Frequently Asked Questions About Hate Crimes by Janell Broyles

Author:Janell Broyles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc

Students at Rutgers University write words of sympathy at a memorial for fellow student Tyler Clementi. Clementi committed suicide after he was allegedly harassed by his roommate and a friend for being gay.

Among its findings was a link between anti-immigrant activism and a rise in hate crimes against Latinos. It cited FBI statistics that show that 692 people were victimized by anti-Latino hate crimes in 2009. “The immigration debate has turned ugly, and the result has been a growth in white supremacist hate groups and anti-Latino hate crime,” said Mark Potok, director of the law center’s Intelligence Project. “The majority of anti-Latino hate crimes are carried out by people who think they’re attacking immigrants, and very likely undocumented immigrants.”

Potok said that many new anti-immigration groups have appeared in the border states of California, Texas, and Arizona, where illegal immigration has been a difficult issue. One shocking example includes a case in Maricopa County, Arizona, where Juan Varela, a Mexican American, was killed and his brother was shot in the neck by Gary Thomas Kelley, a neighbor. According to the U.S. attorney’s office, Kelley, who was allegedly drunk at the time, pointed a gun at Varela and said, “Hurry up and go back to Mexico or you’re gonna die.” Varela’s family had lived in Arizona for several generations. Kelley claimed that he was defending himself after Varela supposedly kicked him. In February 2011, a judge ruled the murder trial of Kelley a mistrial, after the jury was unable to reach a verdict.

Immigration fears, according to the SPLC, seem to be driven by a slow economy and by panic over the projection that by 2050, whites will no longer be the majority in the United States because of immigration.

Lesbians and Gays

On May 13, 1988, Rebecca Wight and her partner, Claudia Brenner, were shot by Stephen Roy Carr while hiking and camping along the Appalachian Trail. Wight was killed, but Brenner survived. Carr claimed that he became enraged by the fact that the two were lesbians. He did not know the victims and decided to attack them only after he realized they were lesbians. Brenner, who went on to become an anti-gay-violence speaker, said later, “I never thought that you could be killed for being gay. I knew about taunts and harassment, and that’s what I thought of when someone said anti-gay. I never thought it happened to women. I never thought it was a matter of life and death.” According to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics for 2009, there were 1,436 hate crime offenses based on sexual orientation, 15 percent of which were classified as anti-female homosexual bias. Almost 56 percent of the 1,436 hate crimes were the result of anti-male homosexual bias.

In September 2010, Tyler Clementi, an eighteen-year-old freshman at Rutgers University in New Jersey killed himself after, authorities said, his college roommate and another student used a Webcam to spy on and stream video of Clementi’s sexual encounter with another man. The two Rutgers students, who have since left Rutgers, have been charged with two counts of invasion of privacy.

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