The Complexities of 'Hate'

Abstract

Debate concerning the validity and proper scope of "hate crime" laws has intensified as Congress and several state legislatures consider expanding or enacting such laws in the wake of several brutal, highly publicized incidents of bias-motivated violence. In this Article, Professor Wang points out that supporters and critics of hate crimes laws approach the controversy from a common starting point: their shared assumptions concerning the nature of the motivations that propel hate crimes. These conventional assumptions center on a narrow "prototype" of perpetrators as hard-core, animus-driven individuals whose violent acts are deviant, irrational, and intended solely to inflict harm on a member of the "target" group.

This Article challenges these widely held assumptions. Searching beyond the caricatured portrayal of perpetrators' motivations painted by the conventional assumptions, it examines the historical and social science literature on the motivations behind two "classic" forms of hate crime: racial violence during this country's "lynching era" (1880-1930) and anti-gay violence today. That literature provides a fuller, more complex picture of the motivations that animate apparent "hate" crimes, revealing that social context plays a far greater role in inspiring such crimes than has commonly been recognized and that perpetrators often are more opportunistic and "rational" than "hate-driven."

Keywords: Hate-Motivated Crimes, Hate Crime, Bias Crime, Hate Crimes Laws, Racial Discrimination, Anti-Gay, Civil Rights, Prejudice, Federal Hate Crime Statistics Act