Hate Crimes and Human Rights Violations

The discourse of hate crime has come to Europe, supported not least by international human rights actors and security and policy organisations. In this article, I argue that there is a need for a philosophical response to challenging claims about the conceptualisation and classification of hate crime. First, according to several scholars, hate crime is extraordinarily difficult to conceptualise and there is a fatigue among practitioners caused by the lack of clarity and consensus in the field. I agree that there is a need, not for additional definitions, but for a more comprehensive conceptual framework, that may help us think more clearly about given definitions of hate crime; about their basic structure, cross‐cutting problems, and possible variations. Supplying such a conceptual perspective represents a timely task for applied philosophy. I engage with this by offering a four‐tiered concept of hate crime. Second, the involvement of human rights actors in the consolidation of hate crime law and policy in Europe has supported the classification of hate crime as a human rights violation. Ultimately, what is at stake is not only our understanding of hate crime, but also our maintenance of a precise and pointed discourse on human rights violations. I argue that we should hesitate or even abstain from classifying hate crime as a human rights violation, and that doing so is compatible with taking both hate crimes and human rights seriously.     

Hate Crime Legislation Reconsidered

In “Is Penalty Enhancement a Sound Idea?” Claudia Card calls into question hate crime legislation, querying whether hatred makes a crime worse, whether hatred of the sort pertinent to hate crimes is worse than a more personal hatred, and whether the message sent by hate crime legislation is the intended message. This essay questions her assumption that penalty enhancement for hate crimes is warranted only if the crimes are worse than otherwise similar crimes that do not count as hate crimes. Instead, it may be the case that it is the proper business of the state to take a particular interest in such crimes, in part because they enact not just any hatred but civic hatred. And if hate crimes are understood as enacting civic hatred, hate crime legislation can indeed serve to counter a message that very much needs to be countered.     

hate crimes against the Amish: a qualitative analysis of bias motivation using routine activities theory

Research on hate crime has largely been limited to official statistics collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and some independent scholarly research of hate crime victims. Few, however, have studied hate crime offenders. Offender narratives of hate crime participation are the focus of this study. Further, few have studied hate crimes against the Amish and their offenders. This study examines hate crime against the Amish with a particular focus on the bias motivation that generates anti-Amish hate crime. To accomplish this task, non-Amish hate crime offenders were enlisted to share their experiences and stories about anti-Amish hate crime. A total of eight subjects were interviewed; the subjects supplied over 16 hours of audiotaped narrative describing acts of "Claping" they had committed against Old Order Amish. The data were transcribed and an analysis of the interview data revealed that themes emerged from offender narratives within each element of routine activities theory. The data support that the subjects were motivated offenders, the Amish were perceived as suitable targets, and there was a perception that guardians were lacking within the community to discourage anti-Amish hate crime. However, it is important to consider the themes that emerged within each dimension of routine activities when applying the theory to anti-Amish bias crime.     

When Faith,Race, and Hate Collide: Religious Ecology,Local Hate Cultures,and Church Burnings

This study explores the extent to which the spate of church burnings that occurred throughout the South during the 1990s may have been influenced by local religious ecologies, diverse forms of civic engagement, and broader community support for racial animus that we call local hate cultures (e.g., prior hate crime incidents, hate group presence). We use county-level data from a variety of sources to determine the degree to which church arsons were associated with relevant features of local communities. Various congregational factors measuring county-level religious ecology are significantly associated with the number of church burnings in Southern communities, as are several local hate culture indicators. Our study provides empirical confirmation of the linkages between church arsons, the public role of religious institutions, and local hate cultures. It also suggests a number of theoretical refinements for existing community-level approaches to the study of religion and hate crimes.     

Exposure to Online Hate in Four Nations: A Cross-National Consideration

There is a considerable amount of hate material online, but the degree to which individuals are exposed to these materials vary. Using samples of youth and young adults from four countries, we investigate who is exposed to hate materials. We find support for using routine activity theory to understand exposure at the individual level; however, there is significant cross-national variation in exposure after accounting for individual-level factors. We consider two plausible hypotheses that could account for this cross-national variation. The data best fit the hypothesis that anti–hate speech laws may provide a source of guardianship against exposure.     

Affective disgust predicts blame for gay male homicide victims

For certain crimes there is a tendency in the United States to blame individuals for their victimization. Previous work has shown that affective states can impact blame attribution. Drawing upon this work, the purpose of the current pre-registered research was to examine the relation between affective disgust and victim blame attribution. In Study 1, as participants’ (N = 203) level of implicit disgust associations with gay men increased, their tendency to blame a gay male homicide victim also increased, whereas their agreement that the homicide qualified as a hate crime decreased. In Study 2, disgust was experimentally induced by exposing participants (N = 431) to disgusting (e.g., vomit, insects) or neutral images (e.g., mug, stapler). Inducing disgust increased victim blame and decreased perceptions that the homicide constituted a hate crime. However, exploratory mediation analyses in both studies showed that the impact of disgust on hate crime applications is best explained as an indirect effect of victim blame. Taken together, these findings suggest that both individual differences in implicit gay-disgust and situational feelings of disgust may underlie people’s perceptions of how blameworthy a victim is for the crime committed against them.     

