Hate Crime Victims
In the United States, racist anti-black bias is the most frequently reported hate crime motivation. Of the 8,208 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2010, 48.2% were race related - with 70.0% of those having an anti-black bias. Other frequently reported bias motivations were anti-Hispanic, anti-Jewish, anti-Islamic, anti-white, and against a person's sexual orientation.
High profile murders motivated by the victims' sexual orientation have prompted the passage of hate crimes legislation, notably the cases of Sean W. Kennedy and Matthew Shepard. Kennedy was mentioned by Senator Gordon Smith in a speech on the floor of the US Senate while advocating such legislation. The Matthew Shepard and James E. Byrd Jr. Hate crime Prevention Act was signed into law on October 28, 2009 by President Obama. It included sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, the disabled and military personnel and their family members. This is the first all-inclusive bill ever passed in the United States, taking 45 years to complete.
Read more about this topic: Hate Crime
Famous quotes containing the words hate, crime and/or victims:
“I care not for you,
And am so near the lack of charity
To accuse myself I hate you; which I had rather
You felt than make’t my boast.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Crime seems to change character when it crosses a bridge or a tunnel. In the city, crime is taken as emblematic of class and race. In the suburbs, though, it’s intimate and psychological—resistant to generalization, a mystery of the individual soul.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would ... be confined to one single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences forever, not unlike the sorcerer’s apprentice who lacked the magic formula to break the spell.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)