Introduction
A report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) in 2021 revealed that there were 11,129 related offenses motivated by bias toward gender identity, gender, disability, disability, sexual orientation, religion, ancestry, ethnicity and race in 2020 (FBI, 2021). The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a hate crime as “any criminal offer against property or person motivated in whole or part by the offender’s bias against gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, religion, race, religion or gender” (FBI, 2021). However, hate itself is not a crime. It means that a crime can only be termed a hate crime when motivated by bias. In addition, the FBI states that the number of hate crimes has shown an increasing trend across the United States, with more than 10,000 in 2021 reporting to law enforcement that they were victims of the crime because of their disability, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity or race (Carrega & Krishnakumar, 2021). Out of these statistics, the attacks targeting Black people increased from 1972 to 2871, while those targeting Asians rose from 161 to 279 in 2021. However, there was a drop in the number of anti-Jewish attacks from 963 to 683. The data from the FBI may not reveal the real figure of hate crimes because, in some states, it is local prosecutors who have the final say on what is to be termed a hate crime, not the police (Carrega & Krishnakumar, 2021). Also, hate crime statistics are not gathered from courts by the federal government. This means that the number could be higher than the Federal Bureau of Investigations published. The increase in these cases calls for the need to study what fuels their increase and how they have impacted different spheres of people’s lives. In addition, it is important to study how hate crimes are distributed across the 50 states in the U.S. Therefore, this research paper discusses hate crimes in the U.S in terms of their history, causes, and types by applying various methodologies and statistical tools.
History of Hate Crime Laws in the United States
The history of hate crime laws dates back to the Civil Rights Act of 1968, enacted to protect the minorities from being discriminated against rental or sale of housing based on their sex, national origin, religion and race (Grattet & Jenness, 2012). If an individual breaches this law, they can be fined or imprisoned for up to one year or both. However, if the hate crime results in bodily injuries or there is the use of fire, explosives or firearms, the offender can get up to ten terms in prison. In contrast, crimes involving murder, sexual assault or kidnapping can lead to the death penalty or life imprisonment (Grattet & Jenness, 2012).
Furthermore, hate crimes started as race and gender issues. Still, as society evolved, the laws expanded to protect people from bias based on other forms of discrimination, such as religion and country of origin. In 1989, the Hate Crime Statistics Act was passed (Perry, 2012). It required the Attorney General to gather crime data fueled by the sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, religion or race of the victim. The bill was signed into law by President H.W. Bush in the early spring of 1990 after it won by a landslide of 368-47 votes.
The Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act of 1993 was introduced in the House of Representatives in 1993. Its objective was to allow judges to impose harsher penalties for hate crimes (Perry, 2012). As a result, three months later, the act was added to the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 as an amendment. President Bill Clinton is one of the key supporters of Hate crime protection laws. In 1997, President Clinton stated that hate crimes committed because of the difference in skin color, religious faith or because the person is a lesbian or gay affect not only the individual but also the larger community (Grattet & Jenness, 2012).
Consequently, the president committed much of his time to hate crimes and discouraged Americans from discriminating against fellow citizens, especially the LGBT people (Perry, 2012). Over the years, different hate crime laws have been passed by the U.S. House of Representatives and signed into law by different presidents.
Reasons People Commit Hate Crimes
There have been serious hate crimes in the history of the United States. One would ask about the motivation of a man who sprayed bullets on two Muslims on a Portland train after shouting Muslim slurs (Burke, 2017). In this error of intense fear and rancor, besieged minorities like transgender people and Muslims often feel that when one of their members is assaulted, it is equivalent to attacking their whole community. The types of hates crimes and their causes are discussed below:
Illegal Thrill-Seekers
Thrill-seekers do not have a specific motive for committing hate crimes since they are motivated by excitement and drama. A good example is when young drunk men are marauding in their areas, thinking of doing mayhem (Perry et al., 2020). Experts say there is no tangible reason why thrill seekers commit such crimes. Worse still, they think that they will be applauded by society for their actions or that society does not care about the victims they target. The victims are attacked because of their difference from the attackers regarding their gender, ethnicity, religion, and sexual or racial background (Perry et al., 2020). Walters et al. (2016) add that the attackers are very dangerous despite, in some circumstances, being young. Although the victims may not be killed in some circumstances, the vicious beating put them in hospitals.
