I Need Help With My Homework On Why Study Hate Crime, School Shootings or State Crime and Identifying Sources & Annotated Bibliography Assignment

Part 1 Discussion ONLY 300 words

Why Study Hate Crime, School Shootings or State Crime?

PROMPT: After reviewing the Alvarez and Bachman readings and recorded lecture materials for the week,

Required Reading: Alvarez & Bachman, "Mass Murder In School" pp. 114-16; Chapter 8, "Hate Crime," pp. 229-254 (provided below).

post a discussion that makes the case for the importance of studying one of the three topics examined in this module: mass murder (or shootings) in school, hate crime or state violence. Provide a specific example (with page number) from the Alvarez and Bachman chapter or from my powerpoint that backs up your assertion to examine one of these three topics, e.g., commenting on its prevalence and changes over time (incidence), issues of social harm, victims or assailants involved. etc. Respond to others about the concerns they identify.

Note: Although it sounds to be an obvious question about the need to study the kinds of violence identified here, consider the federal Dickey Amendment that has been in place since the 1990s in the U.S., and has limited the ability of federal agencies to funds studies that examine gun violence, especially if policy recommendations advocate any kinds of limits on gun availability. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickey_Amendment. The Dickey Amendment is still in force, athough it was recently liberalized in response to a number of high profile mass shootings.

*** REFERENCE ALL PAGE NUMBERS USED IN THE WORK***

Alvarez, A., & Bachman, R. (2021). Chapter 1 Defining Violence. In Violence: The enduring problem (4th ed., pp. 229-254). essay, SAGE Publishing, Inc.

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Chapter 8 Hate Crimes

I was a brand-new sheriff. I didn’t even know the definition of a hate crime. What I knew was that somebody had been murdered because he was black.

—Sheriff Billy Rowles, Jasper, Texas1

We pass hatred and prejudice on to our children, as though they were heirlooms of humanity. We cling to traditions that keep us bound to a way of life that no longer works and arguably never has.

—L.M. Browning2

Violent Hate Crimes

Squirrel Hill is a quiet, predominantly Jewish residential neighborhood in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In fact, it is one of the largest Jewish communities in the United States.3 On the morning of October 27, 2018, the tranquility of this district was shattered when Robert Gregory Bowers, a 46-year-old white man who lived on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, perpetrated the deadliest hate crime against Jewish citizens in the United States. At 9:45 a.m., Bowers entered the Tree of Life Synagogue where Shabbat morning services were underway. Armed with a semiautomatic rifle and a number of handguns, Bowers immediately opened fire, killing two brothers who were standing next to the main entryway

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He then began roaming through the rooms and floors of the synagogue, shooting at anyone he saw.4 Within 15 minutes, police officers arrived at the scene in response to multiple calls from those trapped inside the building. As they were heading in, Bowers appeared to have been on his way out of the synagogue and opened fire on the police from the entryway. When the officers returned fire, he retreated back inside. After another 30 minutes, members of a special weapons and tactics (SWAT) team entered the Tree of Life and exchanged gunfire with Bowers. Both Bowers and several members of the SWAT team were wounded before Bowers retreated deeper into the synagogue. Eventually, Robert Bowers surrendered to law enforcement at 11:08 a.m. In his wake, Bowers left eleven individuals dead, another seven wounded, and a community devastated and stunned at the violence unleashed against them.5

What motivated Bowers to perpetrate this attack? The evidence strongly suggests that it was a clear-cut and straightforward case of anti-Semitism, which is why this particular mass murder is reviewed in this chapter, rather than in Chapter 4. In other words, it was a hate crime.

Starting out as a strong conservative, Bowers transitioned into a white nationalist and frequented online websites and social media that promote conspiracy theories and hate, especially anti-Semitic views.6 He supported the white genocide theory that suggests white Americans and western civilization are being destroyed through immigration. The ostensible culprits behind this fictional genocidal plot are Jews.7 Bowers also subscribed to another conspiracy theory that argued that the widely reported migrant caravans heading to the United States from Central America in 2018 were actually part of a Jewish plot aimed at undermining and weakening the United States.

Conspiracy theories such as these, as we will discuss later in this chapter, have long been a feature of anti-Semitism. Shortly before perpetrating the assault, Bowers had posted that “HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, ‘I’m going in.’”8 HIAS in this quote refers to the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, an organization that works with the U.S. government to resettle immigrants. HIAS has also worked to mobilize Jewish communities against the Trump administration’s efforts to block Muslim refugees and those from Central America. During the attack itself, it was reported that Bowers shouted, “All Jews must die.”9 In addition to murder charges at the state level, Robert Bowers was also charged with multiple violations of federal civil rights law prohibiting hate crimes.10

While the attack on the Tree of Life Synagogue represents a particularly horrific example of hate crime that shocked the nation, recent years have unfortunately seen many examples of this particular form of violent crime. In fact, over the last several years, hate crimes have been the rise in the United States, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). In Chapter 1, we pointed out that violence is often interconnected in various ways; this is certainly the case when looking at hate crimes. Six months after the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting, for example, another shooting took place at a synagogue in Poway, California, on April 27, 2019. There, 19-year-old John Earnest entered the Chabad of Poway Synagogue armed with an assault rifle and killed one person and wounded another three.

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Apparently, Earnest had posted an online manifesto, which explained that he had drawn inspiration from similar attacks, including the Tree of Life shooting and the Mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, a month earlier that killed 50 people and wounded another 50. As these examples illustrate, previous hate-filled violence can inspire further violence, and this is clearly the case in these mass shootings.12

We can also see such connections when we examine the actions of Dylann Roof on June 17, 2015. On that summer day, Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist from South Carolina, went to a historic Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, and killed nine members of the congregation during a prayer service. One week prior to the shooting, he had reportedly told a neighbor that “he was looking to kill a bunch of people on Wednesday.”13 His threat wasn’t taken seriously, but exactly one week later, he entered the Charleston Methodist Episcopal Church, sat down and participated in a prayer meeting for a while, and then opened fire on the congregants. During the shooting, he proclaimed that he was there to “shoot black people,” and when one individual pleaded with him to stop, he answered, “You rape our women and you’re taking over our country. And you have to go.”14 Roof was eventually caught and pled guilty to nine counts of murder at the state level and was subsequently the first person ever sentenced to death at the federal level for a hate crime.15

In response to the huge public outcry that erupted in the wake of the Charleston church shooting, a number of communities began to remove the confederate flag, statues, monuments, and other memorials from public property that were seen as glorifying the confederacy and, by extension, slavery and white supremacy.16 These actions were met by further protests and resistance from various individuals and groups who saw in these removals a rejection of their history and heritage. One protest, the Unite the Right Rally, was held August 11–12, 2017, in Charlottesville, Virginia. The participants came from a variety of far-right groups that included white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and militias.17 Even though they were ostensibly there to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee from Emancipation Park in Charlottesville, the marchers’ broader agenda was clear. They chanted racist and anti-Semitic slogans and wore a variety of Nazi and neo-Nazi symbols.18 The rally quickly broke out into violence, with marchers fighting opponents of the rally. Before it was over, one white supremacist drove his car into a crowd, killing a young woman (Heather Heyer) and injuring many more. The driver, James Alex Fields Jr., was later arrested and convicted of a number of crimes, including first-degree murder.19 Fields also faces federal hate crime charges.20 Here again, we see the ways in which individual acts of violence are connected with the Charleston church shooting leading to the rally and the violence in Charlottesville.

It may surprise you to know that for all of the recent examples of hate crime prosecutions, these laws, both state and federal, are fairly new. Until recently, such crimes were typically prosecuted as ordinary offenses based on the underlying behavior rather than the motivating element of bias or hatred of a group.21 Sometimes, individuals would be prosecuted for civil rights violations, a federal crime since 1871, when congress passed the Civil Rights Act.22 A good example of this is the 1994 prosecution of four Los Angeles Police Department officers who were caught on video tape beating Black motorist Rodney King (see Chapter 9 for a discussion of this case).

