HATE CRIME Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

HATE CRIME - Essay Example According to Dr. Jack McDevitt, hate crimes are â€Å"message crimes,† which tell the victim and the minority group to which he belongs, that they are not welcome in that society (cited in APA Position paper, 1998). As such, hate crimes have the potential to alienate whole sections of society and lead to fragmentation. In the face of such clear-cut danger to society, it is imperative that unambiguous, punitive legislation against hate crimes needs to be enacted and put into execution at the earliest. The entry of the term ‘hate crimes’ into common vocabulary can be traced to the Justice Departments’ ‘hate crime statistics’ in 1985 (Jacobs and Potter, cited in Siasoco, 1999). The official definition of a hate crime or a bias crime is â€Å"a criminal offense committed against a person, property or society which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offenders’ bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation or ethnicity/national origin† (Robinson, 2003). The perpetrators of hate crimes are generally young adults and strangers to the victims. While some of them may be members of hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, the vast majority are otherwise law-abiding individuals, whose personal biases stem from the social norms governing their environment. They often feel that they are morally justified and supported by society in their attacks on people perceived to be ‘different.’ The leading basis of hate crimes continues to be racism, with African-Americans bearing the brunt of the attacks, a particularly heinous case being the dragging to death of James Byrd in Texas in June 1998. Ethnic minorities are targeted because of their different lifestyles and their success being perceived as a threat to the employment and financial opportunities of the ‘natives.’ David Ritcheson, a Latino, was sodomized and savagely