Research Paper on FBI 2018 Hate Crime Stats: Race & Ethnicity-Motivated Incidents Near Homes

Introduction

According to hate crime statistics released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2018. The number of race and ethnicity motivated hate crime in 2017 was 4,047, but in 2018 it decreased to 4,131. Most race and ethnicity-based hate crime incidences occur near homes or residential areas. Statistics also show that out of 6,266 hate crime offenders, 53.6% were white, 24.0% were Black or African American, and 12.9% race unknown. The further disclosed that out of 5,589 known offenders, 84.7% were 18 years of age or older. The offenders threaten insults and attack a victim due to their perceived affiliation with a group sharing certain traits such as skin color. These research papers aim to explore race-based hate crimes in the 21st century, survey their trends and effect on the community.

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Hate Crime Cases

On November 7, 2019, Graham Williamson and Louie Revette, of Mississippi seminary were sentenced for a racially motivated cross burning a main African-American residential area. Revette, 38, received eleven years in federal prison for organizing and effecting the cross burning and also for recruiting Williamson. William, on the other hand, received a sentence of 3 months in state prison as a collaborator of Revette commit a crime. The two individuals, in October 2017, built across, set it up, and ignited it on fire close to the African-American residential homes, Mississippi, at Seminary in Key Hill area (Department of Justice, 2019).

The offenders acknowledged their awareness that burning crosses have traditionally been used to scare, intimidate, and bully African-Americans and aimed at making the members of the community in the area frightened. They targeted the young African-American individuals, a juvenile, victim, M.H. as the burning cross was placed near their home. Judge Keith Starrett of the South District Court, Mississippi, and United States sentenced two culprits. The offenders confessed to targeting M.H as a juvenile victim because of their color and race and because they lived in and lived in the Seminary area. Eric Dreiband, Assistant Attorney general of the division of civil rights, said that the department of justice wouldn't condone hate acts, and offenders will face the full force of the law. (Department of Justice, 2019)

James Alex Fields was sentenced to serve a lifetime in jail after taking a guilty plea of hate crimes charges brought against him. The offender participated in a white nationalist rally held in Charlottesville, causing the victim's death, caused bodily injury, and attempted to kill other people after driving into a group of protestors. According to the witnesses, on August 12, 2017, the perpetrator attended Virginia rally ''Unite the Right' in Charlottesville, where protests groups and folks expressed and chanted anti-Semitic and supremacist opinions. The offender confessed to driving into downtown Charlottesville were ethnically, and a racially diverse crowd had assembled after police officers chased the rally participants (Department of Justice, 2017). James went ahead and drove into the circle of counter-protester due to their actual and real race and color. The defendant disclosed that before the rally started, he used social media platforms to promote and express supremacist opinions. The racial and social policies of Nazi-era Germany and violence against groups he alleged to be non-white.

A fifty-one-year-old man, Gregory A. Bush, is charged with federal hate crimes and firearm violations for October 24, 2018. The offender is accused of the murder of African American customers and the attempted murder of a third individual at a Kroger grocery store in Jeffersontown, Kentucky. The arraignment charges Bush with committing these violent acts because of the accusor race and color. Bush is required to appear before the federal jury on January 15, 2019, and if found guilty of the charges, Bush could get life imprisonment or the death penalty. The federal grand jury also indicted Bush with allegations of using fire and discharging a firearm during and when enacting those violent crimes. During the arraignment, it was alleged that Bush carried out those crimes after careful planning and scheming. He also put other clients at the store's life in danger during his heinous act. The penalty for Bush charges presented in court is the death penalty or life imprisonment.

A man from Utah was indicted by a federal grand jury in Salt Lake City, Utah, on three hate crimes charges. The man is accused of attacking three men with a metal rod as he believed they are Mexicans. The suspect was charged with going into the store and chanted that he wanted to kill Mexicans on November 27, 2018. Then he allegedly knocked one victim in the head with an iron shaft in an attempt to murder the victim and struck another man to injure him.

