Hate crimes and racial relations

SIGNIFICANCE: Hate crimes—which often occur as a result of racial or ethnic bigotry—injure the victim and society in ways that other crimes do not. It has been argued that, because of their nature, hate crimes generate more injury, distress, and suffering than do other crimes.

In 1984, Alan Berg, a Jewish talk show host on a Denver radio station, was fatally shot on his way home by several members of a neo-Nazi hate group. In 1986, three White teenagers attacked three Black men in Howard Beach, New York, simply because the victims were African American. Both these actions were hate crimes, defined by the Federal Law as “crimes motivated by a victim’s perceived race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.”

Hate crimes are typically excessively brutal, and quite often, they are carried out in a random fashion against strangers, as with the incidents involving the Howard Beach Black men. Authors Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt have given several explanations as to why these crimes occur: the perpetrator’s negative and stereotypic view of other people, the possibility that bigotry is becoming more widely tolerated, the resentment that one group feels toward another because it has been left out of the mainstream of society, a perpetrator’s desire for the thrill of the action, a perpetrator’s reaction to a perceived or imagined injury such as the loss of a job promotion or a benefit, and, finally, a perpetrator’s wish to rid the world of evil. Statistics on hate crimes in the United States indicate that reported hate crimes sharply increased in 2001 following the September 11 terrorist attacks. The rate of hate crimes declined every year after 2001 until 2014, which was the lowest number of hate crime attacks since data collection began in 1991. From 2014, however, the number of hate crimes increased fairly steadily into the 2020s, with a slight decrease in 2018. In 2020, the number of hate crimes exceeded the 2014 spike, and by 2022, the number of hate crimes reached a record 11,600. Unlike the peak in 2001, the peak in the 2020s was the result of years of increasing rates of hate crimes. Since 1991, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) data has indicated race as the primary bias motive for hate crimes. Between 2021 and 2022, the rate of hate crimes against transgender and Jewish individuals increased by at least 35 percent, but the number of hate crimes committed against Black individuals was still nearly double that of both groups. Additionally, between 2014 and 2022, crimes against Black Americans doubled.

Federal Laws against Hate Crimes

There are a number of different types of laws that victims of hate crimes can use against perpetrators. Most states have enacted laws to deal specifically with these types of crimes. Several statutes also address these crimes on a federal level. There are federal laws prohibiting conspiracies against the rights of citizens, prohibiting deprivation of rights under color of law, and prohibiting damage to religious property and obstruction of persons in the free exercise of their religious beliefs. In addition, federal statutes prohibit forcible interference with civil rights and willful interference with civil rights under the fair housing laws. These federal statutes have rarely been applied to hate crimes for several reasons. First, if a president does not emphasize civil rights, the attorney general in that administration will not be likely to prosecute these crimes. Second, since most of these statutes require that the victim be engaged in an activity involving a federally protected right, such as buying a house or eating in a restaurant, they do not apply to many victims. Third, the remedies under the federal statutes are limited. Nonetheless, over the years, the federal government has expanded protections for victims of hate crimes. This includes the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded prosecutable hate crimes to areas such as gender and sexual orientation.

In 2021 and 2022, the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act attempted to expedite the Department of Justice's processing of hate crimes against Asian Americans. In 2021, the act was amended to include grants, training, and assistance to handle and prevent hate crimes against the Asian community under the name Khalid Jabara and Heather Heyer National Opposition to Hate, Assault, and Threats to Equality Act of 2021.

State Laws Prohibiting Expressive Conduct

On June 21, 1990, two young White men burned a cross on the property of a Black family in St. Paul, Minnesota. One of the men, designated by his initials, R.A.V., because he was only seventeen at the time, was charged in accordance with a new city “bias-motivated” disorderly conduct ordinance which read, “Whoever places on public or private property, a symbol, appellation, characterization, or graffiti, including, but not limited to, a burning cross or Nazi swastika, which one knows or has reasonable grounds to know arouses anger, alarm or resentment in others on the basis of race, color, creed, religion, or gender, commits disorderly conduct and shall be guilty of a misdemeanor.” R.A.V. could have been charged with simple trespass, disorderly conduct, breach of the peace, or even a more severe crime such as terroristic threats. Instead, in what was to become a test case of the statute and others similar to it, the prosecutor decided to invoke this law, which punished the expression of a viewpoint.

R.A.V.’s attorney, Edward J. Cleary, decided to challenge the constitutionality of the law under the First Amendment to the Constitution. A Minnesota district court agreed that the ordinance was unconstitutional. The prosecutor decided to appeal the decision to the Minnesota Supreme Court. This court overturned the lower court ruling. R.A.V. appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States for a review of the case. On June 22, 1992, the Court issued a unanimous opinion in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul declaring that the ordinance was unconstitutional. Five of the justices held that the ordinance was unconstitutional because it prohibited the expression of subject matter protected by the First Amendment. Four of the justices said that the ordinance was overbroad in that it included in its proscriptions expression which was protected by the First Amendment. The entire Court thought that the city had other means by which to prosecute R.A.V. Thus, the Court concluded that, offensive as the action in which R.A.V. had engaged was, the action was protected under the Constitution to the extent that it was expressive conduct.

