The Legacy of Hate Crimes in American History
Hate crimes have existed throughout the history of the United States. Dating back as far as the colonial era, hate crimes were perpetrated against loyalist and continued well into the period of antebellum slavery through the twentieth century. Although Am
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The Legacy of Hate Crimes in American History
Hate motivated violence is steeped in both American and European culture and history. In Europe, hate victim groups such as Roma, Gypsies, Travelers, and Jews have experienced centuries of hate motivated violence. Similarly in American history, African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Jews and lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and queers persons and generally non-white persons have often been the victims of prejudice and hate-motivated violence (Petrosino 1999). Hate crimes in the United States can be dated back to colonial America. Conceivably, establishing a historical timeline between past and present hate crimes can assist in developing public policy that includes an understanding of the origins and nature of hate victimizations. Recall one of the problems with using statutory definitions of hate crimes is the implicit assumption that hate crimes were either nonexistent or not a serious problem before the enactment of hate crime legislation (Petrosino 1999). Petrosino (1999) posited the predominance of American jurisprudence throughout history reflects the political nature of lawmaking and its functional role to keep powerless groups from making moral, ethical, and legal claims of hate crimes. In this regard, two factors contribute to our misunderstanding of the origins and nature of hate victimizations. First, normative values of past eras denied personhood to hate crime victims because of the absence of constitutional, statutory, and legal redress for victims. Second, the U.S. government itself has held a complicit and direct role in perpetrating hate crimes (Petrosino 1999). Consider the legacy of four centuries of slavery (King et al. 2009); the near genocide of the Yuki and Cheyenne Indian (Petrosino 1999); law enforcement tolerance and participation in lynching (Wells-Barnett 1969); and hate crimes perpetrated against Asian Immigrants (Chen 2000). In many state constitutions, non-white races and ethnicities were disallowed full legal redress in matters that accused Whites persons. The net effect of this type of historical amnesia has been that the nature and severity of hate crime victimizations has not been recognized because racism and xenophobia was largely, normative. Hate crime atrocities against non-white persons did not alarm the consciousness of citizens because the internal ethical and moral © The Author(s) 2017 F.S. Pezzella, Hate Crime Statutes, SpringerBriefs in Policing, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-40842-2_2
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compass throughout most of American history guaranteed rights, privileges, and protection of personhood only to White citizens. Here, we recall the history of hate crimes in America and Europe to provide both a context and continuity between past and the present hate motivated violence. Arguably, historical accounts of hate-motivated violence throughout American history may serve to explain why certain hate-motivated behaviors and types of victimizations continue to be so prevale
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