Defensive
The offenders target certain victims and keep any threats at bay by justifying their actions (Burke, 2017). This hate crime is triggered by events such as a family of Blacks or Muslims moving into a new neighborhood. In some scenarios, these crimes could happen without warning, although the perpetrators believe their actions are justified. The attackers do not display remorse because they feel that they are supported by some members of society, even if not all. In addition, the attackers view their actions as an act of defending their turf, such as the workplace, country or religion (Walters et al., 2016).
Retaliatory
It is a revenge-fueled attack and could be in response to terrorism, other hate crimes or personal slights (Perry et al., 2020). This hate crime is typically committed by individuals and could occur between members of the same religion or racial groups. The ‘avenger’ care about nothing more than revenge. The attackers are determined to commit the crime to the extent that they can travel to the victim’s territory. Retaliatory can also be termed an ‘eye-for-an-eye’ attack since the perpetrators target any person they feel might have committed the original crime (Perry et al., 2020). After the 9/11 attacks, hate crimes against Arabs and Muslims rose. For instance, members of a breakaway Amish sect were charged by Ohio prosecutors after they cut off the beards of their rival sect. However, the hate crimes conviction was overturned by an appeals court that ruled that religion might not have been the motivation for those assaults (Burke, 2017).
Crusaders
Although it is a rare hate crime, experts argue it is the deadliest (Walters et al., 2016). Crusaders commit these crimes for racial or religious causes. It is linked to groups with similar views, and the mission of the attackers is to fight against all those of rival races or religions. Burke (2017) adds that crusaders have lengthy manifestos that explain their ideas and have websites that publish violent images and hate speech messages.
Hate Crimes against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT)
Violence against the LGBT community is made up of assaults on transgender, bisexual, gay men and bisexual people (Herek, 2017). Most of those targeted by such violence are accused of contravening the perceived protocols of sexual and gender roles and violating heteronormative rules. Also, the individuals perceived to be LGBT are targeted. Additionally, there is violence between couples of the same sex, with statistics revealing that violence among same-sex couples is more common than among the opposite sex (Herek, 2017).
The hate crimes against LGBT can be traced back to 1969 during the stonewall riots against one of the several police raids on gay bars, and over the years, it has escalated to involve many cases (Walters et al., 2020). As a result, dozens of transgender; people who do not conform to their gender are killed annually in the United States. However, the majority of the murdered are black transgender women (Fischer, 2019). These attacks revolve around society’s belief that each person should behave according to the roles, behaviors, desires and expressions associated with the gender he was assigned at birth. Some factors fueling hate crimes against LGBT include political and religious views. These hate crimes result in psychological and physical harm to the victims and, in most circumstances, lead to death. The actions could be caused by political, religious or cultural biases and mores (Walters et al., 2020). When violence is meted out on LGBT people of color, it becomes difficult to distinguish whether it is due to their gender/sexuality identity or racism.
Hate Crimes against Races
The statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2020 revealed that out of the 11,126 victims of hate crimes, 62% of the victims were targeted because of the offenders’ bias toward ancestry, ethnicity or race (Tessler et al., 2020). It means that 5,227 were victims of hate crimes because of their race in 2020 compared to 32% in 2019. In addition, African-Americans continue to record the highest number of hate crimes, with 2020 reporting 2871 incidents which is a 49% increase from 2019 (Tessler et al., 2020). Also, the number of anti-Asian Incidents increased by 77% since 2019. Other high categories of hate crimes include Latino incidents or anti-Hispanic. These statistics are shown in the figure below.
Figure 1 Hate crimes against race in the U.S. between 2019 and 2020
Source: (The United States Department of Justice, n.d)
Hate crimes against race is the bias because of the color of an individual. African-Americans have been on the receiving end of these hate crimes because of their skin color (Cheng et al., 2013). Throughout American history, white Americans have enjoyed socially sanctioned privileged compared to other races and rarely do they suffer from hate crimes because of their color. Hate crimes against race have existed in America since the early colonial era. Most African-Americans were enslaved before 1865 and had to suffer a lot from being beaten, lynched and murdered (Cheng et al., 2013). Also, Hispanics, Middle Eastern and Asian Americans have suffered massacres, forced removals and genocide in the United States. The hate crimes were prevalent and manifested in ways such as segregation, reservations of Native Americans, genocide and racist immigration and naturalization laws. Although the incidences of hate crimes against race have gone down, they are still rife in some parts of the United States. They are still common in some sectors of the modern United States, such as politics, health care, housing, business and the criminal justice system (Cheng et al., 2013). Martin Luther King Jr. was at the forefront of ending racial hate crimes and other social movements that advocated for equal treatment of all Americans irrespective of their race.