Gender‐bias hate crimes: what constitutes a hate crime from a potential juror's perspective?

The current study explored hate crime in a nontypical scenario. Label of the crime (first‐degree assault vs. bias‐motivated assault) and gender of the victim were varied within the context of an attack perpetrated within other gender dyads (i.e., when the victim was female, the perpetrator was male, and vice versa). Results indicated that participants in the assault condition were more likely to find the defendant guilty than those in the hate crime condition. Participants also made differential attributions of victim blame, such that those in the assault condition found the victim to be more mentally unstable than those in the hate crime condition.     

Let me count the ways: An integrative theory of love and hate

We propose an integrative theory of love and hate intended to help resolve problems and inconsistencies that have emerged from previous conceptualizations. We suggest that love is a motive based on the valuing of the other and is associated with the goal of preserving or promoting the other's well‐being. Likewise, hate is a motive based on devaluing the other and is associated with the goal of diminishing or destroying the other's well‐being. We further suggest that intense, powerful emotions may serve as eliciting experiences for different types of love and hate, and we discuss how benefiting or harming the other can be either an instrumental or an ultimate goal for the various forms of love and hate. Finally, we discuss some ways in which our theory can promote new directions in the future study of love and hate.     

A Defense of Stiffer Penalties for Hate Crimes

After defining a hate crime as an offense in which the criminal selects the victim at least in part because of an animus toward members of the group to which the victim belongs, this essay surveys the standard justifications for state punishment en route to defending the permissibility of imposing stiffer penalties for hate crimes. It also argues that many standard instances of rape and domestic battery are hate crimes and may be punished as such.     

Enhancing the salience of free speech rights increases differential perceived free speech protections for criminal acts against Black versus White targets

Hate crime charges offer enhanced sentences for prejudice‐motivated acts in recognition of the injury that extends beyond the victim to other members of the targeted group. The present study builds upon and extends previous work illuminating how anti‐Black prejudice influences application of free speech protections to justify criminal acts against Black (vs. White) targets, which subsequently reduces support for hate crime charges for the act by investigating the potential effects of environmental cues that increase the salience of free speech rights. The present work tested the main and interactive effects of act target (Black vs. White), anti‐Black prejudice, and the salience of freedom of speech on perceived free speech protections for a prejudice‐motivated criminal act and the consequent influence on support for hate crime charges. Replicating previous findings, greater anti‐Black prejudice predicted more perceived free speech protections for Black‐targeted acts, which predicted less support for hate crime charges. Low‐bias participants viewed Black‐ versus White‐targeted acts as less protected by free speech rights and more deserving of hate crime charges; high‐bias participants viewed the two acts similarly. Making the right to free speech (compared to protections from search and seizure) salient amplified differential perceptions of free speech protections based on prejudice and target group, which predicted support for hate crime charges. This work holds implications for justification processes and highlights the importance of studying culture‐specific values.     

Xenophobic and racially motivated crime in Belgium: exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial regressions of structural covariates

This study employs exploratory spatial data analysis and spatial count regression models to examine xenophobic and racially motivated crimes in Belgium between 2000 and 2012. Drawing upon recent work, we conceptualize and operationalize hate crime in multiple ways, reflecting “spaces of hate,” victimization risks, and risks adjusted for random interactions. The results reveal that hate crimes exhibit a distinct spatial imprint, which corresponds to Belgium’s geographic regions. The findings also reaffirm previous research, indicating that the choice of the offset in the computation of hate crime rates is highly consequential for assessing the impact of relative group size.     

Archetypal Hatred: Orlando Consciousness

The massacre at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, which killed 49 and wounded 53 people on June 12, 2016, has been termed a terrorist act, another example of the rampant issue of gun control in America, and, of course, a tragedy. It has also been called a hate crime, but most media and other commentary have shied away from a focus on the gay aspect. This article focuses on why the gay community seemed specifically targeted, and what that intentionality represents from a Jungian perspective. Jung's essay on Wotan (a god in Germanic mythology), with a focus on the archetypal underpinnings of Nazi Germany, as well as his thoughts on taboo, specifically relationship taboo in tribal cross-cousin marriages explored in Aion, are examined in an attempt to underscore the importance of an underlying hatred and hostility toward gay men that existed in the unconscious of the shooter, and which may exist in the culture at large. Backlashes from religious groups that occur as gay rights are extended, as well as specific hate crimes like the Orlando shooting, point toward this underlying hostility toward gay men. This hostility is part of a dangerous unconsciousness suffered by the so-called modern world, a reminder of the thin veil of civility we live under: vulnerable, in moments like Orlando, or in larger contexts such as Nazi Germany, to explosion in the form of massacre, despotism, and other tragic and hideous manifestations.     

