have made Chinese and East Asians in America fearful for their own safety. Some Asian Americans have made efforts to hide their Asian identity or assert their status as American in an attempt to prevent hate crime attacks (Buscher, 2020 ; Tang, 2020 ). While this tactic may be effective on the individual level, it does not modify the positionality of Asian bodies during COVID-19. The attempt to distinguish Asian Americans from Asians who are foreign nationals misses the fact that in the United States, being Asians and being foreign are inextricably bound together.

After World War II, news media and local organizations encouraged Chinese Americans to distinguish themselves from the Japanese, and similarly encouraged Japanese Americans to show their Americanness and patriotism to gain acceptance by the white majority (E. D. Wu, 2015 ). Muslim and Sikh Americans displayed American flags after 9/11 to show that they were not a threat to the United States, and more recently there has been a movement to celebrate Sikh Captain America (Ishisaka, 2018 ). Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang suggested that Asian Americans fight against racism by wearing red white and blue and prominently displaying their Americanness (Yang, 2020 ). In many of these situations, these strategies did not directly address the problems of racism and xenophobia – they simply shifted the blame towards another group.

Disease does not differentiate among people based on skin color or national origin, yet many Asian Americans have suffered from discrimination and hatred during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although the threat of the virus is real for all Americans, Asian Americans bear the additional burden of feeling unsafe and vulnerable to attack by others. The link between COVID-19 and hate crimes and bias incidents against Asian Americans is indicative of the widespread racial sentiments which continue to be prominent in American society. While some scholars have gone as far as to regard Asian Americans as “honorary whites” (Tuan, 1998 ), the current COVID-19 crisis has made markedly clear this is an illusion, at best. There are a number of reasons why the racial dynamics of anti-Asian crimes during COVID-19 should be examined more closely.

First, the majority of incidents and attacks have occurred in diverse metropolitan areas such as New York City, Boston, and Los Angeles. These are spaces that most Americans have traditionally regarded as more liberal and tolerant of difference than other parts of the United States. In New York City alone, from the start of the COVID-19 outbreak through April 2020, the NYPD’s hate crime task force has investigated fourteen cases where all the victims were Asian and targeted due to coronavirus discrimination (NYPD, 2020 ). The remarks of a Kansas governor that said his town was safe “because it had only a few Chinese residents” (Lefler & Heying 2020 ) offers one explanation for the high concentration of racial incidents in large cities with sizable Asian populations, but we think that this is not sufficient in explaining the data so far. Future research should track racial bias and hate crimes more systematically in order to further our understanding of how demography and urbanicity influence these incidents.

Second, these hate crimes have increased the anxiety of Asian Americans during already uncertain times, with many fearful for their physical safety when running everyday errands (Tavernise & Oppel Jr., 2020 ). Asian Americans are now self-conscious about “coughing while Asian” (Aratani, 2020 ), and concerned about being targeted for hate crimes (Liu, 2020 ; Wong, 2020 ). There is evidence to suggest that Asian Americans under-report crimes (Allport, 1993 ), and some recent immigrants may lack an understanding of the legal system and process of reporting crimes, particularly in the case of hate crimes. Therefore, scholars should take additional care to document and analyze these incidents and their effects on Asian American communities across the United States.

The possible upward trend of anti-Asian bias incidents and hate crimes is indicative of the growth of white nationalism and xenophobia. The image of a disease carrier with respect to COVID-19 is bound in Asian bodies and includes assumptions about race, ethnicity, and citizenship. As Vincent Chin, Srinivas Kuchibhotla, the Burmese-American family, and many others have shown us, the level of fungibility in terms of how Asian ethnicities are perceived can be deadly. It does not matter if the person is from China, of Chinese origin, or simply looks Asian – the perpetrators of this violence see all of these bodies as foreign and threatening. While there have been numerous instances of anti-Asian bias and crime, there have not been similarly patterned anti-European tourist incidents or an avoidance of Italian restaurants, suggesting that COVID-19 illuminates the particular racialization of disease that extends beyond this virus, and further back in American history.