In October 2018, the suspect pleaded guilty; he admitted shooting the three African American men because of their race as they tried to leave New Orleans post-Hurricane Katrina. The man was sentenced for ten years in jail, proceeded by five years' supervised release by a Louisiana, New Orleans federal judge. In 2005, the three African-American men passed through the area to reach a ferry landing used as an evacuation point. The suspect and his neighbors had erected a barrier of tumbled trees to block their streets, and when the three African-American men crossed the blockade, the accused shot and injured them (Depertment of Justice, 2018)

After Bourgeois firing his gun, he told them that anything trying to pass the barrier darker than a brown paper bag would be shot. According to documents present in court, Bourgeois and other white male dwellers of Algiers Point area swore that they would exert force to shut out American-Americans from their vicinity, soon after Hurricane Katrina struck New Orleans. Also, the defendant initiated an armed patrol of their neighborhood. The state and federal agencies were using the ferry landing site as an extraction point. After the men fled, Bourgeois bragged that he had 'shot one' and promised to "kill that black man if he had survived. (Bhattacharyya & Gabriel, 2016).

The United States President Barack Obama, in 2009, signed Matthew Shepherd and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act into law. The new statute stretched the federal hate-crimes law to include violent crimes motivated by disability, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation. The bill was drafted due to the public outcry of increasing hate crime in the United States after Matthew Shepherd and James Bryd brutal murder. Therefore, this assisted in the fair and just hearing of these cases without racial discrimination.

Effects of Race-Based Hate Crime

Hate crime can sometimes affect a victim psychologically; for instance, he may succumb to depression. The victim may also lose self-esteem or become get filled with range and develop a need for vengeance. At times this victim may hire goons to attack and terrorize the persons who oppress them due to different color and race. It can also bring terror in the group to which the victim belongs, inspiring feelings of vulnerability among its other people who could be the next hate crime victims (Esposito & Kalin, 2011). Divisions and factionalism ascending in reaction to hate crimes are particularly damages to multicultural societies. Hate crimes infuse phobia far beyond the boundaries of a municipality or state and, thus, have the likeliness of deteriorating and leading to larger-scale chaos. (Perry, 2002).

Conclusion

Although the statistics by the FBI show a drop in the number of racial and ethnicity motivate hate crimes, they are still ubiquitous in the United States. Most victims and offenders are young African-Americans and Whites, respectively, as illustrated in the above cases. The offenders target the victims' residential are or homes making them fearful. The justice system is less reluctant to hate crime culprits, and it's using all its resources available to apprehend the offender, therefore, hate crime reduction. Society and parents still have a significant role to play to curb race and ethnicity-based bullying.

The law enables the government to try and change prejudiced behavior and attitude. Hate crime laws are, thus, regarded as highly symbolic laws intended to show government rebuke of criminal actions motivated by various biases. Issues such as race-based hate crime can be the catalyst of war in a community or country at large. Hate crimes are, therefore, a violation of the national social contract of equality, and this is the main prudential reason for the enactment of federal hate-crime laws in the United States of America. In comparison with ordinary crimes, hate-motivated crimes and incidences have a substantial impact on victims; they send a message to the whole community.

References

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Department of Justice.(2019) https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/mississippi-man-sentenced-11-years-crossburning

Department of Justice.(2019) https://www.justice.gov/usao-edla/pr/new-orleans-man-sentenced-hate-crime-shooting-three-african-american-men-sentenced

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Department of justice,(2019) https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdms/pr/mississippi-man-sentenced-36-months-crossburning

Depertment of Justice, (2018). https://www.justice.gov/usao-edla/pr/new-orleans-man-sentenced-hate-crime-shooting-three-african-american-men-attempting

Esposito, J. L., & Kalin, I. (Eds.). (2011). Islamophobia: The challenge of pluralism in the 21st century. OUP USA.

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Perry, B. (2002). In the name of hate: Understanding hate crimes. Routledge.