Hate Speech,Dignity and Self-Respect

This paper engages with the recent dignity-based argument against hate speech proposed by Jeremy Waldron. It’s claimed that while Waldron makes progress by conceptualising dignity less as an inherent property and more as a civic status which hate speech undermines, his argument is nonetheless subject to the problem that there are many sources of citizens’ dignitary status besides speech. Moreover, insofar as dignity informs the grounds of individuals’ right to free speech, Waldron’s argument leaves us balancing hate speakers’ dignity against the dignity of those whom they attack. I suggest instead that a central part of the harm of hate speech is that it assaults our self-respect. The reasons to respect oneself are moral reasons which can be shared with others, and individuals have moral reasons to respect themselves for their agency, and their entitlements. Free speech is interpreted not as an individual liberty, but as a collective enterprise which serves the interests of speakers and the receivers of speech. I argue that hate speech undermines the self-respect of its targets in both the agency and entitlement dimensions, and claim, moreover, that this is a direct harm which cannot be compensated for by other sources of self-respect. I further argue that hate speakers have no basis to respect themselves qua their hate speech, as self-respect is based on moral reasons. I conclude that self-respect, unlike dignity, is sufficient to explain the harm of hate speech, even though it may not be necessary to explain its wrongness.     

Heterosexism and Sexism as Correlates of Psychological Distress in Lesbians

This study examined the effects of external and internalized heterosexism and sexism on lesbians' mental health. Hierarchical regression analysis, controlling for education and income, identified recent sexual‐orientation‐based hate crime victimization, recent sexist events, internalized heterosexism, and the interaction of recent sexual‐orientation‐based hate crime victimization and recent sexist events as significant predictors of psychological distress, accounting for 31% of the variance.     

Sex Offenders—America’s New Witches? A Theoretical Analysis of the Emergence of Sex Crime Laws

During the 1990s, the United States enacted several punitive sex crime laws. Contemporary scholarship suggests this shift can be understood as a modern “witch hunt.” However, theoretical accounts have yet to examine systematically the emergence of such legislation. This study applies two theories—the first by Erikson and the second by Jensen—to assess whether they accord with known facts about the proliferation of these laws. Broad support for the theories as accounts for the punitive trend in sex crime legislation exists, but the inclusion of information dissemination as an additional factor would strengthen these accounts. Implications are discussed.     

Religion‐Related Hate Crimes: Data,Trends, and Limitations

Both police report and victim survey data estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of all hate crimes are motivated by a religion bias. Yet, the volume of research on religion‐related hate crimes pales in comparison to research examining race‐based or sexuality‐based hate crimes. We examine two data sources, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), to assess trends and patterns in hate crimes involving religion. The UCR, which is based on police reports, suggests a downward trend in the number of religion‐related hate crimes that mirrors the overall downward trend for all hate crimes. The NCVS, which is based on victim reports, suggests that religion‐related hate crimes have been relatively stable in both number and as a proportion of all hate crimes. We conclude by suggesting potential directions for future research and data collection.     

On hating to hate

Hate may be the most dangerous of all emotions for the survival of the planet. The author addresses two questions: What obscures hate when it is actually present? and What masquerades as hate but isn't? Using illustrations from a wide range of fields, the author contends that discerning hate is both essential and far trickier than we think. She concludes by asserting that overcoming hate requires imagination. We must learn to imagine a world without hate and unimagine a world with hate.     

Rape as a Hate Crime: An Analysis of New York Law

New York defines rape as forced penile vaginal penetration, which means only women can be rape victims. Given this definition, rape should always be considered a type of hate crime and thus eligible for sentencing enhancement because the perpetrators target victims based on their group membership. Such a narrow definition of rape is problematic because it fails to acknowledge oral and anal rape and overlooks the fact that men can also be raped. I argue that regardless of the type of sexual assault that occurs (vaginal, oral, or anal), rape should be considered a hate crime when the rapist chooses the victim based on gender, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation and the rape reinforces the patriarchal and heteronormative hegemony.     

Perspectives of people with mental health problems at hot spots: Attitudes and perceptions of safety,crime, and the police

People who live in places with high levels of crime and disorder are more likely to experience mental illness compared with those who do not live in these types of place (Weisburd et al., 2018; Weisburd & White, 2019). The increased police presence on high crime streets may also increase the likelihood that these individuals will encounter law enforcement. There is a strong body of literature focused on the relationship between neighborhoods and the physical and mental health of residents (e.g. Arcaya et al., 2016; Duncan & Kawachi, 2018; Leventhal & Brooks‐Gunn, 2003), but there are very few studies that look at the perceptions of people with mental illness directly, particularly as they relate to the environment of the street on which they live and attitudes toward the police. In turn, existing studies generally look at the most serious mental health problems (e.g. schizophrenia), ignoring more common mental health concerns such as post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and depression. This paper uses self‐report data from a large in‐person survey of people who live on crime hot spot and non‐hot spot streets in order to assess attitudes among a broader group of persons with mental health problems. Furthermore, we examine the interaction between living in crime hot spots and non‐hot spots and perceptions of these residents. Our findings in this broader sample confirm earlier studies that identify greater fear and less trust of the police among persons with mental illnesses. At the same time, our findings suggest that fear of crime and perceptions of police are moderated by living in a crime hot spot.