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Beginning in the late 1970s and early 1980s, however, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), an organization founded to fight anti-Semitism and other forms of prejudice, began a successful lobbying campaign to pass hate crime legislation based on a model statute that they developed. Assisted by other organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Institute for Prejudice and Violence, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, these organizations began a campaign to get laws against what they first termed ethnic intimidation (later renamed bias-motivated crime) enacted into law. Beginning at the state level and enjoying a fair bit of success, they soon began advocating at the federal level.24 Their work was instrumental in the adoption of hate crime laws for many states and the federal government. Despite these legislative efforts, these hate crimes were still not widely known, understood, or enforced. In the late 1990s, however, two cases in particular rocked the nation and helped change popular and legal consciousness around this issue. In many ways, these two cases have come to be synonymous with modern American hate crime: the James Byrd case in 1998 and the killing of Matthew Shepard that same year.

James Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard: Catalysts for Modern Hate Crime Legislation

One night in June 1998, James Byrd Jr., a 49-year-old African American, declined a ride home from a friend during a party and decided to walk home alone on Martin Luther King Boulevard in Jasper, Texas. A gray pickup truck driven by Shawn Berry, the 23-year-old manager of a local movie theater, and two other men Byrd did not know pulled up. Berry asked Byrd whether he wanted a ride. When Byrd climbed into the back of the truck, Berry gave him a beer. Byrd’s decapitated body was found the next morning; his head and one of his arms were found over one mile away from the rest of his body. At the scene where an obvious struggle had taken place, cigarette butts and a lighter with the symbols for the Ku Klux Klan and the word Possum etched in the dirt were later found by investigators. Subsequently, Berry’s written confession detailed the facts: He and two other men, Bill King and Russell Brewer, had picked Byrd up on Martin Luther King Boulevard; they then drove him up to Huff Creek Road, beat him up in a clearing, spray-painted his face black, and then dragged him with a logging chain tied to his ankles about three miles before they dumped his body at the side of the road. Byrd’s head and arm had been cut off when his body was pulled over a sharp metal culvert.25

The nation, the state of Texas, and the town of Jasper were all outraged that such a horrific crime could have taken place and provided an outpouring of support for Byrd’s family in particular and for the African American community of Jasper in general. To demonstrate their support, thousands wore yellow ribbons, and at Byrd’s funeral, speeches about reconciliation and healing were given by dignitaries, including Jesse Jackson and Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, and a letter from then–President Bill Clinton was read. For their crimes, King and Brewer were sentenced to die, and Berry was sentenced to life in prison. In the end, however, James Byrd Jr. was buried on the black side of the Jasper City Cemetery, “still segregated in 1998.”

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Brewer was executed by lethal injection in 2011, and on Wednesday, April 24, 2019, John William King was similarly put to death by the state of Texas.27

The brutal murder of James Byrd Jr. was the first time that the term hate crime came to the forefront of public consciousness in the United States. Unfortunately, within four months, the nation would again be shocked by another brutal murder motivated by hate—this time against someone because of his sexual orientation. The victim in this case was a 21-year-old college student named Matthew Shepard, who attended the University of Wyoming. On the evening of October 7, 1998, Russell Henderson and Aaron McKinney went to a known gay bar with the intent of targeting a gay man for robbery. They met Shepard there and offered him a ride home. Instead of taking him home, however, they took him to a remote area, tied him to a fence post, pistol-whipped him in the head to unconsciousness, and left him there to die. Shepard was found more than 18 hours later by a cyclist. He never regained consciousness and died four days later on October 12. Subsequently, Henderson and McKinney were found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.28

At the time of both Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr.’s deaths, most states did not have hate crime statutes. Today, 46 states and the District of Columbia have some sort of bias crime legislation, the exceptions being Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, and Wyoming. Generally, these statutes add additional time onto sentence lengths for those convicted of hate-motivated offenses. For example, after the Tree of Life Synagogue mass murders, federal prosecutors charged Robert Bowers with many crimes, including the following:

11 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs resulting in death;

11 counts of use and discharge of a firearm to commit murder during and in relation to a crime of violence;

2 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon and resulting in bodily injury;

11 counts of use and discharge of a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence;

8 counts of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs involving an attempt to kill and use of a dangerous weapon, and resulting in bodily injury to a public safety officer; and

1 count of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs involving use of a dangerous weapon and resulting in bodily injury to a public safety officer.29

Similar to all crime statutes, however, there is a great deal of variability in how and when offenses fall under the rubric of a hate crime. For example, in April 2019, a white supremacist named Russell Courtier ran over and killed Larnell Bruce, a 19-year-old black man, with his Jeep after an argument in Oregon.

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Although the crime was clearly hate-related, prosecutors could not charge Courtier with a felony hate crime because the state statute only allowed this when offenders acted with an accomplice. As a result, Courtier was only convicted of a misdemeanor hate crime along with this murder charge and was sentenced to 28 years in prison.30 This case mirrors an earlier one from May 2017, in which a man stabbed two people to death and wounded another on a Portland commuter train. Jeremy Christian had been yelling anti-Muslim epithets at two women on the train, one of whom was wearing a hijab.31 The three victims attempted to intervene and calm Christian down, but he attacked them with a knife, killing two of them. Christian was subsequently charged with murder, assault, and weapons charges, but because he acted alone, the hate crimes charges were misdemeanors, not felonies. This quirk of Oregon’s hate crime statutes has meant that these laws do not always result in sentence enhancements. This variability in hate crime statutes across states makes them difficult to define. We turn to this issue now.

What Is a Hate Crime?

In previous chapters, we have highlighted legislation designed to combat and prevent particular kinds of crime. However, the hate crime statutes enacted across states and at the federal level are necessary to discuss first in this chapter because they help us understand exactly what a hate crime is. A hate crime is not a specific kind of offense but an existing offense that is perpetrated because of some underlying prejudice or hatred perceived by the offender(s). Essentially, an ordinary crime becomes a hate crime when offenders select a victim because of some characteristic, such as the victim’s race or religion. Of course, similar to intent, it is difficult to prove underlying prejudice or hatred. Instead, prosecutors must typically demonstrate that a victim is targeted because of their group affiliation. In other words, hate crimes involve victims who are targeted because of their religion, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other group identity that is targeted because of bias, prejudice, and intolerance.32 As one scholar points out, the specific victim is not necessarily chosen because of who they are or what they did but simply because they belong to a particular group.33 This quality of impersonal victimization is something that hate crimes share with genocide (Chapter 11), and in a very real sense, genocides can be considered an extreme, systematic, and collective type of hate crime. In terms of specific legal definitions of hate crimes, we can start with the one used by the FBI:

A hate crime, also known as a bias crime, is a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.34

Many states include other characteristics within their hate crime statutes, including age, gender, political affiliation, and transgender status or gender identity. As the language of the FBI definition suggests, bias crime is sometimes used as another term for hate crime.

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The first major hate crime legislation passed at the federal level was called the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990. The law directed the attorney general to collect data “about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” In September 1994, Congress passed the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, which amended the Hate Crime Statistics Act to include both physical and mental disabilities.

