What is a Hate Crime?

     Many people have somewhat of an idea of what a hate crime is.  A hate crime is a criminal offense commited agaisnt a person, property, or society that is motivated by the offenders bias agaisnt a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.  "Most hate crimes consist of intimidation, although vandalism, simple assault, and aggravated assault also account for a number of hate-crime offenses" (Schmalleger,2011,p.63).  The first hate-crime laws were made in 1870.  Sections 241. 242. and 18 which was the deprivation of freedom for blacks and equal rights for the 13th and 14th ammendment.    

    There are many different new guidelines added for hate-crimesFor instance on October 28,2009 Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. "This law adds sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories in federally defined hate crimes"(Larner,2010,p.74).  In the year 2011, sexual orientation is very big, because more people our coming out of the "closet" per se and claiming themselves as homosexuals which is rather different from the earlier days when homosexuality was not spoken of.  It was somewhat of a taboo that our country knew existed, but rather not speak of.

        Hate crimes affect many groups of people, but for the most part hate crimes are directed towards different minorities.  This could be African-American, Hispanic, Chinese, etc.  "Traditional racial threat theories view racial composition, particulary minority size, as an indirect indicator of economic and political threat, and they predict

that interracial conflict is porportional" (Lyons,2008,p.359).  With this being said usually it is tension between two races that create the hostile act.Hate crimes take on my different forms from minor to major criminal acts.

References:
Schmalleger, F. (2011). Criminal justice today. Upper Saddle River,NY: Prentice Hall.

Lyons, C. (2008). Defending turf: racial demographics and hate crime. Social Forces, 87, 359.

Larner, J. (2010). Hate crime/thought crime. 74.