In this most diverse society on earth, all of us are members of one or another minority - racial, religious, ethnic, cultural, national origin, sexual. That is why so many of us are vulnerable to hate crimes, and why violence motivated by bigotry has targeted so many different segments of society: African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, and Asian-Americans; Jewish-Americans and Arab-Americans; Native Americans; recent immigrants; women; and gays and lesbians, to name just a few.
Of the 7,947 hate crime incidents reported to the FBI in 1995, sixty percent - 4,831- were motivated by race. Of these, 2,988 were anti-black, 1,226 were anti-white, 355 were directed against Asian-Americans or Pacific Islanders, 221 were directed against multi-racial groups, and 41 were directed against Native Americans or Alaskan Natives.
Second to racially motivated hate crimes were hate crimes motivated by religious bigotry - 1,277 incidents in 1995. Of these, 1,058 - approximately 82% - were directed against Jews.
The third major category of hate crimes, accounting for 1,019 incidents in 1995, was motivated by animus against the victims' sexual orientation. Of these, 735 were directed against male homosexuals and 146 against lesbians.
The fourth category - ethnicity/national origin - accounted for 814 incidents with sixty three percent (516) directed toward Hispanics.
There is no systematic documentation of hate crimes against women because they are women, but women of all races and ethnic groups, and all social classes are targets of hate crimes.22
These stories convey a sense of how hate crimes victimize Americans of different races, religions, ethnic groups, and sexual orientation, as well as women.
Attacks upon African-Americans:
Among groups currently included in the Hate Crime Statistics Act, the greatest number of hate crimes of any kind are perpetrated against African-Americans. From the lynching to the cross-burning and the church-burning, anti-black violence has been and still remains the prototypical hate crime - an action intended not only to injure individuals but to intimidate an entire group of people. Hate crimes against African-Americans impact upon the entire society not only for the hurt they cause but for the history they recall, and perpetuate.
That is why the epidemic of fires at black churches has generated so much concern. Churches have always been the most important independent institution in the black community, and those who would attack African-Americans have often attacked their churches. As the historian C. Eric Lincoln writes in his recent book, Coming Through the Fire: Surviving Race and Place in America, the first recorded arson of a black church took place in South Carolina in 1822. White mobs torched black churches in Cincinnati in 1829 and in Philadelphia during the 1830's. After the Civil War, in their efforts to terrorize blacks and restore white supremacy, the Ku Klux Klan targeted black churches for vandalism and arson.23
This long and painful history still casts a long shadow. As Deval Patrick, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, U.S. Department of Justice, recently declared: "In our society, arson of a church attended predominantly by African Americans carries a unique and menacing threat - that those individuals are physically vulnerable because of their race."24
As civil rights activism and the desegregation of public schools and public facilities stepped up during the 1950's and '60s, so did burnings and bombings of black churches, Jewish synagogues, and other houses of worship whose congregations were multiracial or whose clergy supported integration. While there were hundreds of attacks on churches and synagogues, the most infamous was the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, where four young girls were crushed to death.
An example of the historic continuity in the attacks upon black churches is the troubled history of St. John Baptist Church in Dixiana, South Carolina. Founded in 1765, the church has been the target of attacks throughout its history - a period that spans the eras of slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, segregation, and civil rights.25
In 1983, while Sunday services were underway, a group of whites shot out the church's windows. Coming back later in the day, they scrawled "KKK" on the door, destroyed the piano, smashed the crucifix, tore up the Bibles, scattered beer cans on the pews, and even defecated on the sacrament cloth. Over the next 12 years, more than 200 people were arrested for acts of vandalism against the church. Then, on August 15, 1995, the church was burned down. And, in May, 1996, three white teenagers were arrested and charged with burning down the church.
St. John Baptist Church was one of at least 73 African-American churches that suffered suspicious fires or acts of desecration since January 1, 1995.