Already there has been substantial news coverage of these anti-Asian crimes, which suggests that people are paying attention to this issue, and police departments are actively investigating many of these incidents. Activists and community organizations have started online campaigns such as #washthehate and #hateisavirus to combat anti-Asian racism during this time. The BBC has documented 120 distinct news articles covering alleged incidents of discrimination since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic (Cheung, Feng, & Deng, 2020 ). In addition, the Chinese for Affirmative Action and Asian Pacific Policy and Planning Council have created a platform where individuals can record incidents of racism and coronavirus discrimination. The reporting of hate crimes during COVID-19 is superior to the reports of these types of incidents during the SARS outbreak (Leung Coleman, 2020 ; Washer, 2004 ). Although the federal government response has been limited compared to the hate crime prevention initiatives after 9/11 and SARS, in May 2020, the Commission on Civil Rights agreed to take on the demands proposed by a group of Democratic Senators in a letter requesting a stronger response to the anti-Asian hate crimes and discrimination during COVID-19 (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020 ; Yam, 2020b ).

Similar to the murder of Vincent Chin, which served to ignite an Asian American activist movement, we hypothesize that the racial incidents against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic may encourage the political mobilization of a panethnic Asian American movement. At the same time, we believe that the incidents that are classified as “hate crimes” and “bias incidents” based on legal definitions do not fully capture the extent or pervasiveness of racist and xenophobic thoughts against Asian Americans. We encourage future scholars to more closely examine the culturally embedded racial logics that lead to these incidents, rather than focusing solely on the incidents themselves as the object of analysis. The hate crimes against Asians in the time of COVID-19 highlight the ways that Asian Americans continue to be viewed as foreign and suspect. This may be an additional burden on Asian Americans beyond the anxiety, economic instability, and the risk of illness all Americans have experienced during COVID-19.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge support from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the MacMillan Center, and the Council for East Asia at Yale University. We are also grateful for the support of the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2016-LAB-2250002).

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Tessler, H., Choi, M. & Kao, G. The Anxiety of Being Asian American: Hate Crimes and Negative Biases During the COVID-19 Pandemic. Am J Crim Just 45 , 636–646 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09541-5

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Although actions performed with good intentions sometimes lead to unfavorable consequences, this notion applies particularly to things with well-intentioned ideologies. An idea might appear promising on paper, but upon implementation, it may falter. This typically happens because, despite the noble purpose of these ideas, individuals often neglect to consider potential negative consequences that may arise upon their delivery. Hate speech, when criminalized, stands as one example of this phenomenon. Even though outlawing hate speech appears well-intentioned, its actual implementation would […]

Hate Crime in the United States

Executive Summary President Obama assented into law the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which ushered in a new era in the protection of minorities from hate crimes. In the United States, recent events have demonstrated the extent to which the regulation has worked in safeguarding the dignity of all citizens. There has been a tremendous increase in the incidence of hate crimes in major cities all over the nation. In effect, the affected groups continue […]

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What really is a hate crime? A person does some things out of hate which we can see and call as a hate crime. Not everything done out of hate can be called hate crime. For example, if a person speaks bad about other person that can’t be called hate crime. Therefore, not everything can be called hate crime because it has hate in it. Hating a thing is not a hate crime; but, being offensive towards it and going […]

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Sociological Perspectives on Hate Crime

Table of Contents

What is Hate Crime?

The Home Office defines Hate Crime as ‘

‘Any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.’ ( Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2018-19 ).

There are five main characteristics which the police monitor…..

race or ethnicity
religion or beliefs
sexual orientation
transgender identity.

However this is not an exhaustive list and hate crimes can also be committed on the basis of age or gender, and there are calls to include misogyny (hatred of women) as a hate crime.

Hate crimes typically include any of the following acts motivated by ‘hatred’ against any of the above characteristics….

Assault with or without injury
Causing fear, alarm or distress
Criminal Damage

All of these crimes can also be committed in general, but if a victim feels they were motivated by hatred of their religion or gender identity etc. then the police must record the act as a hate crime.

Trends in Hate Crime

Trends in hate crime vary significantly depending on where you get your data…

Police recorded Hate Crime reports that there were 103,379 Hate Crimes in England and Wales in 2018/19, an increase of 50% over the last five years:

However, the 2018-19 Crime Survey for England and Wales shows a decline in Hate Crime the estimated number of hate crime incidents experienced by adults aged 16 has fell by 40 percent from 307,000 in the combined 2007/08 and 2008/09 surveys to 184,000 in the combined 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 surveys.