The most recent law enacted at the federal level against hate crimes is called the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act; it was signed into law by President Obama in March 2010. The law expanded federal hate crime legislation to include violence based on gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability in addition to the existing criteria based on race and religion. After signing the legislation, President Obama stated, “After more than a decade of opposition and delay, we’ve passed inclusive hate crimes legislation to help protect our citizens from violence based on what they look like, who they love, how they pray, and who they are.”35

Although most offenders are prosecuted for hate crimes at the state level, hate crime charges are also brought against offenders at the federal level, as the federal conviction and sentencing of Dylann Roof on federal hate crimes charges illustrates. Moreover, hate crime prosecutions are successfully being made for victimizations not typically thought of as motivated by hate. For example, on September 20, 2012, Samuel Mullet Sr., a leader of a so-called renegade Amish sect, and 15 of his followers were convicted in federal court of hate crimes for terrorizing another Amish community in eastern Ohio by forcefully shaving the beards of men and cutting the hair of both men and women. While the crimes themselves constituted assaults, the jury convicted the renegade sect members of hate crimes because they were attempting to “suppress the victims’ practice of religion.” The U.S. attorney described the incidents quite graphically: “The defendants invaded their homes, physically attacked these people and sheared them almost like animals.” This is a significant victimization in traditional Amish communities, because “men’s long beards and women’s uncut hair are central to religious identity.” One female victim recounted how the attackers forcefully entered her home at night and how several of them held both her and her husband down, shaved her husband’s beard with clippers and cut his hair while he repeated prayers, and then cut her hair with shears used to cut a horse’s mane.36

How Frequently Are Hate Crimes Carried Out?

Because the category of hate crimes is relatively new, collecting data on their prevalence is also relatively recent. In 1996, the U.S. Congress enacted the Church Arson Prevention Act of 1996, which mandated the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program to begin collecting statistics on offenses motivated by bias against physical and mental disabilities in January 1997. Remember, however, that the UCR collects data only on those incidents that are reported to the police. The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) did not start asking victims about whether they perceived they were targeted because of bias until 2003.

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As with the vast majority of interpersonal violence, data from the NCVS is more valid and reliable than police report data because only a fraction of victimizations are reported to police. For example, one analysis by the Bureau of Justice Statistics found that less than half of hate crimes (44%) are reported to law enforcement.37 Figure 8.1 displays the breakdown of 7,106 single-bias crime incidents reported to the police in 2017 by the type of bias. As can be seen, the largest percentage of these crimes were based on racial and ethnic bias, followed by both religious and sexual orientation bias. The least common types of hate crime reported to law enforcement concern disabilities, gender identity, and gender bias.

We also should remember that any one particular criminal incident may involve multiple offenses. Figure 8.2 highlights that of the 7,106 incidents in 2017, there were 8,437 specific offenses reported. When broken down by type of offense, Figure 8.2 reveals that while the single largest category reported to police in 2017 were property offenses (27.6%), most of the hate crimes reported to the police involved violent offenses. Specifically, according to the FBI, of the 8,437 offenses reported, just over 60% were crimes against people, while 36.9% were crimes against property. Of those interpersonal offenses, most consisted of intimidation, followed by simple assault.

Figure 8.1 Percentage Distribution of 7,106 Single-Bias Incidents Reported to Law Enforcement in 2017 by Bias Type

Source: “2017 Hate Crime Statistics,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports.

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Keep in mind that the above figures reflect only those hate crimes that were reported to police. To understand why some hate crimes are not reported to police, the NCVS asks victims why they did not report their victimizations. The reasons given for not reporting were that many victims handled it privately or referred the matter to a non-law enforcement official such as a teacher or staff member at a school or an apartment manager.38 Almost a quarter of victims, however, simply did not report because they felt that the police wouldn’t be interested or willing to respond or because they felt that it would cause more trouble for them from the perpetrator or friends of the perpetrator. From both of these sources of data, we now know more about the characteristics of hate crime victimization in the United States.

Figure 8.2 Percentage Distribution of 8,437 Hate Crime Offenses Reported to Law Enforcement in 2017 by Offense Type

Source: “2017 Hate Crime Statistics,” Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reports.

The NCVS defines hate crimes as those incidents in which victims believe the offender selected them for victimization because of one or more of their personal characteristics, including race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, and disability. This definition also includes incidents in which the offender perceives the victim as belonging to or associated with a group largely identified by one of these characteristics or perceives the victim as associating with people having certain characteristics. Before a crime is classified as hate related, corroborating evidence of hate motivation must also be found to have been present at the time of the incident, including at least one of the following:

The offender used derogatory language.

The offender left hate symbols.

The police confirmed that a hate crime had taken place.

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Based on these three forms of evidence, the vast majority of cases were believed to be hate crimes because of the use of derogatory language (98.7%). Not surprisingly, the NCVS estimates many more hate crime victims compared to police report data. The most recent data available indicate that there were 207,880 hate crimes in 2015, of which 192,020 were violent crimes and 14,160 were property offenses.39 The most common form of violent hate crimes were simple assaults (61.6%), followed by aggravated assault (17.7%). For property offenses, the most common type of hate crime consisted of thefts.

You may be surprised to learn that just over half (55%) of violent hate crimes reported to the NCVS were perpetrated by known offenders—that is, offenders who were acquainted with the victims—and about 61% of offenders were male. Violent hate crime is also more likely to involve multiple offenders than other violent crime. For example, about 30% of violent hate crime incidents involved more than one offender compared with only 17% of violent victimizations that were not motivated by hate. As we will see in Chapter 9, people will often engage in behavior in a group they would not otherwise engage in if alone.

Between 2011 and 2015, the most likely type of bias, according to victims’ perceptions in the NCVS data, was directed against a person’s race (48.1%), followed by ethnicity (35.4%), which includes a person’s ancestral, cultural, social, or national affiliation.40 These first two categories of bias were followed in descending order by gender, association (used to refer to victimization because of a relationship with someone from the targeted group), sexual orientation, religion, disability, and perceived characteristics (victimization because of looking or acting according to some biased perception, such as when a person is attacked because the perpetrator thinks they look Jewish or is acting effeminate). These results are fairly consistent with the FBI data reported above in Figure 8.1.

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Race-Based Hate Crime

As both the UCR and NCVS data illustrate, hate crimes perpetrated because of race are overwhelmingly targeted against African Americans. While there are many ways in which anti-Black violence has been historically carried out, perhaps the most well-known and infamous example of such an offense is known as lynching. Lynchings were typically carried out by a lynch mob and could therefore comprise a form of collective violence, which will be discussed in Chapter 9. However, we review lynchings here because of its historical role in suppressing and victimizing African American populations. While lynchings sometimes targeted other groups, including Mexicans, Chinese, and American Indians/Alaskan Natives, it most commonly was perpetrated against Blacks. Furthermore, on December 18, 2018, after almost 100 years of failing to pass similar measures, the U.S. Senate unanimously approved legislation defining lynching as a federally prohibited hate crime.41 The law, which is called the Justice for Victims of Lynching Act of 2018, provides a federal sentence of life in prison for two or more people convicted of killing someone because of their actual or perceived race, color, religion, or national origin. It should be noted that at the time of this writing, this bill has not passed in the U.S. House of Representatives or been signed by President Trump.

Lynching is an imprecise term and has been used and misused in many ways. However, it can roughly be defined as an extralegal execution by a mob. This, of course, is not what Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas was referring to when he called his nomination hearings a “high tech lynching.” Lynching is a type of collective violence in which a group of individuals circumvent the law and punish individuals for real or imagined crimes. Initially nonlethal in nature, it usually involved punishments such as whippings and tarring and feathering, but over time, it evolved to become a much more lethal form of social control—one that typically included torture, mutilation, hanging, and burning.

While there are a couple of possible contenders, the origin of the term lynching most likely comes from Judge Charles Lynch, who fought against the Tories during the Revolutionary War.42 Tories were colonists who supported the British against the revolution. A Virginia magistrate, legislator, and colonel in the militia, Lynch and his sympathizers rounded up and punished Tory sympathizers, even though they had no jurisdictional authority to do so. As Lynch himself reported after one extralegal expedition, “Shot one, hanged one, and whipt [sic] several.”43 Because of the relatively high social status of those perpetrating the acts and a superficial adherence to formality and impartiality, many people felt that the actions of Judge Lynch were legitimate and carried the force of law, even if the technical legality was missing. This type of violence soon became known as Lynch’s law, later shortened to Lynch law, and then still later to the verb lynching.