Throughout American history, there are some cases of racial hate crimes that have stood out. One such case is the shooting in Charleston, South Carolina (Cheng et al., 2013). It occurred on 17 June 2015 in a church based in Carolina, where nine members of the congregation were killed during a prayer service. The killing of the African-Americans was perpetrated by Dylan Roof, who believed in white supremacy (Cheng et al., 2013). The Justice System of the United States determined that the shooting was a hate crime against race. As a result, Dylan Roof was charged with 33 federal hate crime charges. This was a horrible incident. Dylan went to church with the other congregants but intended to kill them all. It was not because they committed a crime but due to their skin color. He also wanted to ignite a race war because he believed that white were superior (Cheng et al., 2013). He hated blacks hence the reason for planning the attack. Dylan did not care about the age of the members because his intention was to kill everyone.
Hate Crimes against Religion
In 2020, incidents related to hate crimes against religion decreased to 1244, an 18% drop from 2019. Of this number, 683 were anti-Jewish incidents, 110 anti-Muslim, 15 anti-Buddhist and 89 anti-Sikh incidents (The United States Department of Justice, n.d). Since September 2001, the hate crimes against Muslims have increased, with one of the recent murders being of three Muslims in North Carolina (Considine, 2017). The most prevalent cases feature Jews and Muslims, which is attributed to the rise of ISIS and the war in Gaza.
One of the latest cases of anti-religious hate crimes was in 2018 when a man rushed into the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and began shooting, injuring more than six people and killing (Tessler et al., 2020). The deadliest attack against the Jewish community happened when worshippers celebrated their faith in different rooms. Also, in April 2019, a shooter appeared at a synagogue in Poway, California, injuring three and killing one woman (Tessler et al., 2020). The rise in hate crimes against religious groups spells doom for millions of Americans who attend different places of worship.
Hate Crimes against Gender
The United States Department of Justice data indicates that there has been an increase in incidents related to gender since 2019. In 2019, there were 25 anti-male and 50 anti-female incidents (The United States Department of Justice, n.d). Some laws that have been enacted to protect women against hate crimes include The Violence Against Women Act. These crimes are committed because of the defendants’ bias against men or women. Such hate crimes could take different forms, such as assault. However, most crimes against women include domestic violence, sexual assault and rape (Herek, 2017). The advocates of women’s rights claim that most violent crimes against women result from misogyny and thus qualify to be categorized as hate crimes. However, opponents argue that crimes against women, like crimes against men, are motivated by different personal reasons; hence they do not emanate from bias. Proponents claim that it is important to reexamine whether the increase in domestic violence and sexual assault cases is due to bias against a specific gender. As a result, The Violence Against Women Act was enacted by Congress to allow victims of gender-based violence to sue for damages in a federal court (Modi et al., 2014). Figure 2 below shows statistics of different types of hate crimes in the U.S between 2019 and 2020 as published by The United States Department of Justice.
Figure 2 Different types of hate crimes in the U.S
Source: (The United States Department of Justice, n.d)
Conclusion
This research paper has revealed that different forms of hate crimes are rampant in the United States of America. Although legislations have been enacted to curb these crimes, the cases continue to be witnessed in different areas of the country. The crimes have resulted in the loss of life and physical injuries. As discussed in the paper, the history of hate crime laws can be traced back to the Civil Rights Act of 1968. Also, it has provided the reasons why people commit hate crimes by highlighting the various types of people who engage in these crimes: thrill-seeking, defensive, retaliatory and mission offenders. Also outlined in the paper are the types of hate crimes, including those against races, religion, gender and the LGBT community. To prevent these types of crimes, the law enforcement agencies should enforce the existing legislation to ensure peaceful coexistence among people of different gender, race, religion and ethnicity. All Americans should feel safe in their country, and at no given time should their lives be put at stake because of their differences.
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