Race, Ethnicity and National Origin-based Discrimination in Social Media and Hate Crimes Across 100 U.S. Cities

We study malicious online content via a specific type of hate speech: race, ethnicity and national-origin based discrimination in social media, alongside hate crimes motivated by those characteristics, in 100 cities across the United States. We develop a spatially-diverse training dataset and classification pipeline to delineate targeted and self-narration of discrimination on social media, accounting for language across geographies. Controlling for census parameters, we find that the proportion of discrimination that is targeted is associated with the number of hate crimes. Finally, we explore the linguistic features of discrimination Tweets in relation to hate crimes by city, features used by users who Tweet different amounts of discrimination, and features of discrimination compared to non-discrimination Tweets. Findings from this spatial study can inform future studies of how discrimination in physical and virtual worlds vary by place, or how physical and virtual world discrimination may synergize

Human Relations Report

Any assessment of the state of human relations in the Chicago region needs to be multidimensional. At its most basic, such an assessment involves the quality of relationships, or relations, among individuals. Relations may manifest themselves in families, among friends, within neighborhoods, or in work, religious, educational, recreational or other social settings. There are no widely accepted measures of the quality of human relations, in part because different commentators view the subject differently. Quality human relations may have several outcomes: for people to be satisfied or experience a good quality of life; for people to be supportive and helpful to one another; or for people to treat one another fairly and equally.In some social settings, individuals with common characteristics share a common fate or have similar life experiences and opportunities. Other social settings are marked more by differences among groups than commonalities. Such differences can be readily observed in the cases of different racial, ethnic, age or language groups; among persons sharing a gender or sexual orientation; or among the disabled. These social groupings seem to have the most impact on people's condition and identity

The Negative Ramifications of Hate Crime Legislation: It’s Time to Reevaluate Whether Hate Crime Laws are Beneficial to Society

Supporters of hate crime legislation suggest that the primary reason for the codification of hate crime laws is “to send a strong message of tolerance and equality, signaling to all members of society that hatred and prejudice on the basis of identity will be punished with extra severity.” However, hate crime laws may actually be accomplishing the opposite effect of tolerance and equality because they encourage U.S. citizens to view themselves, not as members of our society, but as members of a protected group. The enactment of hate crime legislation at the federal and state levels has led to unintended consequences and unfair practices. Today, the controversy regarding the effectiveness of hate crime laws is debated, and people question whether this type of legislation is beneficial to society. This article will candidly reevaluate hate crime legislation. Part II will provide the definition of the term “hate crime” and the theoretical justification for enhanced sentencing involving discrimination-based conduct. Focus will be placed on data that disproves the theory that hate crime laws reduce or deter future hate crimes. It will also explain the underlying reasons for the enactment of hate crime laws, such as the media’s role and political influences, and it will present several of the misconceptions associated with hate crime legislation. Part III will present the unintended consequences associated with the enactment of hate crime statutes, including constitutional violations. It will also explain why hate crimes are rarely prosecuted, and will focus on the inconsistency, redundancy, and arbitrary usage/application of hate crime legislation. Part III will also present an individual’s response to the negative, unintended effects of hate crime legislation. Part IV will determine that hate crime legislation is not cost-effective. Part V sets forth a recommendation on improving community efforts to educate or reeducate citizens on respecting diversity. Finally, the article analyzes hate crime laws from supporting and opposing viewpoints and concludes that there is no need to separate hate crimes from other types of crimes as a means to promote a more tolerant, equal, and stable society

50 Years after the Civil Rights Act: The Ongoing Work for Racial Justice in the 21st Century

This report documents the state of civil and human rights, and paints a persuasive picture of just how far the United States still has to go to make racial justice a reality. The report also makes a series of policy recommendations in the areas of justice reform, education, employment, hate violence, housing, human rights, immigration policy, media and technology, and voting. This Report commemorates the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act and the 20 years since the United States ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CERD). The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights collaborated with 39 other organizations in 2014 in documenting their concerns and recommendations for progress under the treaty. According to the report, while progress has been made, the U.S. still struggles on many fronts. The Leadership Conference addresses racial justice and highlights many of the issues that remain important today

The Prevalence of Hate Crimes Motivated by Sexual Orientation in Florida after the U.S. Supreme Court Legalization of Same-Sex Marriages