Thus it’s possibly best to reject the Police Recorded Crime Stats as being invalid as a measurement of the total amount of Hate Crime committed, given that around 50% of CSEW Hate Crimes are not picked up by the police.

Many of the earlier perspectives seem pretty ineffective at explaining this type of crime. You’d probably have a hard time trying to apply Functionalism , for example: by definition these crimes are divisive, and a reflection of conflict in society, rather than social integration, and it’s hard to see how this particular type of crime could be regarded as functional for society or in any way positive.

Similarly with other consensus theories: there’s little evidence that a breakdown of social control, a strain in society, or of subcultures being significant causal factors (at least no more than with any other type of crime) of hate crime… many of these crimes are committed by lone individuals.

It’s possible to apply Interactionism to help understand religiously motivated crime motivated by Islamophobia, given the general negative press coverage of Islam, focussing mainly on infrequent terror attacks when they happen. However, this doesn’t explain hate-crimes agains other religions or minority groups. There’s hardly a moral panic against the LGBT community for example!

Rational Choice Theory (from Right Realism ) could partially explain hate crime – possibly some of the perpetrators feel as if there’s little chance of them being caught harassing their victims because the ‘general public sentiment’ is on their side, so they won’t be reported.

This does seem to be a very postmodern crime – in that it’s a negative response to the increased visibility of minority groups and the increase in Diversity in British culture in recent years, although this is a very general level of theoretical explanation.

Possibly hate crime is a reaction to the increased relative deprivation and a feeling of marginalisation experienced by the perpetrators? Maybe they feel as if everything ‘diverse’ and ‘minority’ is being celebrated and has a place in British Culture but that more traditional British culture now has no place? So maybe there’s a possible application of Left Realism to be made here.

Conclusions>?

Hate Crime is a difficult crime to understand. It seems that many of the perspectives simply don’t apply to it, and those that do only seem to apply at the most general level.

So maybe this is a type of crime that defies sociological explanation?

NB – there may be quite a lot of it, but remember that if you take the CSEW stats, hate crime is actually going down, while the police seem to be getting better at reporting it, so whatever the causes, maybe it’s not all bad?!?

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Home — Essay Samples — Law, Crime & Punishment — Hate Crime — Andrew Sullivan’s “What’s So Bad About Hate”: Examining Hate Crime

Andrew Sullivan's "What's so Bad About Hate": Examining Hate Crime

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A hate crime is a crime committed as an act of prejudice against the person or property of a victim as a result of that victim’s real or perceived membership in a particular group. Many of the most notorious hate crimes have been murders, such as the racially motivated murder of James Byrd, Jr., in Texas in 1998 or the homophobicmotivated murder of Matthew Shepard in North Dakota later that same year. The vast majority of hate crimes, however, are cases of assault or vandalism.

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The critical identifying element of hate crimes is the bias motivation of the perpetrator. The distinguishing factor can be obscured by the very term hate crime , which is the popular term used in connection with bias-motivated violence. In fact, bias crime is a more accurate label. Many if not most crimes are motivated by hatred of one kind or another. Not every crime that is motivated by hatred for the victim is a bias crime. Hatebased violence causes a bias crime only when this hatred is connected with antipathy for a group, such as a racial or ethnic group, or for an individual because of membership in that group. In some form, virtually every state in the United States expressly criminalizes bias crimes.

Elements of Bias Crimes

Bias crime statutes in the United States encompass crimes that are motivated by the race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or religion of the victim. Many reach sexual orientation or gender as well, and some include other categories such as age or disability. Bias crime laws may either create a specific crime of bias-motivated violence or raise the penalty of a crime when committed with bias motivation.

The key factor in identifying an actor as a bias criminal is the motivation for the conduct. Bias crimes are unusual but not unique in their focus on motivation rather than the traditional focus on intent. Some scholars have criticized bias crime laws on this basis, a critique that is addressed below.

There are two analytically distinct, albeit somewhat overlapping models of bias crimes. These models may be referred to as the discriminatory selection model and the group animus model . (In this terminology, group is used to represent all group characteristics that constitute bias crimes, such as ethnicity, race, or religion.)

