‘Hate Crime’ is a blanket term used to encompass a variety of actions towards a particular demographic, often a minority relative to the local society, with the aim of inducing fear and creating a larger gap of inequality. Such actions include, verbal and physical assault, vandalism, threatening behaviour and harassment. It is evident that there are both direct and indirect effects of hate crimes. The direct effect is experienced by the individual victim whereas the actions many have a lasting impact on the wider community.
The case of the Charleston church shooting can be used to explore some of the damaging impacts on a single victim. This case was about a mass shooting and hate crime in which white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine African Americans at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church; three victims survived. The day after the crime the police arrested Roof. Roof confessed to committing the shooting in the hope of igniting a race war. In December 2016 Roof was convicted of 33 federal hate crime and murder charges from the shooting. On January 10, 2017, he was sentenced to death. He said “I would like to make it crystal clear, I do not regret what I did,” Roof wrote. “I am not sorry. I have not shed a tear for the innocent people I killed.” Aside from innocent people losing their lives, those that survived continued to feel the effects. These impacts themselves can be categorised into immediate effects and aftermath of a situation where they have been victimised for being a part of society which is deemed unconventional or ‘wrong’. Some of the direct impacts are due to physical assault, as the victim’s health or safety may be compromised. As well as assault, threatening behaviour many also lead to living with fear and anxiety. The mental and emotional consequences many be an immediate result of the crime itself or triggered by the idea that the occurrence might happen again, despite judicial intervention, as will be investigated further in this essay. Although there are a number of impacts such as financial loss and a need to relocate for safety, the emotional and mental effects of such a crime many have further detrimental effects such as depression, self-harm and even suicide in a lot of cases. Being a victim of a hate crime many also make a person change their own ideals or lifestyles in order to reduce their perception to perpetrators as a target. Due to the abundance of ways in which a hate crime can be committed it is often difficult to provide consolidating evidence of such actions and so victims tend to lose faith in the legal system.
The victims’ loss in faith in the legal system gives an advantage to the perpetrators and people who follow similar ideologies. Paired with the light consequences of hate crime, other's are often encouraged to commit similar acts without fear of harsh punishment. Often, people who commit hate crimes are said to have carried out their actions in order to feel empowered, this is found to be one of the incentives that influence further hate crimes. Another indirect impact of hate crimes in regards to the effect of the perpetrator or those who share the same values. Some people become of aware of hate crimes and repeat them as a form of thrill-seeking whereby they harass and torment a particular demographic for their own entertainment, again without fear of harsh judicial action. The Ku Klux Klan where seen as a violante group to intimidate southern blacks and anyone who would help them or is affiliated with them. They would do this to prevent the black form enjoying any basic civil rights, they would treat the blacks different to everyone else and do things that would harm them so they wouldn't live at peace. They done this because they didn't think the black community deserve to enjoy anything or have any kind of right due to the fact that they were “different” to them. In regards to the United Kingdom, typically, people of colour are discriminated against especially by white people because of employment. It is stereotypically Eastern European immigrants who are thought to be ‘stealing’ employment opportunities in construction from white people who were born and raised in Britain. Some people argue that this is a defence mechanism as they use the foreign employees as an excuse for their unemployment. When other people in similar situations hear such discriminative stereotypes, they trick themselves into also believing it, which in turn reinforces the hate speech, driving society further and further from equality. These people can also be classified as mission offenders. This means that they think the system is designed to work against them, meaning that they can justify their threatening behaviour against innocent people due to their irrational belief that they are disadvantaged.
However, it can be argued that the direct and indirect impacts of hate crime do not intensify the gap in inequality between minority groups and the rest of society. For example, news of such hate crimes influences activism such as protests for LGBT rights, fighting against islamophobia, aims to achieve equal pay for women and many more. These were brought into action in order to build society on a foundation of equity and aim to bridge the gap between what is deemed ‘unconventional’ whether it is gender, race, sexual orientation or anything other. Involved in such acts are often people who would be targeted for sharing the same beliefs as the victims of hate crimes, as well as other members of society that aim to spread quality and counteract the indirect motivating effects of hate crime. On the other hand, members of the community who can relate to the victims are often too scared to actively work towards equality or out of fer decide to passively make themselves safe, by changing how they are and how they carry themselves. This opposes the aim we have as a society to accept and welcome individuality and takes away the person’s freedom in order to protect themselves from hate crimes.
Furthermore, hate crime isn’t considered to be as heinous a crime as murder or sexual assault or robbery. For this reason, as aforementioned, perpetrators of such crimes are aware that they can get away with many actions such as discrimination, vandalism and harassment. Not only is providing clear evidence that a crime is a hate crime difficult to do, but the process after reporting is is sometimes considered futile as the punishments received by perpetrators, or lack thereof, encourages other bigots to go and repeat these acts. The spiral of influence due to a lack of fear in the judicial interventions coupled with the sense of empowerment is making these crimes harder to stop in the future due to the wide scale spread of inequality.
On the other hand, since approximately 2016 until present, there have been many more attempts to mitigate the effects of racists, islamophobes, homophobes, bigots etc. on society. Masses of people have become more actively involved in movements such as Black Lives Matter which has had broad coverage across many media platforms. Involvement and support from celebrities has also increased the audience of such movements which in turn is having an effect on the wider community to decrease the inequality gap. Triggered by hate crimes, other protests for women’s rights, gay rights and many more have been put into action in order to reprogram society and also teach the younger generations of model behaviour that they should implement in their lives, which will lead to positive repercussions in the future.
To conclude, I believe that hate crimes have an effect on the victim directly and indirectly as well as also having indirect impacts on other members of the community whether they can relate to the victim or the perpetrator. These hate crimes and the lack of heavy authority when dealing with such cases causes a spiral of influence which in turn encourages other like-minded individuals to carry out such terroristic acts against a specific demographic. THis widespread crime will induce fear in minority groups and cause the already existing gap in society to widen. Recently, a more active approach to tackle this inequality has been implemented by people from different communities but with the same agenda; equity and equality. It would be difficult to completely abolish hate crimes as unfortunately there will always be people who exist who are unwilling to integrate or accept any other way of life aside from their own. This ignorance, which is more common than not, will make it difficult to achieve total equality. However, setting the foundations for equality from a young age and letting the future generations have the societal structure that allows acceptance for all people will create communities where hate crimes are not as frequent and the implications of these hate crimes will increase in severity.