Hate and Bias Crimes in America

Reading Reflection #2
When looking at this week’s subject, “Hate and Bias Crimes in America,” I have consulted three different sources of information. The first area of hate crimes that I researched were actual active hate groups and what types of groups are out there today. The US Poverty Law Center breaks hate groups into 6 basic sections: Neo-Nazi, Racist Skinheads, White nationalist, neo-confederate, Black separatists, and the Christian Identity religious group. In Missouri and Kansas there is currently 38 active hate groups that fit into one of these sections. These groups may differ on their ideals and points of view, but they are all based on the same premise: hated. Hate and discrimination affects many different walks of life, people are discriminated on based on race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or disability. The FBI’s Uniformed Crime Report (UCR) reports the actual number and types of these hate crimes that were reported by police agency into statistics. I am basing my opinions and the numbers off of the 2007 UCR. I am also examining an article and some comments of readers from The US Southern Poverty Law Center on iTunes and hate music. It is somewhat eye opening when examining the FBI’s 2007 UCR on hate and bias crimes. Hated is very prevalent in today’s society with crimes based on racism still being the most reported issue by police. In fact, almost 51% of the hate crimes reported by the UCR were racially motivated. Hate crimes based on religion comes in second with 18.4%, followed by sexual orientation at 16.6%, then 13.2 % based on ethnicity/nation origin, and 1% of hate crimes were against people based on a disability. There were a total of 7,621 hate crimes based on single-bias incidents report in 2007. I think these numbers show that even though our society has been changing and molding into a more excepting place; we still have a long way to go to alleviate the discrimination. We all can play a part in continuing to shape our society by standing up for what we believe in. Every one of us has seen acts of discrimination and hatred yet unfortunately most of us just turned our head and looked the other way pretending nothing happened. Just think what would happen, how much faster we could shape society if instead of ignoring these acts we stop them in the beginning stages and stop the cycle of hate. I hope we all can show the rest of the world how great and excepting place the USA is one day. This won’t happen if we don’t educate our generations today and to come that hate is one thing that can bring down a society as swiftly as war does. When I read the article, “When It Comes to Peddling Hate Music, iTunes Appears to be Selective,” by Sonia Scherr, I was somewhat surprised to learn the fact the iTunes apparently has banned anti-gay music but still offers music that is fueled by racial hate. I would like to hear their logic on this issue, although as somewhat of a gay rights advocate it makes me feel good the they removed some anti-gay music, it still makes me wonder how they can justify removing hate music again one group but not another. Now I know that there could be some first amendment issues if our government tried to pass legislation attempting to ban hate music, after all, people do have freedom of speech whether I or the majority of people agree with what they are saying or not. I do think the CEO’s and executives of these music distributors should consider an all or nothing approach on what they decide to offer their clientele or customer base.