The discriminatory selection model of bias crimes defines these crimes in terms of the perpetrator’s selection of his victim. It is irrelevant why an offender selected his victim on the basis of race or other group; it is sufficient that the offender did so. The discriminatory selection model received much attention because it was a statute of this model that was upheld by the Supreme Court in Wisconsin v. Mitchell , 508 U.S. 476 (1993). The group animus model of bias crimes defines crimes on the basis of a perpetrator’s animus for the group of the victim and the centrality of this animus in the perpetrator’s motivation for committing the crime. Florida and Massachusetts, among other states, have adopted group animus bias crimes laws. Many and perhaps most cases of discriminatory selection are in fact also cases of group animus bias crimes, but not all. A purse snatcher, for example, who preys solely on women, finding it more efficient to grab purses than to pick wallets out of men’s pockets, would have discriminatorily selected a victim on the basis of gender, but not with group animus.

Most states with bias crime laws have adopted statutes that draw on both models. These laws provide enhanced sentences for crimes committed ‘‘because of ’’ or ‘‘by reason of ’’ the victim’s real or perceived membership in a particular group. Although these statutes lack explicit reference either to discriminatory selection or animus, they share attributes of both. ‘‘Because of ’’ statutes look to the perpetrator’s selection of the victim. In addition, particularly in those states that require a finding of maliciousness, ‘‘because of ’’ statutes are akin to animus as well.

Under any of these models, bias crimes can arise out of mixed motivation where the perpetrator of a violent crime is motivated by a number of different factors in the commission of the crime, bias among them. To constitute a bias crime, the bias motivation must be a substantial motivation for the perpetrator’s criminal conduct. Under the Supreme Court decision in Apprendi v. New Jersey , 120 S.Ct. 2348 (2000), all elements of a bias crime must be submitted to a jury (or judge as a trier of fact) and proven beyond a reasonable doubt; a sentence enhancement for a bias crime may not be imposed on a finding by preponderance of evidence by the sentencing judge.

How Bias Crimes Differ from Other Crimes

The justification for bias crime laws turns primarily on the manner in which bias crimes differ from other crimes. Bias crimes cause greater harm than parallel crimes , that is, those crimes that lack a prejudicial motivation but are otherwise identical to the bias crime. This is true on three levels: harm to the individual victim, the victim’s group or community, and the society at large.

Bias crimes generally have a more harmful emotional and psychological impact on the individual victim. The victim of a bias crime is not attacked for a random reason (e.g., the person injured during a drive-by shooting) nor for an impersonal reason (e.g., the victim of a violent robbery). Rather the victim of a bias crime is attacked for a specific, personal reason: for example, race, religion, ethnicity, or sexual orientation. Moreover, the bias crime victim cannot reasonably minimize the risks of future attacks because the victim is unable to change the characteristic that made him a victim in the first place. The heightened sense of vulnerability caused by bias crimes is beyond that normally found in crime victims. Studies have suggested that the victims of bias crimes tend to experience psychological symptoms such as depression or withdrawal, as well as anxiety, feelings of helplessness, and a profound sense of isolation.

The impact of bias crimes reaches beyond the harm done to the immediate victim or victims of the criminal behavior. There is a more widespread impact on the ‘‘target community’’—that is, the community that shares the race, religion, ethnicity, or other group characteristic of the victim. The target community experiences bias crime in a manner that has no equivalent in the public response to parallel crimes. The reaction of the target community goes beyond mere sympathy with the immediate victim. Members of the target community of a bias crime perceive that crime as if it were an attack on themselves directly and individually.

Finally, the impact of bias crimes may spread beyond the immediate victims and the target community to the general society. This effect may be seen on a number of levels, and includes a spectrum of harms from the very concrete to the most abstract. On the most prosaic level—but by no means least damaging—the isolation effects discussed above have a cumulative effect throughout a community. Members of the community, even those who are sympathetic to the plight of the victim family, may be reluctant to place themselves or their children in harm’s way, and will shy away from socializing with the victims, thus exacerbating the problems associated with social isolation.