State Hate Laws Prohibiting Conduct

In 1991, a nineteen-year-old Black man, Todd Mitchell, and his friends came out of a theater showing the film Mississippi Burning so enraged that, upon seeing a fourteen-year-old White youth (Gregory Riddick) on the street, they assaulted him. Coming out of the theater, Mitchell said to others in his group, “Do you all feel hyped up to move on some White people?” Then, when Mitchell saw Riddick walking by, he added, “There goes a White boy—go get him.” The group kicked and beat the boy for five minutes. Riddick remained in a coma for four days before he returned to consciousness with probably permanent brain damage. Mitchell was convicted of aggravated battery, normally punishable by a maximum sentence of two years. Because the jury found that the crime was motivated by racial animus, however, the sentence was increased to seven years in accordance with a state statute that read, “If a person commits the crime of aggravated battery and intentionally selects the victim ’in whole or in part because of the actor’s belief or perception regarding the race, religion, color, disability, sexual orientation or ancestry of that person,’ the maximum sentence may be increased by not more than five years.”

Within hours after the Supreme Court announced its opinion in R.A.V., the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down this law as unconstitutional. The state appealed the decision to the Supreme Court of the United States, and on June 11, 1993, in a unanimous opinion less than half the length of R.A.V., the Supreme Court reversed the decision and held that “enhancement” laws such as this which punish hate-motivated conduct are constitutional. The Court, in Wisconsin v. Mitchell, distinguished this case from R.A.V. by stating that R.A.V. dealt with expression and this case with conduct. The Court went on to state that with criminal acts, the more purposeful the conduct, the more severe the punishment. Thus, when a defendant’s beliefs add to a crime and motivate the defendant into action, the motive behind the conduct is relevant to the sentencing and punishment. Second, the Court stated that these enhancement laws are similar in aim to civil antidiscrimination laws and that they are justified because the conduct involved inflicts greater individual and societal harm than do other crimes. Some commentators, such as Edward J. Cleary, who argued R.A.V. before the Supreme Court, viewed Mitchell with alarm and sensed that these enhancement statutes come dangerously close to punishing a person’s thoughts and thereby infringing upon First Amendment rights. He questioned why those who attack a person of another race should, because they hate that race and express it, be subject to stricter laws than those who attack in silence. By upholding the enhancement laws, Cleary suggested, the Supreme Court blurred the lines between speech and action. Others believe that, because of the Court’s emphasis on the analogy between these enhancement-type laws and antidiscrimination laws, these laws are constitutional. In sum, if a statute infringes upon expression, as in R.A.V., it will be held unconstitutional; if a statute prohibits conduct, it will be upheld.

Forty-five states and the District of Columbia had adopted some form of law to deter hate crimes. These laws are not without practical problems. First, in many instances (as was the case in R.A.V.), prosecutors may wait to find the perfect case to fit the statute. The usefulness of the statute is thereby limited. Second, if there is a successful prosecution under the statute, there may be problems in carrying out a severe punishment. Jails are overcrowded, and it seldom makes sense to jail the entire group involved in the crime. If only leaders are jailed, there is ample evidence that prison will make them worse.

In 2015, a mass shooting that appeared to be racially motivated prompted further discussion about hate crime laws, particularly at the state level. On the night of June 17, 2015, twenty-one-year-old White suspect Dylann Roof opened fire in an African American church in Charleston, South Carolina, killing nine African American individuals. Within days of the shooting, authorities had discovered evidence on his computer and social media pages that pointed to White-supremacist beliefs and prompted further outcries that the incident had been racially motivated. However, as South Carolina remains one of five states without any hate crime laws, the FBI and the Department of Justice announced that they would be investigating the shooting as a hate crime at the federal level. In December 2016, Roof was found guilty on thirty-three counts of federal hate crimes; he was subsequently sentenced to death in January 2017.

Bibliography

Cleary, Edward J. Beyond the Burning Cross: The First Amendment and the Landmark R.A.V. Case. Random, 1994.

"Facts and Statistics." US Department of Justice, 25 Sept. 2024, www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/hate-crime-statistics. Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.

Gerstenfeld, Phyllis B. Hate Crimes: Causes, Controls, and Controversies. 4th ed., Sage, 2018.

Haiman, Franklyn S. “Speech Acts” and the First Amendment. Southern Illinois UP, 1993.

Hall, Nathan. The Routledge International Handbook on Hate Crime. Routledge, 2015.

"Hate Crimes." Federal Bureau of Investigation, www.fbi.gov/investigate/civil-rights/hate-crimes. Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.

Hate Crime Statistics, 2015. Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2015, ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015. Accessed 26 Apr. 2017.

Kelly, Robert J., and Jack Levin, editor. Bias Crime: American Law Enforcement and Legal Responses. U of Illinois P, 1991.

"Learn about Hate Crimes." US Department of Justice, 2 July 2024, www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/learn-about-hate-crimes. Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.

McDevitt, Jack. Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed. Plenum, 1993.

"Motivations and Characteristics of Hate Crime Offenders." START Research Brief, University of Maryland, Oct. 2020, www.start.umd.edu/pubs/START‗BIAS‗MotivationsCharacteristicsOfHateCrimeOffenders‗Oct2020.pdf. Accessed 18 Dec. 2024.

Shah, Robina, and Paul Giannasi. Tackling Disability Discrimination and Disability Hate Crime: A Multidisciplinary Guide. Jessica Kingsley, 2015.

Valeri, Robin Maria, and Kevin Borgeson. Hate Crimes: Typology, Motivations, and Victims. 2nd ed., Carolina Academic Press, 2024.

Waters, Dustin, and Kevin Sullivan. "Dylann Roof Guilty on 33 Counts of Federal Hate Crimes for Charleston Church Shooting." The Washington Post, 15 Dec. 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/national/dylann-roof-guilty-on-33-counts-of-federal-hate-crimes-for-charleston-church-shooting/2016/12/15/0bfad9e4-c2ea-11e6-9578-0054287507db‗story.html?utm‗term=.8f9fafc9f4fd. Accessed 20 Dec. 2024.