After the revolution, lynching began appearing on the frontier as the newly formed nation began its inexorable expansion westward, but in character and tone, lynching remained largely unchanged and was a relatively infrequent occurrence. Lynching at this time, it should be noted, was rarely perpetrated against Blacks but was instead perpetrated against various other groups that were perceived as threatening some established order. There was no need to lynch slaves, since the laws and customs of slaveholding states and territories provided many legal mechanisms intended to keep Blacks in their place and under control. This all changed, however, after the end of the Civil War and the beginning of Reconstruction.

On April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox courthouse and ended the American Civil War. In December of that same year, Congress ratified the Thirteenth Amendment and officially abolished slavery, completing the process begun with President Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. African Americans were finally free to participate in the economic, social, and political life of the nation. Unfortunately, many White Southerners resented and hated the newly won rights of their former slaves Under slavery, Whites had enjoyed a privileged position that was protected by the laws and institutions of the slaveholding states. The Civil War and Reconstruction put an end to that and, as one historian of lynching asserts,

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The conclusion of the war and the subsequent abolition of slavery unleashed an unprecedented wave of extralegal violence. Many white southerners, embittered by defeat and unsettled by the turmoil of Reconstruction, responded by expanding antebellum customs of communal violence to meet new conditions. . . . At the root of the postwar bloodshed was the refusal of most whites to accept the emancipated slaves’ quest for economic and political power. Freed from the restraints of planter domination, the black man seemed to pose a new and greater threat to whites.44

Lynching, then, was a way for White Southerners to reassert control over the African American population—in other words, it was a tool for protecting certain traditional values that placed Blacks in a subordinate role to Whites. This extralegal means of social control was also buttressed by a host of legislative initiatives in the Southern states known as the “Black Codes” that were intended to limit the rights of African Americans. Congress attempted to hamper these codes by passing the Civil Rights Act of 1866 that gave African Americans citizenship and full rights—even overcoming a presidential veto to do so.45

In short, in the aftermath of the Civil War, Southern Whites began relying on violent and repressive tactics, of which lynching was the most lethal manifestation, in order to protect their privileged way of life relative to that of Blacks. Although there were many organized groups that fought to retain White supremacy during this time, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) is probably the most well-known. The KKK was founded in 1866, its main purpose being to fight Reconstruction efforts. Today, the number of members in various organizations related to the KKK has dwindled; however, the Klan is still alive and well, holding annual rallies and marches across the country. You can even order Klan jewelry and figurines from various Klan websites. The organization’s scope of intolerance has widened since the time of Reconstruction following the Civil War, and the Klan now professes to be anti-Jewish, anti-Catholic, anti-gay, anti-immigration, and anti-Muslim.

As a tool for maintaining social control, lynchings in U.S. history were not isolated incidents. In fact, lynchings by small groups of Whites were so prevalent between 1880 and 1930 that Stewart Tolnay and E. M. Beck have referred to these years in U.S. history as the “Lynching Era.”46 Tolnay and Beck found that there were 2,805 people lynched between 1882 and 1930 in ten Southern states.47 While the vast majority of these victims were African Americans, other victims were those from the North who came to the South to assist the Black population during Reconstruction, and White Southerners who sympathized with Reconstruction and efforts to integrate Blacks into Southern society. In the view of Tolnay and Beck, these nearly 3,000 victims represented only the tip of the iceberg of the violence and intimidation faced by Southern Blacks on a daily basis. It is therefore a mistake to see lynchings as spontaneous eruptions of communal violence, although they were often portrayed as such—especially by many Southern newspapers.48 Instead, we must recognize that lynching often served some very real social, political, and economic goals.

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When examining the patterns of lynchings in the South, we find that, up until World War I, most lynchings of African Americans were concentrated in the areas in which cotton was the dominant crop. In fact, the number of lynchings at any given time has been found to be influenced by fluctuations in the price of cotton. Specifically, lynchings against Southern Blacks increased during tougher economic times in those regions of the South where the dominant cash crop was cotton. Keep in mind that cotton cultivation depended heavily on cheap African American labor. While never overtly about labor conditions, the violence against African Americans certainly helped reinforce White domination over the African Americans and helped maintain the plantation owners’ supply of cheap labor. Lynchings also varied by time of year, and this seasonality also reflected the needs of the planters. As Tolnay and Beck assert,

Although plantation production was extremely labor intensive, the demand for labor was not uniform throughout the year. It is likely that landlords and planters perceived greater need to maintain control over workers during periods of peak labor demand. . . . Although the manifest function of lynchings might well have been to rid the white community of offending blacks who violated the moral order, the latent function was to tighten the reins of control over the black population, especially during times when whites most needed black labor to work fields of cotton.

In many ways, then, we can see lynching as operating on a number of different levels. One of the primary purposes was to strike fear into the hearts of Blacks in the post-Reconstruction period as they were attempting to integrate into White society and assert their economic and political independence. Lynchings helped intimidate the Black population and made them easier to control within the labor force. This reign of terror also made many Blacks hesitant about speaking up or advocating for higher wages and/or better working conditions. It also served as a means to maintain White supremacy over the Black population, because it helped to discourage African Americans from challenging the status quo of White privilege more generally. In addition, some have suggested that as the prices of cotton fell and Southern Whites were under more economic stress, Blacks were more likely to be scapegoated for the problems and economic misfortunes of Whites, who lynched Blacks out of frustration and misplaced anger.50

This is not to suggest that these instrumental reasons were articulated overtly. Instead, we find a whole host of rationales and justifications used to paint the lynchings in a positive light. The victims of lynchings were almost always portrayed as dangerous and brutish offenders who had called down the righteous wrath of the community by their actions. Perpetrators of violence, we must remember, almost always portray their behavior as justified and righteous, and in this, the lynch mob was no different. Local newspapers, for example, often portrayed the actions of a lynching in the best possible light. After one lynching in 1886 in Louisiana, for example, this opinion appeared in the local paper: While we deplore the necessity for mob law, we must commend it in this instance, for if the accused had been convicted of an “attempt at rape,” the penalty would only have been two years in the Penitentiary, which is worse than farce. . . . The action of the mob is approved by the best people in the parish. As we have said before, “the will of the people is the law of the land,” and all such monsters should be disposed of in a summary manner.

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Ostensibly, African Americans were lynched for a variety of real or alleged crimes, such as murder, theft, or rape, or for appearing to challenge their position within society by being uppity, insolent, or rude. The image of Black men defiling White women was a particularly potent symbol and was often used to justify violence against African American males. One Texas editorial even went so far as to write,

Almost every day some negro brute assaults a white woman in this state, and often one to a half-dozen murders are committed in an effort to hide the crime. . . . If rape and murder by brutish negroes are to become common, the negro must expect extermination.52

Some may be tempted to argue that lynchings were simply a form of popular justice—lynch mobs were simply making sure that justice was served in cases where a crime had been committed. However, this premise is almost impossible to justify, since the majority of lynching victims were taken from jails or some other form of law enforcement authority.53 As such, most victims were already facing legal sanctions in some form or another, even though many victims had not been tried or convicted of an offense. Moreover, a significant number of lynchings involved more than a mere hanging; many involved symbolic mutilations, burning, and torture of the body, which was always displayed in a place that was easily visible to the Black community. In sum, the purpose of lynching was to create a reign of terror over the African American community and to make a political statement that Blacks who did not submit to White rule would be severely dealt with.