Bias crimes cause an even broader injury to the general community. Such crimes violate not only society’s general concern for the security of its members and their property but also the shared value of equality among its citizens and racial and religious harmony in a heterogeneous society. A bias crime is therefore a profound violation of the egalitarian ideal and the antidiscrimination principle that have become fundamental not only to the American legal system but to American culture as well. Indeed, when a legislature defines the groups that are to be included in a bias crime law, it unavoidably makes a normative statement as to the role of certain groups or characteristics. Bias crime laws are concerned with those characteristics that implicate social fissure lines, divisions that run deep into the social history of a culture. Thus every bias crime law in the United States includes race as a category; racial discrimination, with its earliest roots in slavery, is the clearest example of a social fissure line in American society. Strong cases can similarly be made for the other classic bias crime categories—color, ethnicity, religion, and national origin. When a state legislature debates the inclusion of other categories to its bias crime law, the debate is partly over the place of those groups in society. Drafting the scope of a bias crime law is necessarily a process that includes the locating of social fissure lines.

Scope of The Problem

Although there is some reason to believe that the level of bias crimes increased over the last two decades of the twentieth century, it remains difficult to gauge whether the bias crime problem has actually worsened. During the 1980s, public concern over the level of bias-motivated violence in the United States rose dramatically. Such concern and the consequent enactment of bias crime statutes across the United States probably stemmed, at least in part, from an apparent worsening of the bias crime problem. Statistics from both independent and governmental datagathering organizations support the conclusion that bias crime increased over the course of the 1980s and, to a large extent, leveled off during the 1990s. These statistics, however, remain inconsistent and incomplete. Moreover, the statistics gathered toward the end of the 1980s and throughout the early to mid-1990s reflected not only a growth in the bias crime problem, but also a growth in legislative and administrative awareness of the problem.

In general, experts and commentators on bias crime agree that these crimes had, throughout the mid and late 1980s and early 1990s, increased annually. The main organizations that collect data on the subject of bias-motivated violence—the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force—all reported such persistent growth.

In 1990 Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA) in an effort to provide official statistics concerning the level of bias crimes. Under this act, the Department of Justice must collect statistics on the incidence of bias crimes in the United States as a part of its regular information-gathering system. The Attorney General delegated the development and implementation of the HCSA to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program for incorporation among its sixteen thousand voluntary law enforcement agency participants. Beginning with the HCSA’s implementation in 1991 and through the early 1990s, the F.B.I. documented a general rise in bias crimes. However, these figures, like those reported by other data-gathering organizations, remain vulnerable to charges of inaccuracy. Because the F.B.I.’s numbers simply mirror the numbers reported by state and local law enforcement agencies, and because agency participation under the HCSA is voluntary, the completed data more aptly reflect popular perception of the bias crime problem rather than the problem itself.

There is a mutual-feedback relationship between the bias crime problem and both the popular perception and official response to the problem. A perceived increase in bias crime as fostered by independent data-gathering and reporting leads to increased public concern regarding such crimes. Such concern leads, in succession, to legislative and administrative response, to increased official reporting, and, in effect, to an even greater perceived increase in bias crime. Thus, problem and perception conflate, and the apparent growth in bias crime becomes not simply a reflection of increased hatred and apathy (as the statistics alone would suggest) but also an indication of increased understanding and action (as the increased response to the problem suggests).

On the other hand, there is reason to believe that, despite increased bias crime reporting by police agencies, a majority of bias crime victims do not report incidents at all. Victims’ distrust of the police, language barriers, and fear of either retaliation by the offender or public exposure generally may well lead to systemic underreporting of bias crimes.

In addition to all of the problems with measuring the current level of bias crimes, there is a significant problem with establishing a baseline for a meaningful comparison. Data collection on the levels of bias crimes prior to the mid-1980s was virtually nonexistent. For example, it was not until 1978 that the Boston City Police Department became the first law enforcement agency to track bias-motivated crimes; it was not until 1981 that Maryland became the first state to pass a reporting statute.

