Hate crimes in
the United States
Khaled Elsharkawy
Hate crimes in the United States,
also known as bias- motivated crimes,
are the crimes committed by one or more persons motivated by hostility or hatred
against a person or a specific category on the
basis of race, religion, nationality, gender, sexual
orientation, gender identity, or
age (Jacobs & Potter, 2001).
The term “hate crimes” was not used until after World War
II and the beginning of the face
of racist movements,
however, the origin of hate crimes dates
back to ancient civilizations, for example: the old Roman
Empire, which was well known persecution of various religious
groups (Kelly & Maghan, 1998).
According to several historical
documents the persecution of Christians was a great beginning of
the reign of Emperor Nero in
64 AD when
a fire destroyed a huge big part of Rome, and
called that anyone who follows
the religion will be punished
and led to years of hatred against anyone who follows the Christian beliefs,
as well as many other religious groups (Kelly
&Maghan, 1998, Wright, 2005).
The persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire was intermittently
for nearly three centuries until the year 313 AD
when the Milan edict was issued by Emperor Constantine
the Great who ruled the Roman
Empire since 306
AD until 337 AD, and was
dominated by the influence of the Christian religion
(Bomgardner, 2000, Wylen, 1995).
The biggest hate crime in the
world was in Nazi Germany, when
Hitler called to
the complete destruction of the Jews,
builds up death camps, and established the Holocaust which resulted in the mass murder of millions of people as well as the genocide
of ethnic and racial groups in Bosnia and
Rwanda (Little, 1998).
The Ku Klux Klan
was a secret racist organization founded in The United States in 1856. It has
been the most virulent white racist organization in the United States that threatened
those of African American, Jewish, and
Catholic descent. In 1921, the group reached approximately 100,000 members and flooded
the money coffers, and peaked in 1924
when it offered 40,000 of its members in the streets of Washington, DC, during the National Congress of the Democratic Party
(Altschiller, 1999; Little, 1998).
The hate crimes got
on a smaller scale in the United States
in the late 20th and early 21st,
but it's still going on across the country, and most of the hate crimes in the United States are racially motivated. Those crimes included offenses like intimidation, vandalism, rape, murder, and assault (Encyclopedia of
Violence, 2008).
Statistics provided by the Federal Bureau of
Investigation has shown that hate
crimes are on the rise in the
United States. In 2006, the number of hate increased 8% from
the year before, and 6,222 incidents involving
hate crime have also been reported in 2011, and statistics show
that half of all hate
crimes in the United States are
committed by young people aged between
15 and 24 years old. Furthermore, according to some research, at least eight African-Americans, three Caucasian Americans, three
homosexual Americans, three Jewish-Americans,
and one Latino-American have been exposed to hate crimes
at least once a day in the United States.
These grim facts
show that despite the social progress in the community, hate crimes are far from history (FBI, 2012).
The Civil Rights Act of 1986 claims that the Federal Government must
evaluate the criminal proceedings against a person hurt willingly
or participatory in
the abuse of another person or persons or attempts to
do so, use force against another person, or persons on the basis of race, color, religion, or nationality upon entry
into one of six
types of federal protection which are: schools, Social Welfare,
places and public buildings, workplaces, jury court,
and voting. Persons
who violate the law are punished with a fine or imprisonment for up to
one year, or both, if the results
were bodily injury or if such acts involve intimidation,
but if there was use of firearms or explosives, the punishment would be imprisonment of ten years, while the crimes involving the kidnapping and sexual abuse and/or murder are punishable by life imprisonment or death (Wright,
2005).
The “Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of
1994” requires the committee to make judgments in
the United States through tightened sanctions on hatred motivated
by race, color, religion, national
origin, ethnic origin, or sex
crimes (Wright, 2005).
The “Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act” was a
law passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Barack Obama in
reaction to the killing of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. This law included
a modification of the Civil Rights Act of 1968 and the expansion of hate crimes
to include sex drive, sexual identity, sexual orientation, disability, or
transgender (Department of Justice, 2013).