Another peculiar element of lynchings was the often carnival-like atmosphere that frequently accompanied these murders. Hundreds, if not thousands, of spectators, often including children, came out to watch and even participate in lynchings. Spectators sometimes came from miles around to join in the festivities, and the crowd would often pose for photographs with the bodies of the victims; these pictures would sometimes even be turned into postcards. After the lynching, spectators would often fight for scraps of clothing, rope, and bone to take home as souvenirs. As repellent as this is to us, it should be noted that this kind of behavior was often seen at legal executions performed in public and was part of a long tradition of public conduct.

Unfortunately, ritualistic lynchings have not disappeared entirely, as the case of Michael Donald illustrates. In Mobile, Alabama, in 1981, the trial of an African American man charged with the murder of a White police officer resulted in a hung jury. The KKK believed that the jury was unable to convict the defendant because some of the jury members were African American. To avenge the policeman’s death, two Klan members, Henry Hays and James Knowles, went to Mobile to seek revenge. After cruising for victims, they found 19-year-old Michael Donald walking home from the store after getting his sister a pack of cigarettes.

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At the time, Donald was attending a vocational school and working part-time at the local newspaper. Hays and Knowles forced him into their car and drove him to the next county, where they beat him with a tree limb, slit his throat, and then hanged him from a tree. Donald’s death was originally attributed to a drug deal gone bad, but Donald’s mother fought tirelessly to get her son’s murder investigated. It took two-and-a-half years, but the FBI finally linked Hays and Knowles to the murder and both were ultimately convicted; Hays was sentenced to death and Knowles was sentenced to life in prison. The Southern Poverty Law Center also filed a wrongful death suit against United Klans of America on behalf of Beulah Donald, Michael’s mother. The jury ruled that the Klan was responsible for Donald’s death and awarded his mother $7 million.54

Photo 8.1 The noose still represents a symbol of threat and intimidation

iStock.com/madsci

While lynchings are not as prevalent as they once were, they nevertheless remain potent manifestations of collective violence perpetrated outside of the boundaries of official governmental authority. Moreover, while ritualistic lynchings by hanging and burning have faded, we know that hate-motivated killings remain an ever-present part of all societies. We also know that the primary purpose of lynchings is not to seek some form of popular justice but to instill a climate of terror in marginalized populations. This reality continues into the present day. In 2018, for example, nooses were left hanging outside of the Mississippi capitol building ahead of a racially charged special election.55 Similar kinds of incidents with nooses left hanging as a potent symbol of hate have appeared at schools and businesses in the last few years and remind us that the specter of lynching is still very much with us in 21st-century America.

Religion-Based Hate Crime

As we noted above (Figure 8.4), the most common form of religious based bias crimes is anti-Semitic in orientation. Anti-Semitism refers to derogatory speech and action targeted against Jews and relies on very old images and prejudices. In fact, anti-Semitism has sometimes been referred to as the longest hatred.56 While other groups are also sometimes targeted, and while Islamophobia has been on the rise in recent years, it is anti-Semitism that represents the most pervasive form of religious-based hate crime (Figure 8.5). While the majority of the anti-Semitism tracked by the ADL occurred in public places, a surprisingly high amount occurred in K–12 schools and college campuses, which one would think would be largely resistant to such kinds of intolerance.

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Because anti-Semitism has been around such a long time, many people are at least somewhat familiar with the negative images and stereotypes associated with the Jews, even if they are not anti-Semites themselves. This means that when times get tough or tragedies happen, these old ideas are easily resurrected to explain what happened and why. Globalization, for example, and all of the resulting economic and social changes and dislocation are not always easily understood or explained. They are scary phenomena for many people who see their jobs or way of life being threatened by the changes. This was worsened by the 2008 financial collapse and the widespread anger directed against Wall Street and the banking industry. An easy way to make sense of what happened and to have a target to focus anger against is to scapegoat a group for the economic downturn. Scapegoating can be used by political, social, and religious leaders in order to capitalize on old prejudices and further their own goals, whatever those might be. One anti-Semitic theme, for example, that has been relied on in recent years portrays the Jews as rich and exploitative industrialists and bankers responsible for our economic problems.

Figure 8.5 Anti-Semitic Incidents in 2018 in the United States by Location

Source: Adapted from “2018 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents,” Anti-Defamation League.

After the collapse of Lehman Brothers and other large investment banks, a rumor spread across the Internet that just prior to the collapse, $400 billion was secretly transferred to Israeli banks. Similarly, in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal in 2008, a great number of anti-Semitic postings appeared on various Internet forums.57 The fact that Bernie Madoff is a Jewish businessman who created a $50 billion Ponzi scheme allowed for a great deal of anti-Semitic comments to be voiced, including

Just another Jew money changer thief. It’s been happening for 3,000 years. Trust a Jew and this is what will happen. History has proven it over and over. Jews have only one god—money.

and in a similar vein,

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Madoff is another Jew banker. . . . The [Securities and Exchange Commission] is filled with Jewish gatekeepers who routinely turn a blind eye to Jewish financial bandits. . . . It’s no conspiracy that the Jews are the source of all the financial troubles in the world.”58

It’s no accident that the ADL tracked an increase in anti-Semitic hate crime in the wake of the 2008 downturn. The fear and economic anxiety produced by the recession helped spark a rise in anti-Semitism as many people relied on old prejudices and stereotypes to help explain the situation and as people used Jews as a focal point for their anger, fear, and resentment. In 2017, a surge in anti-Semitic acts in the United States once again reappeared as the ADL documented 1,986 incidents of anti-Semitism, a number that represents a 57% increase in anti-Semitic incidents. This was the largest single-year increase on record.59 Over 60% of these events occurred in a handful of specific states, notably New York, California, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

In 2018, the ADL found that anti-Semitic acts in the United States remained at near-record highs. Even though the total number of incidents were not as high as in 2017, it was the deadliest year for Jews in the history of the United States.60 In fact, 2018 saw a 105% increase of physical attacks on Jews in the United States over the 2017 figure. Such lethal anti-Semitic violence was not limited to the United States; 2018 was also the deadliest year in many decades for Jews around the world.61 Anti-Semitism was on the rise in many places such as Italy, which saw a 60% increase; the United Kingdom, which had a 16% increase; France, with a 74% increase; Australia, with an increase of 59%; and South Africa, with an increase of 25%.62

We like to assume that we have progressed and become more tolerant and civilized over time. So why are we seeing such increases in bias crimes during these last few years? One possible explanation has to do with the rise of hate groups in the United States and around the world and the ways in which they have coalesced and marketed themselves online around a number of issues.

Hate Groups

According to a variety of sources, the number of active hate groups in the United States has been increasing in recent years. Figure 8.6 reveals that the United States has experienced significant growth in active hate groups; in fact, 2018 saw the highest number of organized hate groups in 20 years. Much of this dramatic increase is driven by what may be described as white nationalist groups, which were formally more commonly known as white supremacist groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center, for example, tracked a 50% increase in white nationalist groups in 2018.63 While there are a number of hate groups in the United States from different racial, ethnic, and religious groups, the bulk of the growth has revolved around groups and organizations intent on maintaining or regaining a position of power and privilege for whites.

Figure 8.6 Hate Groups in the United States, 1999–2018

White nationalist groups are organizations whose beliefs center on the ostensible superiority of the white or Aryan people over other races. Such thinking is not new. Ideas about intellectual and physical differences between various racial and other populations have been in wide circulation for a long time and have, over the years, justified racism, genocide, sexism, slavery, colonialism, and other policies and practices based on exploitation and oppression. These beliefs have often been buttressed by a host of pseudo-scientific beliefs such as Social Darwinism, which suggests that the various racial groups are in a life-and-death struggle for survival and that those races that are most fit, genetically speaking, must protect themselves from the dangers posed by different racial groups. Not only is this a misreading of Darwin’s ideas of natural selection, but it also ignores the reality that all human beings are 99.9% identical and of that .1% difference, 94% of that variation is between individuals from the same population.64 Racial differences, in other words, are largely about imagined difference rather than real difference. Race is a social construct. Yet for racists, these differences are real and powerful and of central importance to their worldview and, consequently, shape much of the violence that they carry out. Many nations have dark histories of how this unscientific doctrine has been used to create unethical and sometimes genocidal policies.