It is thus not possible to say with confidence the extent to which bias crimes are increasing and the extent to which the increase is one of perception. However, the obvious relationship between perception and problem in no way undercuts the severity of the problem. Whatever the difficulties of measuring bias crime levels with precision, the existence of a serious level of bias-motivated crime is confirmed. Moreover, the mutual-feedback relationship between the level of bias crime and the popular perception of this level does not necessarily undermine a determination of the severity of the problem. As the understanding of what constitutes a bias crime is broadened, that which may have been dismissed as a ‘‘prank’’ in an earlier time is now properly revealed as bias-motivated criminal conduct. This does not mean that bias crimes are being overcounted; rather it means that previously these crimes were undercounted.

Critique of Bias Crimes

The enhanced punishment of bias-motivated violence has been criticized on a number of grounds. One critique argues that bias crime laws punish thoughts and not criminal acts. This critique itself takes two forms: a constitutional argument that bias crime laws violate the First Amendment right to free expression of ideas, and a criminal law theory argument that bias crime laws improperly focus on motivation rather than mens rea. An additional critique, which applies only to federal bias crime laws, involves questions of federalism and the constitutional authority for such legislation.

The free expression challenges to bias crime laws were the subject of a great deal of scholarly attention as well as a number of judicial opinions. Judicial consideration of the issue culminated in two Supreme Court decisions, R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul , 505 U.S. 377 (1992), which struck down a municipal cross-burning ordinance, and Wisconsin v. Mitchell , which upheld a state law that provided for increased penalties for bias crimes. Three general positions have emerged among observers concerning the challenge to bias crime laws based in principles of free expression. One position argues that bias crime laws unconstitutionally punish thought because the increased punishment is due solely to the defendant’s expression of a conviction of which the community disapproves. A second position permits the enhanced punishment of bias crimes, arguing that bias motivations and hate speech are not protected by the First Amendment. Ironically, these two opposing positions share a common premise: that bias crime laws do involve the regulation of expression.

The third position distinguishes between hate speech and bias crimes, protecting the former but permitting the enhanced punishment of the latter. This has been understood in two related ways. One approach is based on the distinction between speech and conduct, protecting hate speech as the former and punishing bias crimes as the latter. This is the approach adopted by the Court in Wisconsin v. Mitchell . An alternative approach focuses on the perpetrator’s state of mind, and distinguishes behavior that is intended to communicate from behavior that is intended to cause focused and individualized harm to a targeted victim.

The critique that bias crime laws punish bad thoughts rather than criminal acts also has been based on criminal law doctrine. This argument criticizes bias crime laws for impermissibly straying beyond the punishment of act and purposeful intent to reach the punishment of motivation. The argument rests on the assertion that motive can be distinguished from mens rea, based on the formal distinction between motive and intent: intent concerns the mental state provided in the definition of an offense in order to assess the actor’s culpability with respect to the elements of the offense, whereas motive concerns the cause that drives the actor to commit the offense.

Several responses have been made to this critique. First, as a matter of positive law, concern with the punishment of motivation may be misplaced. Motive often determines punishment. In those states with capital punishment, the defendant’s motivation for the homicide stands prominent among the recognized aggravating factors that may contribute to the imposition of the death sentence. For instance, the motivation of profit in murder cases is a significant aggravating factor adopted in most capital sentencing schemes. Bias motivation itself may serve as an aggravating circumstance. In Barclay v. Florida , 463 U.S. 939 (1983), the Supreme Court explicitly upheld the use of racial bias as an aggravating factor in the sentencing phase of a capital case. The Court reaffirmed Barclay in Dawson v. Delaware , 503 U.S. 159 (1992).

A second response to this critique of bias crime laws more broadly questions the usefulness of the formal distinction between intent and motive, arguing that the decision as to what constitutes motive and what constitutes intent largely turns on what is being criminalized. Criminal statutes define the elements of the crime and a mental state applies to each element. The mental state that applies to an element of the crime is ‘‘intent’’ whereas any mental states that are extrinsic to the elements are ‘‘motivation.’’ The formal distinction, therefore, turns on the elements of the crime. What is a matter of intent in one context may be a matter of motive in another. There are two equally accurate descriptions of a bias-motivated assault: the perpetrator possessed a (i) mens rea of purpose with respect to the assault along with a motivation of bias; or (ii) a mens rea of purpose with respect to the parallel crime of assault and a mens rea of purpose with respect to assaulting this victim because of group identification. The defendant in description (i) ‘‘intends’’ to assault the victim and does so because the defendant is a bigot. The defendant in description (ii) ‘‘intends’’ to commit an assault and does so with both an intent to assault and a discriminatory or animus-driven intent as to the selection of the victim. Both descriptions are accurate. The formal distinction between intent and motive may thus bear less weight than some critics have placed upon it. Whether bias crime laws punish motivation or intent is not inherent in those prohibitions. Rather the distinction mirrors the way in which the law describes these crimes.

