Crimes Against People Based on Ignorance - Term Paper Example

CRIM 101 Online Assignment Hate Crimes: Crimes against People based on Ignorance Outline I. To understand what a hate crime is first must be done through defining the topic. A hate crime is a crime that is committed because one individual hates something that another individual represents to them. A. The statistics at the FBI show that in 2009 there were 6,604 incidents of hate crime, with 8,336 victims and 6,225 known offenders of the crimes (About hate crime statistics, 2009, 2009). B. The FBI refers to hate crimes as crimes of bias, meaning that it is done because the offender holds bias against the victim in relationship to prejudices that they hold (About hate crime statistics, 2009, 2009). II. It is also very important to understand the idea of victim in relationship to a hate crime.. A. According to Altheide and Coyle (2006) “Victims are but the personal side of crisis; a crisis is where victims reside. A personal crisis may affect ‘one victim’, but more generally ‘crisis’ refers to ‘social crisis’, involving numerous people. All take place in a time of fear. All of this requires that citizens have information and constant reminders of the pitfalls and hazards of life, whether potential or realized” (p. 289). B. The Anti-Hate Crime Movement began in the 1960s, but it has taken decades to make it a relevant social issue (Jenness & Grattet, 2004). III. As well, education about other cultures has allowed children to start seeing the beauty in difference rather than fearing it. A. Perry, Levin, Iganski, Blazak, and Lawrence (2009) discuss education of children in a globalized world in order to end prejudices as an investment into the future. B. The problem is continued as teachers are not prepared to understand or handle the problems that come from biased bullying and they do not know how to react when they see it or are told about it (Perry, Levin, Iganski, Blazak and Lawrence, 2010). Hate Crimes: Crimes against People based on Ignorance As an international student of Chinese descent, the idea of hate crimes has had personal consequences. Having experienced the hate that can come merely from the perception of national origin, the idea of having laws that specify harsher punishments when the crime is committed because of hate is appealing. Hate crimes can come from many different types of prejudice including gender, the color of skin, sexual orientation, and political differences. One of the greatest influences over the development of hate for people with differences from one’s self is through family built hatreds that sometimes go back for many generations. Although hate crimes have declined in the last few decades, there are still an alarming number in the United States. Decreasing the number of hate crimes happens over generations of decreasing the amount of prejudice in families, but other ways of stopping them can help to provide a quicker end to the problems. One of the ways in which the American government has approached hate crimes is through making the criminal offense carry a deeper sentence when it is associated or caused by hatred that is based on social ideas about classifying others. Teaching students about the differences of other cultures also helps to deter them from having prejudicial ideas that might lead to violence later in life. Abolishing ignorance about other cultures is a powerful way in which to approach the issue of hate crimes. An examination of hate crimes can help to understand why they are still occurring and to develop strategies through which a lower number of them will occur within the United States. To understand what a hate crime is first must be done through defining the topic. A hate crime is a crime that is committed because one individual hates something that another individual represents to them. As an example, the ideas that someone has about the Asian culture might provoke them to commit a crime against someone who is Asian. Stereotypes and profiling are two of the ways in which people evaluate others in order to find reasons to be hateful. The statistics at the FBI show that in 2009 there were 6,604 incidents of hate crime, with 8,336 victims and 6,225 known offenders of the crimes. The FBI refers to hate crimes as crimes of bias, meaning that it is done because the offender holds bias against the victim in relationship to prejudices that they hold (About hate crime statistics, 2009, 2009). The FBI began keeping statistics on hate crimes in 1992. The data that has been collected reveals that 69% of all hate crimes are committed against African American men. More than twice the amounts of hate crimes committed that are reported are against African Americans (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2011). Even though freedom for African Americans has been established for well over a century and social freedoms in the form of civil rights is more than fifty years old, African Americans still see the majority of inequity in the way they are treated and how they experience their sense of esteem and security within the United States. Simply having a specific skin color is all that is needed to evoke a reaction. The sad truth, however, is that even law enforcement can be accused of the same kind of prejudice and profiling. Statistics show that African Americans are more likely to be pulled over by law enforcement. As an example, on the New Jersey Turnpike African Americans make up 13.5% of all motorists, 15% of all speeders, but are pulled over at a rate of 43% more than other motorists. In Baltimore 17.5 percent of the traffic violations were committed by African American motorist, while 70% of all those pulled over and searched are African American (Rome, 2004). Until social prejudice is placed under better control, it is likely that hate crimes will continue. It is also very important to understand the idea of victim in relationship to a hate crime. The victim is terrorized because of something that they usually have no control over, such as country of origin or their gender. Having no control over why they are victimized means that once they have an understanding of this prejudice, they are in a state of fear and readiness at all times as they are afraid that they will be once again a victim if they do not watch for that hate in the eyes of others. According to Altheide and Coyle (2006) “Victims are but the personal side of crisis; a crisis is where victims reside. A personal crisis may affect ‘one victim’, but more generally ‘crisis’ refers