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Based on the pseudo-science of Social Darwinism, the eugenics movement became active in the United Kingdom in the late 19th century and emerged in the United States in the early 20th century (see Chapter 2). The word eugenics comes from the Greek roots for good and origin and essentially misapplies principles of genetics for improving the human race. The term eugenics was first used by Francis Galton, an intellectual from England. While his work focused primarily on obtaining desirable human traits through breeding, in the United States, the movement quickly turned to more sinister policies, including the elimination of negative traits.65 As we have continued to note in this book, policies such as these are usually directed at those we don’t consider us but instead consider them. The movement drove legislation across many states for forced sterilization of many people, including those who were mentally or physically challenged and others from the ranks of marginalized subgroups. As we will see in Chapter 11 on genocide, Hitler and the Nazis believed in eugenics and used these ideas to justify a euthanasia program targeting the mentally and physically handicapped as well as the Holocaust. Only after the horrors of Nazi Germany came to light did the eugenics movement lose power in the United States.

Despite empirical evidence proving that race is a social construct and that all humans are virtually identical, albeit with different skin colors, white supremacist groups continue to exist. In the United States, these groups have included such organizations as the KKK, Posse Comitatus, White Aryan Resistance, and various other neo-Nazi, skinhead, Christian Identity, Christian Patriot, and militia groups. Some are highly organized and structured, while others are much looser.66 All, however, share the belief that the white race—meaning primarily those from northern Europe—are superior to other races, are responsible for the greatest achievements in culture and civilization, and are threatened by the increasing presence of nonwhite peoples in this country. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks such groups, white nationalist organizations grew from 100 in 2017 to 148 in 2018.67 The ADL documented a 182% increase in the distribution of white supremacist propaganda and of the number of rallies held.68 These facts still beg the question of what is behind such a dramatic growth.

A big part of the reason appears to revolve around the issue of power. As we noted in Chapters 5 and 6, perceptions of power (or a lack thereof) are related to other forms of interpersonal crime, including rape and intimate partner violence. It is believed that the resurgence in white supremacy in today’s society represents a reaction to the perceived loss of power felt by some white men. In a country in which whites, and especially white men, once held all the reins of power and enjoyed economic, social, and political superiority and control over other groups, that equation has been changing. Increasingly, the demographic composition of our society has altered and power has become more diffused among various racial, ethnic, religious, and gender groups. Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld, a scholar of hate crime, puts it this way:

White supremacists believe the power that is rightfully theirs, by virtue of their superior race, is being stolen by others. They believe Jewish bankers and media moguls conspire with a corrupt government to take that power. They believe blacks take it by force through their criminal behavior. They believe nonwhites in general take it by immigrating to the United States in great masses and by reproducing when they get here, thereby eventually taking power through sheer force of numbers. They believe race traitors take it by interbreeding with nonwhites, thus contaminating the superior Aryan gene pool. Over and over in white supremacist writings appear these words: “We must take our country back.”69

While economic uncertainty and anxiety have certainly factored into white supremacy, it is the changing face of America that seems to have become a primary focal point for much of the fear and intolerance that we have seen in the last few years.

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Immigration and Hate

According to census projections, by 2045, whites will, for the first time, become a minority population in the United States.70 As the composition of the United States population continues to evolve, fears of the “other” have become a potent source of anger, resentment, and hostility on the part of some whites who see their society changing around them in ways that are alien and uncomfortable. Our society, culture, traditions, and values are constantly evolving and changing, and this is always difficult. For some, it represents a transition from all that is familiar and comfortable to a world that seems foreign and confusing. Research has found that as immigration and ethnic diversity increases in a society, trust, altruism, and community cooperation are correspondingly diminished.71 The notion of white genocide, which we referenced at the beginning of this chapter, perfectly captures this sense of loss and threat perceived rightly or wrongly by some whites.

This is one reason why immigration has become such a hot-button topic in the last couple of years, not only in the United States but also in many European countries. For example, beginning in 2015, Europe experienced a dramatic increase in the number of refugees seeking admittance to European Union nations. Fleeing conflict and war zones and hoping for economic opportunity, millions of refugees risked the hazardous journey across the Mediterranean to reach Europe. While a number of western European nations embraced these new arrivals, it wasn’t long before attitudes and opinions began hardening. These same nations have since seen a significant reaction against this influx with negative rhetoric and stereotyping and anti-immigrant violence increasing in frequency and severity.72

Here in the United States, anti-immigrant ideas have often been a main concern of white supremacist groups, which is why they are also sometimes referred to as nativists . Nativism refers to the practice of protecting the interests and prerogatives of native citizens over immigrants. Ironically, such sentiments ignore the reality that, unless you are an American Indian, we all came from immigrant stock at one time or another. Ignoring such inconvenient truths, white supremacy has embraced and been buoyed by those who have defined immigration as a national emergency and a crisis. Phyliss Gerstenfeld cites a KKK website that asserts that “America is being overrun by illegal immigrants mostly from nonwhite countries who do not share the Christian European Values of our nation’s founders.”73 One study looking at the websites of hate groups found that these sites often portrayed immigrants in various dehumanizing and threatening ways because they “steal jobs” and are labeled as violent criminals and rapists.74 We will see in Chapter 11 that this type of hate-filled propaganda often fuels the fire for genocide.

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These arguments have become common, despite the empirical evidence that shows immigration has had no effect on crime in rural communities between 1990 and 2010 and that during the same time period, immigration was actually linked with lower crime rates.75 One study in Texas even found that immigrants had lower crime rates than native-born citizens.76 And finally, a new study by the Pew Research Center found that between 2007 and 2016, violent crime slightly decreased across areas in general, regardless of whether the number of undocumented immigrants rose of fell in these same areas.77 Despite such research, the image of the violent criminal immigrant remains widespread. This leads us to the role played by President Trump in helping create a climate in which these nativist attitudes and prejudices have been given free rein and even amplified.

iStock.com/Jorge Villalba

There is no question that the number of bias-related groups and crimes have increased, but has the U.S. population really become more prejudiced? Recent research suggests that hatred and intolerance haven’t really increased, but what has changed is that more people feel empowered to express those sentiments in an increasingly polarized nation. Some have called this the “Trump Effect,” a term coined originally to refer to an increase in bullying in schools attributed to the divisive rhetoric used by Donald Trump in his successful 2016 presidential campaign. This effect has been subsequently expanded to include religious and racial bullying by adults as well as misogyny and sexual assault.78

How was the Trump Effect created? During his presidential campaign and while in office, Donald Trump has repeatedly used the language and imagery of white nationalism in public speeches. He has frequently dehumanized and objectified immigrants as animals, vermin,79 criminals, rapists, and invaders.80 Trump has also repeated the claims of white genocide81 and has pointedly refused to condemn acts of violence carried out by white supremacist groups, whether the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, the shootings at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Christchurch Mosque shooting, or the Chabad of Poway shooting in California. Each was carried out by a white supremacist, and in each case, white supremacy was not condemned by the president. On the contrary, in cases such as the Charlottesville rally, Trump defended the white supremacists by asserting that they included “some very fine people.”82

In case you think that we are being unduly partisan in assessing the influence of Donald Trump on hate groups, we should point out that prominent white supremacists, such as David Duke, a former grand wizard of the KKK, and Richard Spencer, a neo-Nazi who coined the term alt-right and was the featured speaker at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, have publicly acclaimed President Trump as an inspiration and ally. Richard Spencer explicitly argued that “the alt-right found something in Trump. . . . He changed the paradigm and made this kind of public presence of the alt-right possible”; he then went on to suggest that “there is no question that Charlottesville wouldn’t have occurred without Trump.”83 Further afield, but expressing much the same ideas, the Australian man who perpetrated the shootings in

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Christchurch summarized this viewpoint when he asserted that Donald Trump was a “renewed symbol of white identity.”84 Furthermore, a study by The Washington Post using data from the ADL found a very large spike in hate crimes in counties that had recently hosted a Trump rally.85 While these points are certainly not definitive, they are very suggestive of the role that Donald Trump has played, whether intentionally or unintentionally, in supporting and fostering white supremacy and giving legitimacy to their views.