The federalism challenges to the constitutionality of a federal bias crime law arise from the fact that the vast majority of bias crimes are state law crimes that are motivated by bias. The question of constitutional authority for a federal bias crime law is especially pressing after the Supreme Court’s decisions in United States v. Morrison , 120 S.Ct. 1740 (2000), striking down the civil remedy provisions of the Violence Against Women Act, and United States v. Lopez , 514 U.S. 549 (1995), striking down the Federal Gun-Free Zones Act. Each decision held that the legislation in question exceeded Congress’ authority under the commerce clause. It is partially for this reason that, at the time of writing, there is no pure federal bias crimes statute. Bias motivation is an element of certain federal civil rights crimes such as 18 U.S.C. § 245. Moreover, in 1994, Congress directed the U.S. Sentencing Commission to promulgate guidelines enhancing the penalties for any federal crimes that are motivated by bias. These statutes, however, cover only a small range of cases involving bias motivation.

After Morrison and Lopez , the commerce clause, the constitutional authority for civil rights legislation during the 1960s barring discrimination in public accommodations, housing, and employment, is a more doubtful source for constitutional authority for a federal bias crime law. A more promising source for such authority may lie in the post–Civil War constitutional amendments, at least for bias crimes involving racial, ethnic, and possibly religious motivation. In enacting section 245, Congress expressly relied, in part, upon the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments as authority for the federalization of biasmotivated deprivation of certain specified rights individuals hold under state law. Not all bias crimes deprive the victim of the ability to exercise some right under state law. It has been argued, however, that the Thirteenth Amendment as well provides constitutional authority for a federal bias crime law. The modern view of the Thirteenth Amendment, articulated in Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer , 392 U.S. 409 (1968), and Runyon v. McCrary , 427 U.S. 160 (1976), understands the amendment as a constitutional proscription of all the ‘‘badges and incidents’’ of slavery, authorizing Congress to make any rational determination as to what constitutes a badge or incident of slavery and to ban such conduct, whether from public or private sources. The abolition of slavery in the Thirteenth Amendment, although immediately addressed to the enslavement of AfricanAmericans, has been held to apply beyond the context of race to include ethnic groups and perhaps religions as well. The Thirteen Amendment would not, however, provide constitutional authority for elements of a federal bias crime law reaching sexual orientation, gender, or other categories.

Bibliography:

ALTSCHILLER, DONALD. Hate Crimes: A Reference Handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1999.
Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. Hate Crimes Laws: A Comprehensive Guide. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1994.
BOWLING, BENJAMIN. Violent Racism: Victimisation, Policing, and Social Context. Oxford, U.K.: Clarendon Press, 1998.
Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice. A Policymaker’s Guide to Hate Crimes. Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice, 1997.
DILLOF, ANTHONY. ‘‘Punishing Bias: An Examination of the Theoretical Foundations of Bias Crime Statues.’’ Northwestern University Law Review 91 (1997): 1015.
KELLY, ROBERT, ed. Bias Crime: American Law Enforcement and Legal Responses. Chicago: University of Illinois, 1991.
JACOBS, JAMES, and POTTER, KIMBERLY. Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
LAWRENCE, FREDERICK ‘‘The Punishment of Hate: Toward a Normative Theory of Bias-Motivated Violence.’’ Michigan Law Review 93 (1994): 320.
LAWRENCE, FREDERICK Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University press, 1999.
LEVIN, JACK, and MCDEVITT, JACK. Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed. New York: Plenum Press, 1993.
WANG, LU-IN. Hate Crimes Law. Paul, Minn.: Clark, Boardman & Callaghan, 1997.

