Sounding Off on Hate Crime in America

“I hate you!”

That exclamation is what I have to deal with when I ask middle schoolers to follow the rules. This phrase may seem rather harmless because it’s coming from a child who doesn’t actually hate me. He or she just hates the rules I’m enforcing.

Even as 20-somethings, we throw around the word “hate” loosely, too.

“I hate this class.”

“I hate my outfit.”

“Ugh, I hate my life.”

Again, the word itself seems harmless because it’s just a word. But what happens when it becomes more than that? When it becomes an attitude? When it becomes a uniting force? When it becomes a crime?

Is it just as harmless then?

I know what you’re thinking: “What does this white girl know about hate crime and oppression?”

I am a white, middle-class, American woman. I grew up in a small town where diversity existed but wasn’t prevalent. No one pointed this out, nor did they try to change it. It was just the way things were.

And other than having to deal with misogynists and sexists on a semi-regular basis, you’re right; I don’t really know what it feels like to be a part of a group of people that ignorance has taught us to hate strictly for being different than us.

But even though this is my truth and the truth of others, it doesn’t change the fact that hate crimes happen. And when they do, they have a jarring effect on the community in which they’re perpetrated.

Historically speaking, every group that does not into fit the white, hetero-normative, American stereotype has experienced some level of discrimination and hatred. For some reason, people have and still do hate things and people that are different.

Three Muslim students were shot and killed at the University of North Carolina recently. The families of the victims say it was a hate crime, motivated by the hatred of Muslim people and the Islamic religion. Police say it was a dispute of a parking space gone bad.

The execution-style killings of these three individuals, along with the fact that the perpetrator commented on his “Muslim” neighbors on more than one occasion, lends credence to the fact that this was a hate crime.

According to the FBI, “a hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias.”

Congress defines it further as a crime against a person solely based on “race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.”

Regardless of this particular case’s defined crime, the possibility of it being a hate crime has opened up a conversation in our country about hate crime and discrimination more generally.

According to NBC News, there are 939 active hate groups in the United States. Florida alone has 58 hate groups, which is second only to California’s 77, this according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Just for comparison, states that have been riddled with racial tension and strife for the better part of their entire existence, Missouri, Mississippi and Alabama, have only 23, 22 and 22 hate groups, respectively.

We have more than double what they do.

Granted, our home state is much bigger than Missouri, Mississippi and Alabama. Nevertheless, the statistics are alarming.

Most of the 939 hate groups that exist are racially motivated and are mostly white people raging against people of other races. But there are hate groups run by those who have long been oppressed as well, in response to the overwhelmingly white hate groups. This has led to a vicious cycle of hate begetting hate.

What I think people don’t understand is that creating a hate group or acting out violently against people you disagree with is not going to further your ultimate agenda. The ideologies of all of these hate groups are inherently flawed in this way because instead of working toward progress, they are misguidedly attempting to fight their oppressors with missions motivated by ignorant hatred, which is the same strategy of their enemies.

I don’t think the creeds of hate groups are actually even about what they say they’re about at all. I think they are just afraid of progress, change and diversity because they fear being left behind or becoming obsolete.

But why should we care? It’s not like these groups actually exist in Gainesville, right? Maybe the youngest among us don’t remember the incident with the Dove World Outreach Center back in 2010, but I do. The pastor of that small Gainesville church called for his parish and other like-minded individuals to burn copies of the Quran on 9/11.

And what about the hatred being spewed from the mouths of those laughable preacher-types in Turlington Plaza? Their PVC-pipe crosses aside, if you listen to the things these guys say instead of just smirking and rolling your eyes as you walk by, you’d see that discrimination and hatred are all around you.

Hatred is as present in our little college town as it is in Ferguson or New York or North Carolina.

Unfortunately, hate crimes and hate groups aren’t going away. There will always be people who choose hate over love and power over human decency.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Don’t ignore the hatred. Don’t stand by and watch as people with differences are being killed or discriminated against. Say something. Do something. Make a statement. Because if people will listen to ignorant rants about Muslims or African Americans or Jewish people, then people will listen to messages of positivity and progress, too.

The only thing we should hate is hate itself.

 Feature photo courtesy of: NBC News

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