to ‘social crisis’, involving numerous people. All take place in a time of fear. All of this requires that citizens have information and constant reminders of the pitfalls and hazards of life, whether potential or realized” (p. 289). Family prejudices are likely the most difficult types to abolish. Family prejudices come when members of a family create a negative stereotype about a social group which creates anger and violent reactions to them. As an example, there are those who believe that Jewish people, because they have a history of being money lenders within their ethnographic background, will try to cheat others. This belief is not based on knowing individuals, but on creating a negative idea about a group. Through developing this type of prejudicial profile about a people, horrible backlash happens. As grandparents who grew up in a world that held wrong or biased beliefs pass them to their children, it perpetuates the hatred (Marger, 2012). The world is experiencing change, but the rate of change is slow and painful as generations must pass in order to shift public opinion. Prejudice is not unique to the United States. It is difficult to define prejudice by the categories and classifications of one nation. In Chile, people with names that are Castilian typically earn 10% more than those without. In Britain ethnically distinctive individuals who do not look British will have a hard time renting a piece of property (Brown, 2010). The nature of prejudice is that it is universal, and yet the targets of prejudice change sometimes from one neighborhood, one fashion statement, or one gender to the next. Prejudice can exist in a variety of forms which can include white men as easily as it does black women. The problem of inequity is where the crime begins to take shape. Categories of people who have experienced oppression within the United States are given special status through which crimes against them when committed with the intention of making a statement about their classification are considered hate crimes. This means women; African Americans, Asian Americans, and just about every other broad classification that has come under the prejudicial influences of heterosexual Caucasian men have the opportunity to claim that they have been targeted because of a classification due to gender, physical appearance, or sexual preference. The problem with prejudice is that classifying people is an arbitrary social phenomenon. Race can be defined by what is different and what makes others distinctive to the majority. As an example, there was a prejudice against red hair and green eyes in the United States, along with an Irish accent because the Irish were considered an undesirable ‘race’. An interesting take on this was created by a Star Trek episode in which people from another planet were differentiated because of which side the black and the white color of their skin occurred (Martin, 2003). This was intended to address the issue of how arbitrary the discussion of race can be when applied to a population. Although there was once an attempt to suggest that different ‘races’ were actually sub-species of the human race, anthropologists now agree that there is no real evidence to suggest that the idea of race is a valid system of classification for human beings (Trouillot, 2003). Stopping this type of crime has been approached from a number of different ways. The first is through laws that create stiffer penalties for those who commit a crime through hatred. The Anti-Hate Crime Movement began in the 1960s, but it has taken decades to make it a relevant social issue (Jenness & Grattet, 2004). Laws that were inspired by victims such as Mathew Shepard have helped to frame the issue so that it could be more easily addressed. Mathew Shepard was killed in 1998 because he was gay. As a result of the media frenzy that occurred about the incidents of his murder, hate laws were developed to ensure that anyone who lashed out against another because of biased reasons would be punished more severely (Loffreda, 2000). Long incarceration creates a deterrent for those who are inclined towards hate filled violence. Losing one’s freedom because of hatred is a foolish and wasteful action, thus it is law that punishes those who act in ignorance that works to better society and its reactions to others within it (Seiter, 2008). Evidence of crimes shows what it means to see a hate crime and its aftermath. In 1998 a man by the name James Byrd was walking home from a Bridal shower. Byrd was a father of three, a hardworking man, and classified as African American. Byrd was discovered by three Caucasian men who kidnapped him, took him to a private area and beat him up, then chained him to the back of the truck. He did not survive. The men were found to have ties to white supremacists, further supporting that Byrd was killed merely for the color of his skin (Mooney, Knox, & Schacht, 2011). It is not hard to recognize a hate crime, but often it is difficult to define it for legislation. The problem with prejudice is that primary focus of those who wish to oppress and terrorize social groups of people can vary from time period to time period. Previous to 9/11 the overall relationships with the Muslim community were quietly strained, but once the event of 2003 had taken place, the Muslim community was a high profile target for those looking for retribution for the event s of the terrorist act against the World Trade Tower (Whitley & Kite, 2010). Interestingly, the bombing in Oklahoma City that was committed by Caucasian men nor the attack by two Caucasian students at Columbine High School did not enrage the public against Caucasian males. Prejudice is a deeper fear than can just be brought on by a violent act. Prejudice is an inflammation of existing fears about differences between two classifications of people. Therefore, when the Twin Towers fell, the Muslim community became a target because of the fear that people had because they did not understand their religion. The other factor became clearly brought about through ignorance as there were reports of Indian people who practiced Hindu being attacked merely because they had a similar skin tone and accent to Muslims. Similar enough, that is, to those who were just looking to find justice or relief from the fear by hurting someone. The problem with prejudice is that there is always a new target created by political and social issues in any time period. As much as Muslims were the early target of the first decade of the millennia, immigrants