The silver lining in this dark cloud is empirical evidence indicating that prejudicial attitudes in the U.S. population have actually decreased since President Trump was elected. Based on a nationally representative survey of U.S. adults taken both before and after the 2016 presidential election, researchers have found that prejudiced attitudes against minority groups have actually declined.86 The key author of the study noted that it was “quite conceivable that Trump has simultaneously galvanized a small number of highly prejudiced white Americans while also pushing millions more to affirm that they are not as prejudiced.”87

How Can We Combat Hate Crime?

At some level, all violence is the result of an us versus them mentality. Perpetrators usually see their victims as being different and somehow of lesser worth or value. They also tend to perceive their victims as having brought on their own victimization. Remember back to Chapter 1, when we pointed out that many who commit violence tend to understand their actions as being necessary or justified. This is a common tendency among many different kinds of offenders, whether the bully in the schoolyard, the genocidal killer, or the hate criminal. The victims are typically seen as having caused the violence against them because of what they’ve done or said or perhaps simply because of how they look. In their own minds, these offenders are being violent only as a kind of righteous payback or retaliation. We can certainly see this in action when we look at the connection between economic conditions and xenophobia, the tendency to have contempt for foreigners or other strangers, which is particularly likely in times of economic hardship, when resources are scarce.

Researchers have found that groups tend to develop much more reactive and punitive attitudes during uncertain economic times, periods of high crime rates, and eras of social and cultural change.88 Uncertainty and fear, in other words, tend to breed and strengthen hostility and anger against those defined as being dangerous, threatening, or different. Thus, although hate crimes may not be directly linked to economic needs (as are many robberies), tougher economic times do increase the likelihood of hate crimes and other forms of violence. We find, for example, that in the United States, negative stereotypes of immigrant populations and crimes against them have been shown to increase during times of economic depression. For example, during the depressions of 1893 and 1907, the latest immigrants from Italy were the targets, while the depression of the 1920s set the stage for the recent immigrants from the Mediterranean and Slavic nations to become the scapegoats.

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During more recent economic hard times, Latin American immigrants, both legal and illegal, have become the target of the moment. This correlation between economic hardship and xenophobia has been observed at other times in the United States and in other countries around the world.89 In many ways, then, certain kinds of hate crimes are motivated by the fear surrounding economic uncertainty and cultural change. Ironically, perpetrators of this kind of violence often define themselves as being the victims, and the groups they target are seen as being the perpetrators because of the social, cultural, and demographic changes they represent.92 This tendency is made easier by preexisting prejudices and stereotypes against minority groups. One particularly potent example of this concerns anti-Semitism.

In Focus 8.1 The Internet, Hate Groups, and the Emergence of the Lone Wolf

The Internet is providing society with a host of new possibilities, but not all of them are positive. Unfortunately, the Internet’s promise of anonymity provides many hate groups with the visibility often denied them in regular media channels and allows them to introduce their propaganda to thousands. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of websites devoted to hate group propaganda continues to increase at a rapid pace. The Internet has also allowed hate groups to recruit through mass e-mailing and to establish a sense of community through cyber bulletin boards and chat rooms for people hundreds of miles apart. Of course, this visibility has also allowed researchers access to the worlds of these hate groups. Through the messages and images presented on hate sites, we now have more information about how they recruit new members, how they build a sense of community, and how they compel individuals to action.90

The list below includes five reasons (delineated by Teaching Tolerance [http://tolerance.org]) why hate groups and hate speech can flourish online. All of these conditions have increased the effectiveness of recruiting so-called lone wolves, individuals who take part in a movement but remain largely anonymous. Many hate groups encourage lone wolf action by telling their members, “Don’t keep membership lists, don’t go to rallies or meetings where you can be observed, and, should you decide to break the law, be sure not to tell anyone about it.”91

Privacy: Even though many sites remain open for anyone to post information or participate in a chat room, many are now requiring a screening and approval process for participants, thereby allowing greater privacy from public scrutiny.

Persuasion: Open discussions on the web allow extremists to more personally talk with individuals who may feel alienated from the rest of society but may not be convinced that an affiliation with a hate group is the way to go. The immediate availability of this communication makes such propaganda much more persuasive.

Anonymity: Although access to Internet traffic has the potential to be subpoenaed in a court of law, most people do not perceive that this will ever happen to them. Most people believe their interaction on the Internet will remain anonymous. This perceived anonymity serves to increase participation in hate groups. Obviously, having to attend a meeting, such as a KKK rally, to get involved in an organization would be perceived as more of an obstacle to reluctant participants compared to chatting over the Internet.

Planning: The Internet allows groups to organize and plan activities, such as rallies, concerts, and lectures, more effectively than traditional methods of communication.

Support: All of us feel the need to be part of a community. Internet chat rooms facilitate this formation of community for their participants and provide reinforcements for extremist ideas that would not be tolerated in the larger society.

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The problem with the kind of stereotypes and prejudices that lead to hate crimes is that they are remarkably enduring. In many ways, they are similar to a forest fire that, after the flames have been doused, continues to smolder underground for a long time. You think it’s been eradicated, but given the right conditions, those smoldering embers can burst into flame again—so too with prejudice. Education, legal changes, and tolerance training can all be used to combat intolerance and hatred so that it goes underground. But given the right economic, social, and political conditions, those old prejudices can quickly be resurrected. There are many reasons why these ideas persist.

One explanation relates to a deep-seated instinct among groups to distinguish between who is and who is not included. The tendency to separate ourselves into in-groups and out-groups is very strong. Jack Levin and Gordana Rabrenovic state,

If no ethnic or religious differences exist, humans will invent them to set up a hierarchy of those of us who are the richest, most intelligent, most morally superior, best hunters, and so on.93

However, this predisposition to divide the world into us versus them does not inextricably result in hate. Levin and Rabrenovic conclude,

Hating “the other” is learned behavior, pure and simple. . . . Haters learn such ideas either early in life from their parents or later in life from their friends, classmates, teachers, religious leaders, and the mass media.94

As such, the elements responsible for socialization—including family, school, religious organizations, and society as a whole—each play a role in creating hate. In fact, we all play a role. It is important to remember that everyday acts of prejudice and bigotry are also related to acts of hate-motivated violence. When we allow bigoted comments and jokes to be told without comment, we are acting as bystanders to hate. When a classmate makes an anti-Semitic comment; when your roommate insults something by saying, “That’s so gay”; when a coworker uses racial and ethnic slurs in casual conversation; when the coach of a child’s baseball team tells a player that he throws like a girl—each of these seemingly small instances helps to foster prejudiced environments where hateful attitudes and behavior are more likely to flourish. Each presents an opportunity to step out of the role of a bystander and into one of action. We will have more to say about the role of bystanders in Chapter 11 on genocide.

In U.S. society, the First Amendment protects a citizen’s right to free speech, including hate speech. This is a fundamental right that we believe should never be jeopardized. Nevertheless, there are ways in which communities can respond to events that promote hate, such as rallies and other gatherings. The Southern Poverty Law Center has published methods that have been successfully used by communities to combat hate groups.