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Wisconsin v Mitchell (1993) states, “If a person intentionally selects the person or property of which the crime is committed or damaged because of race, religion, color or disability the penalties for the crime increase by statute and virtue of the United States Supreme Court.” The United States is successful for one of the most multicultural nations amongst all other melting pots in the world. Why would they want to risk their character and reputation and let hate crimes go unpunished? American history has been blighted by anti-racial prejudices which have been overcome by the Civil Rights Movement and other human rights petitions to the courts. “Crimes of hatred and prejudice—from lynching’s to cross burnings to vandalism of synagogues—are a sad fact of American history, but the term “hate crime” did not enter the nation’s vocabulary until the 1980s, when emerging hate groups like the Skinheads launched a wave of bias-related crime.” (“Hate Crime”). To leave any of these unturned would be an infringement to people’s inalienable rights and an injustice to society. Why does the law hold people to a higher accountability for hate crimes? The reason the court holds people to a higher accountability is because it is a demarcation against the rights afforded under the United States Constitution particularly the First Amendment rights where no one should be prejudiced based on color, religion, race or ethnic background.

Representative John Conyers of Michigan and Barbara Kennelly of Connecticut “coined the terminology hate crime in 1985 when they co-sponsored a bill called Hate Crime Statistics Act .” The bill sought to punish those who were motivated to kill motivated by “racial, religious and ethnic prejudices.” (Jacobs & Potter, 1998). Though the 1989 issue of the U.S. News and World Report thought differently when it stated, “Why should the courts be in the business of judging these misty matters? If the skulls of all Americans are equally valuable because we are a democracy why not gives everyone the same sentence for cracking any cranium at all.” (Jacobs & Potter, It should be noted that hate crime is also denoted as a ‘bias’ crime and that is why it is held to a higher standard during sentencing in the courts.

Wisconsin v Mitchell 508 U.S. 476 (1993)

Jacobs, J. and Potter, K. Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics Retrieved June 15, 2010 from, http://books.google.com/books?id=JRgUBNEvzuwC&dq=hate+crimes&lr=&source=gbs_navlinks_s

Hate Crime (2008) Retrieved June 15, 2010 from, http://www.fbi.gov/hq/cid/civilrights/hate.htm

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Hate Crimes

Before getting in to details of hate crimes, it is imperative to understand hate crimes from the definition although it has many definitions. For easy understanding, hate crimes is any offense based on the disability, race, sexuality, religion and values of the victims. Hate crimes has many angles as it depends entirely on who or the purpose of the hate crime such as, sentencing, reporting and conceptual purpose. This paper is going to discuss hate crimes and the types of hate crimes.

The first type of hate crime is the racial hate crime. Racial hate crime is the most dominant in the public order offenses in terms of the numbers and statistic as many people fall victims of this hate crime. For example, in the United Kingdom, the number of racial hate crimes recorded between 2010 and 2011 dropped drastically to 31486 as compared to 2006, which was at 42,554. This drop was due to much campaign and civic education by the government to the people and the pressure from the international communities. The racial hate crime is so common, since it does not cause physical harm to the victims but it has mental and emotional damage to the victims.

Another type of hate crime is the sexual orientation and gender. People in the society today are declaring their sexual orientation as gay, lesbian or straight. However, other people do not like to have their sexual orientation known which might lead to confusion of a persons' sexuality. Hate crime against sexuality arises when a victim is mistaken as one who belongs to a given sexual orientation, which is against his or her actual sexual orientation. In 2009 and 2010, sexual orientation crimes rose from 312 to 357 offenses. This increase was due to the varying changes in definitions and incidences by people as people realized the development of the sexual and gender hate crimes.

Finally, the disability hate crime is another category of hate crime. This hate crime varies as it depends entirely on definition of the disability. People with mental impairment, physical disability or visual impairment are the victims of this hate crime as they consistently face stigmatization from the society.

Hate crimes has adverse effects on its victims and sometimes can lead to death of the victims if the victims do not get help. Educating the people on hate crimes is important, as it will help reduce stigmatization and prevalence of the crime, since people will be aware of hate crime and its consequences.

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This publication is a joint report of the Stanford Law School Policy Lab on Assessing Alternative Responses to Hate Crimes and the Brennan Center for Justice. The report was co-written by the following Stanford Law students under the supervision of Stanford Law Professor Shirin Sinnar and Brennan Center Fellow Michael German: Tyler Bishop '20.
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