Beliefs on Hate Crimes

    Hate crimes have different charges for their crimes.  Awhile ago hate crimes were not even a category in the justice system.  There is a lot of belief that there should not be charges for hate crimes.  As a whole whites commit most of the hate crimes and blacks are the minority target. "But blacks do commit hate crimes, and as it turns out are committing lots more of them than generally known. According to the 2004 FBI Hate Crimes report, blacks committed slightly more than 20 percent of the hate crimes in America" (Hutchinson,2006,p.8).  This could be due to the fact that blacks still at times feel oppressed as a people in America.
      I do not condone any violence, but when people feel threatened they will act violent out of rage.  There used to be light always heavily shedded on antisemitism crimes, but however the FBI notices that that is not on the rise.  "Greg Smith, a senior researcher at the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, said recent polls show that many Americans view Judaism as being close to their own faith, an indicator of a favorable approach toward Jews. "We haven't picked up any backlash against Jews in our polling in recent years," Smith said" (Guttman,2009,p.1).  I believe that as we enter the future years we are going to see more hate crimes on people with gender issues since that is coming more the rise of people being open about their identities.
     Hate crimes have grabbed the attention of America and some feel there needs to be stricter consequences for committing such crimes.  "Overall, the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported nearly 8,000 hate crimes in 1998, including more than half that were motivated by racial bias. This rate is higher than annual averages during the past 12 years. By comparison, national data showed an average of 5,000 hate crimes a year" (Dervarics,2000,p.7). Hopefully with acts like the Hate Crimes Prevention Act that was enacted will make people think twice about committing such hanous crimes and bring some tolerance to our country.


References:


Guttman, N. (2009). What's behind the fbi's hate crime report?. Federal Bureau of Investigation--FBI, 113(31786), 1. 　
Dervarics, C. (2000). Congress takes on hate crimes. Diverse Issues in Higher Education, 17(11), 7.