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For example, if a hate group such as a white supremacist organization plans a demonstration, an alternative event can be organized that encourages multiculturalism. Hate crime victimizations should also be responded to by the community, not only by law enforcement. This is important not only to show unity within the community against hate but also to send a message to the hate crime victims that their community cares about them.95

Conclusions

In this chapter, we have examined how society can respond and combat violent crime by increasing the penalties associated to victimizations that target subgroups of the population simply because they are members of that group. In this way, hate crimes differ from other interpersonal crimes that result from conflict situations between known individuals and from economically motivated crimes against strangers, such as robberies. The term hate crime is relatively new, but crimes motivated by hate have a long history. While they have always existed, they tend to increase during times of economic downturn and/or when those in power perceive a real or imagined threat to their hierarchical status.

Part 2 ***DO NOT PLAGARIZE NOR PARAPHRASE!!! USE THIS TO DO THE 550 WORD WRITING!!! ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTION FROM THIS AND REFERENCE THE PAGE NUMBER & TEXTBOOK

Alvarez, A., & Bachman, R. (2021). Chapter 1 Defining Violence. In Violence: The enduring

problem (4th ed., pp. 368-378). essay, SAGE Publishing, Inc.

**** USE AMERICAN SCHOLARLY REFERENCES ONLY ****

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OVERVIEW: The objective of this assignment is to build skills on how to identify research sources, construct an annotated bibliography and identify key similarities or dissimilarities among articles. To do this, choose ONE OF THREE topics covered in this module: Mass Murder (Shootings) in Schools, Hate Crimes/Violence OR or State Violence. These are three distinct areas of research, but my intention is that you pursue an area of inquiry with which you have the most interest.

Learning how to identify and comprehend research sources is a key skill required for learning how to conduct and analyze social scientific and scientific research. Such research by necessity relies on previous research work that establishes knowledge about "what we know" about a particular phenomenon. Relying on published research that goes through academic peer review or that is published in credible scholarly books or research monographs avoids the problem of misinformation, i.e. one has to establish their basis of knowledge by referencing credible and verifiable sources. For example, the Alvarez and Bachman book claims to summarize credible and verifiable information on the topic of violence by referencing sources of primary research (see their endnotes and endnote references). Further, credible research sources are usually subject to verification by academic institutions, government agencies, policy organizations or other researchers that may challenge another's research finding (e.g., peer review).

For this assignment, the research sources you use must be academic articles published in research journals, i.e., not written by a journalists (who often synthesize primary research done by others) or social media commentators who often post personal opinions not backed up by credible and verifiable data (see module link "Scholarly Versus Journalistic/Popular Press Articles" linked here to learn more about these distinctions). To assure that you use only academic articles you are instructed to use the Criminal Justice Database, which contains articles from hundreds of journals, to complete this assignment (see below). In having you rely on academic research articles, I am not diminishing the important scholarship and research done in published books or high quality media journals such as The New Yorker or The Atlantic, but using research articles is the most efficient way to serve the objectives of this assignment.

INSTRUCTIONS: The first task of this assignment is to identify the three articles you want to use for the assignment. The articles must be on U.S.-based research and written in last 20 years, and be similar in research focus (e.g., measurements of violence, typical victims and offenders, causal circumstances or conditions, policies and prevention, etc - see below and my posted video for completing this assignment). Also, you should be able to comprehend the study for purposes of summarizing and presenting it, i.e., it should not be too sophisticated in its use of analytic techniques (such as the use of complicated quantiative methodologies) or theoretical principles. 

To locate articles, access the  "Criminal Justice Database" described earlier at https://www-proquest-com.libproxy.library.wmich.edu/criminaljusticeperiodicals/advanced?accountid=15099. This link should take you to the "Advanced Search" option for the database (see screenshot below). Be sure that you are logged onto your Wmich account to gain access. See sample screenshot below for what the page should look like (Note: if the link provided does not take you directly to the database, go to the WMUlibrary website at  https://wmich.edu/library , and click on the "databases" tab - left side about mid-page. The link takes you to a page listing "A-Z Databases." On the right you will find a "find a database" request option, where you should write "Criminal Justice Database.") 

Searching the Criminal Justice Database: Once on the database you will find several command lines where you can put in key words and phrases for your search. As an example (see screenshot below), I put in "hate crime" for the primary search and "religious" on an additional line to narrow the focus. You also should make sure that you choose to search "anywhere" in text to maximize results, and choose the "full text" option for what you want your search to provide for your viewing. In addition, to make sure you adhere to the parameters of the assignment, be sure to do the following before conducting your search: a) Under the option "specific date range," choose 2002 to 2022; b) Under the text box labeled "Source Type," scroll down & click "Scholarly Journal"; c) Under the text box labeled "Document Type," scroll down and choose "Article"; d) Under the Language text box, choose "English." These steps will assure that you will adhere to the directions of the assignment, and YOU WILL BE GRADED DOWN especially if you choose sources that are not articles from scholarly journals. See the screenshot below that provides a visual for the steps I am describing here.

Now you can start searching for relevant articles. Note that you will want to refine your search by subtopic with the objective of finding three articles with a similar research focus. For example, perhaps you are interesed in finding articles on hate crimes that are directed at likely victims and offenders. Then you can designate key words or phrases that pertain to the specific groups that you surmise are most likely to be victims of hate crimes, and confine your search along these lines (e.g., hate crimes directed at specific religious groups, etc.). Other subtopics guiding your search might include that key words or phrases that pertain to the characteristics of assailants, prevalence and rates of change (incidence) over time, methods of perpetrating violence (e.g, do assailants use arson, guns, some other method??), etc. If examining mass shootings in schools or state violence, search subtopics might include prevalance and incidence, policies and prevention, characteristics of those caught up in such incidents, etc. If searching for articles on state crime, you should be specific and search under police use of force, police shootings or police killings. 

You should use the Alvarez and Bachman or my lecture/powerpoint to help identify key words and phrases. For example, Alvarez and Bachman begin their chapters going over the scope of a specific problem (data on prevalence and incidence) and then explore specific subtopics. They also identify common victims and offenders associated with hate crimes and school shootings. For the material on state violence, most of this discussion will be from my lecture where I examine police excessive force and related matters that can help you designate key words or phrases for identifying key themes tying articles together and narrowing your searches. 

After you have identified the three articles WITH SIMILAR THEMES that you want to examine, you may proceed to the second task of this assignment, constructing your annotated bibiography. An annotated bibliography needs to include the following: 1) Full Reference (name of article, authors, journal in which article is published with showing volume, number, & year published - See "Sample Annotated Bibliography" or "Quickguide Chicago Manual of Style" linked below to find samples of acceptable formats for referencing sources. NOTE: PROQUEST OR OTHER SEARCH ENGINES ARE NOT JOURNALS - journal titles are listed with articles themselves; 2) Research Question (what is the article about)? 3) Research Method (what is the data source and how was data collected??); 4) the "so-what" of the research, i.e., a couple of sentences outlining key findings, conclusions or causal arguments, including key concepts or theories identified and applied. See the attached "Sample Annotated Bibliography for Sociology" posted in this module (below) to get a sense of how an annotated bibiography should look (either APA or MLA format). You must also link the URL showing the online location of your article so I can view it if need be.

Task three: End your assignment with paragraph that addresses the ways in which the pieces you chose for your annotated bibliography are similar or disimilar to one another in terms of their findings or theoretical perspectives (do not comment on less distinctions such as site of study or method used unless these are central to the findings of the research). If there are key disagreements or disputes among the researchers, point these out.

KEEP IN MIND THAT YOU MUST USE YOUR OWN WORDS IN RESPONDING TO THE PROMPT - NO CUTTING & PASTING!!