have become the next target. Legislation such as that created in Arizona where the Support our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act was put into place through which many of the new statutes allowed for prejudicial behavior from the authorities in the state. Federal law took away the prejudicial policies that had been put in place such as the right to detain people if they could not readily prove their immigration status (Ducat, 2010). The fact that a state made attempts to divide people in relationship to their skin color or accent shows that prejudicial behavior is not just limited to criminal behavior. Although, one might ask if it can be considered the same as the result is the same. People are divided and fear ignites impassioned responses to mere traits and visual differences. For legal purposes, a hate crime can be defined through further dividing people into classifications so that motivations can be assigned for the actions of one group against another. The problem is that it is usually an individual or group of individuals who decide to behave very badly and in ways that society find horrendous. Hate crimes can be small and petty or they can be very public and devastating. The experience of hate based upon prejudice is demoralizing and defeating, causing riffs between people and changing one’s view about their place within society. One problem of creating the idea of hate crimes, however, is that it further divides the way that people see one another. When one person is accused of a hate crime, the public recognizes the differences that were the excuse for the horrendous behaviors. Education about other cultures has allowed children to start seeing the beauty in difference rather than fearing it. The progress has been slow, but it is becoming a better world because the movement has raised awareness. In contemporary society, the idea of committing such a crime is associated with ignorance, which also helps to deter those who would not want to seem ignorant even if they have had certain prejudices put into their belief systems. One can only hope that the end to this type of crime is near. Perry, Levin, Iganski, Blazak, and Lawrence (2009) discuss education of children in a globalized world in order to end prejudices as an investment into the future. Through education, there is an end in sight to the long held prejudices that have slowed the progress of human development. Statistics about how children are still exposed to hatred are startling. Children in the age of 12-18 have seen hate related messages by a rate of about a third, while one in nine has experienced hate words against them. Derogatory gay references are heard by 90% of all school aged children. Bullying often includes using hate based words and violence that is associated with socially relevant classification. The problem is continued as teachers are not prepared to understand or handle the problems that come from biased bullying and they do not know how to react when they see it or are told about it (Perry, Levin, Iganski, Blazak and Lawrence, 2010). The issue of cultural understanding and how to teach and discipline the matter should become a part of the curriculum of teachers as they learn the various aspects of their career. In a world that is coming closer together through the power of the information age, it is essential that cultural groups begin to learn about one another and end the fear and ignorance that inspires hate between them. In trying to find a way in which to build self-esteem, often prejudicial feelings emerge in order to create comparisons from one type of individual to another. This involves judgment about what is good and bad in relationship to traits that an individual may or may not have. The strong will beat up the weak; the angry will take out their anger on a target. There is little that can fully stop the concept of creating targets for frustrations that become colored by hate and prejudicial actions. It would be nice to think of a world in which hate because of arbitrary differences would be eliminated. The difference between the amounts of hate in that world in comparison to the world as it is would be tremendous. Through creating examples that are positive and show growth in enlightenment, society can perhaps begin to find a way to not act on differences through violence and cruelty. It is important that legislators, law enforcement, and the public begin to work towards eliminating the hate as a form of conflict in relationship to differences in classifications of humans. It would also help if the government stopped supporting believing in racial concepts by taking that type of tracking off of forms. The problem with that is the statistics would no longer reflect the social problems that are developed through race. Federal hate crime statutes help to deter and to prosecute with aggression those who would hurt others because of their perceived race or classification. Hate laws are necessary in a society that works so hard to continue to divide people. It can only be hoped that in the future that classification will begin to diminish and that people can support each other rather than blame so that anger and frustration becomes expressed through racially motivated hate crimes. Hate crimes are often first developed because a family has some deep seeded fears associated with specific social groups. Laws that approach the issue of hate crimes have helped in deterring those kinds of actions, but it is through education that true change will come. As the beauty and wonder of different cultures begin to be understood as students are taught about all the wonderful things in the world, it is likely that hate crimes will diminish. In addition, as people begin to understand more about world cultures, they will begin to appreciate differences rather than be afraid of them. It is clear that it is important for people to know how other cultures express themselves in order to lower the number of hate crimes. For those who refuse to learn what it means to appreciate other cultures and continue to act out of fear, they will find themselves in a jail with long terms of incarceration. The government has specifically stated through the enactment of law that hate filled crimes will not be tolerated. References About hate crime statistics, 2009. (2009). FBI. Retrieved from http://www2.f bi.gov/ucr/hc2009/index.html Altheide, D. L., & Coyle, M. J., (2006). Smart on crime: The new language for prisoner release. 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