Research on the dynamics of violence has revealed that crimes involving a prejudicial motive often occur in close temporal proximity to a galvanizing event such as elections, terrorist attacks, or unprecedented Supreme Court decisions. Given the particularly contested nature of marriage policy, it is not inconceivable that same-sex marriage recognition might incite retaliatory violence. Same-sex couples were granted the right to marry by the United States Supreme Court in June of 2015. By June 2016, Orlando, Florida experienced the “deadliest incident of violence against LGBTQ people in U.S. history,” after a mass shooting at Pulse nightclub resulted in the death of 49 individuals and wounding of 53 others. In 1999, Vermont’s Supreme Court unanimously ruled that same-sex couples were entitled to the same benefits and protections afforded by Vermont law to married heterosexual couples. Soon thereafter, the number of anti-gay hate crimes increased 125%, from 4 in 1999 to 9 in 2000. In the proposed study, secondary data from Hate Crimes in Florida Reports, provided by the Florida’s Attorney General, were analyzed to assess the current prevalence of hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation in Florida after the legalization of same-sex marriages and to determine if there is a close temporal connection between hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation in Florida and the legalization of same-sex marriages. Data analysis revealed that two years after the 2015 marriage equality Supreme Court decision, hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation in Florida increased from a mean of 25% in the three years prior to the decision to 30% in the two years after the decision to legalize same-sex marriages. This slight increase in reported incidents indicates there was no suggestion of a temporal connection between the marriage equality decision and hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation during the postdecision years. However, the increase during the year after implementation of the marriage equality decision is in alignment with trends revealed in prior research on the relationship between politics and violent crimes

U.S. Hate Crime Trends: What Disaggregation of Three Decades of Data Reveals About a Changing Threat and an Invisible Record

When prejudice-related data are combined and analyzed over time, critical information is uncovered about overall trends, related intermittent spikes, and less common sharp inflectional shifts in aggression. These shifts impact social cohesion and grievously harm specific sub-groups when aggression escalates and is redirected or mainstreamed. These data, so critical to public policy formation, show that we are in such a historic inflection period now. Moreover, analysis of the latest, though partial Federal Bureau of Investigation hate crime data release, when overlaid with available data from excluded large jurisdictions, reveals hate crimes hit a record high in 2021 in the United States that previously went unreported. This Essay analyzes the most recent national data as well as various numerical and policy milestones that accompanied the historic, yet incomplete, implementation of hate crime data collection and related statutes over recent decades. This analysis of emerging trends in the United States is undertaken in the context of bigoted aggression broken down over time

Bias Crime: A Call for Alternative Responses

The argument for enacting laws to punish and deter bias crime does not always benefit from clear and unambiguous examples of bias driven murder. A frustrating factor in some of the widely publicized reports of bias-related assault is the element of ambiguity: where a member of one race or religion injures a member of another race or religion, even perhaps articulating the difference between attacker and victim by means of an expletive or other statement, the question inevitably arises whether the attack was the product of bias alone, or did other factors, such as an intent to rob or rape, predominate. This article advocates a renewed legislative effort in the fight against bias crime. The difficulty that attaches to defining a crime of bias, and to identifying the categories to be included in the statute, is far outweighed by the urgency of the escalating problem. In addition to the present remedial scheme, varied approaches need to be fostered and accentuated including non-penal sanctions. Proposed statutes in New York take a stronger stance on identifying and punishing bias crime incidents. Even more important than a successful conviction rate is the development of effective education and community responses to intolerance and prejudice

Bias Crime: A Call for Alternative Responses

The argument for enacting laws to punish and deter bias crime does not always benefit from clear and unambiguous examples of bias driven murder. A frustrating factor in some of the widely publicized reports of bias-related assault is the element of ambiguity: where a member of one race or religion injures a member of another race or religion, even perhaps articulating the difference between attacker and victim by means of an expletive or other statement, the question inevitably arises whether the attack was the product of bias alone, or did other factors, such as an intent to rob or rape, predominate. This article advocates a renewed legislative effort in the fight against bias crime. The difficulty that attaches to defining a crime of bias, and to identifying the categories to be included in the statute, is far outweighed by the urgency of the escalating problem. In addition to the present remedial scheme, varied approaches need to be fostered and accentuated including non-penal sanctions. Proposed statutes in New York take a stronger stance on identifying and punishing bias crime incidents. Even more important than a successful conviction rate is the development of effective education and community responses to intolerance and prejudice

2003-2007 Report on Hate Crimes and Discrimination Against Arab Americans

Analyzes rates, patterns, and sources of anti-Arab-American hate crimes and discrimination, including detainee abuse, delays in naturalization, and threats; civil liberties concerns; bias in schools; and defamation in the media. Includes case summaries