While the great majority of the incidents took place in the South, other parts of the country have not been immune. For instance, in January, 1994, two members of the Fourth Reich Skinheads were sentenced to prison terms for plotting an attack on the historic First African Methodist Episcopal Church in South-Central Los Angeles. The racist skinheads had hoped that the attack, which was averted by their arrest, would trigger a race war.26
As the church-burnings have aroused increasing public concern, several commentators, including the editorial page of the New York Post, have called the issue a "hoax."27 While there is not definitive evidence of a national conspiracy - and civil rights advocates have not contended there is - these facts cannot be obscured:
- 73 predominantly black churches have been burned or desecrated since January, 1995.
- A USA Today investigation found that, although a number of white churches have burned since January 1995, the rate of black church arsons is more than double what it had been in earlier years. And, of course, there are many fewer black churches (65,000) than white churches (300,000), so a much higher percentage of black churches have been burned.28
- The USA Today investigation also found "two well-defined geographic clusters or 'Arson zones' where black church arsons are up sharply over the last three years."
The zones are:
- 1) a 200-mile oval in the mid-South that encompasses western Tennessee and parts of Alabama and Mississippi," and
- 2) another area that "stretches across the Carolinas, where the rate of black church arsons has tripled since 1993."29
- Of those who have been arrested or prosecuted for destroying black churches since 1990, the majority have been white males between the ages of 14 and 45. And, of the 39 people who have been arrested in the arsons that occurred since January 1995, 26 have been white, 13 black.
- Since 1990, at least 13 of the arsons of black churches took place in January around the holiday commemorating the birth of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
All this suggests that President Clinton is correct: "We do not have evidence of a national conspiracy, but it is clear that racial hostility is the driving force behind a number of these incidents. This must stop."
As with hate crimes against other groups, acts of violence and intimidation against African-Americans are by no means confined to the destruction of houses of worship. Other examples of hate crimes against blacks include:
- On December 7, 1995, two African American residents of Fayetteville, North Carolina, were brutally and senselessly murdered by three soldiers who apparently identified themselves as neo-Nazi skin heads. Police said the soldiers were looking for black people to harass and shot the victims as they were walking down the street. A federal investigator later said, "This [crime] gives new meaning to the definition of a hate crime."30
- On Friday, March 29, 1996, an African-American woman, Bridget Ward, and her two daughters, Jamila, 9, and Jasmine, 3, moved into a rented home in the virtually all-white Philadelphia neighborhood of Bridesburg. Late that night, she heard young people marching down the street, chanting, "Burn, motherf--, burn." The next morning, Ward, who works as a nurse's aide, found racial slurs smeared on her house, ketchup spilled on the front side walk and back porch, and an oily liquid was splattered in the rear. From Mayor Rendell to ordinary citizens, including many of Ward's neighbors, most Philadelphians were horrified by the incident. Police patrols were stepped up on the block, and the department's Crisis Prevention and Resolution Unit, which typically handles racial incidents, investigated the crime. But Ward continued to be subjected to racial harassment, including a letter threatening her and her children. Five weeks after she moved to Bridesburg, Ward announced her intention to move. The acts of racial hostility against the Ward family are typical of hate crimes intended to keep members of racial, ethnic, or religious minorities out of many neighborhoods.31
- In Fairfax County, Virginia, an affluent community near Washington, D.C., in 1993, a 41-year-old black woman heard the doorbell ring at the home where she was house-sitting. When she looked out the window, she saw a cross burning 10 feet from the front door.32
- A continent away, in 1994, in the Los Angeles suburb of South Gate, the white neighbors of a black woman burned a cross on her lawn, kicked her children, hanged and gassed her puppies, and placed "White Power" signs on her property.33
- In Orland Park, Illinois in 1995, a black man who was talking with a white woman was attacked by a 25-year old white male who yelled racial slurs during the attack.34
- In Berwick, Pa. a car driven by a black woman was struck repeatedly by a white man who yelled racial slurs and threatened to kill her and her son.35
- In Harper Woods, Michigan, a black couple was threatened by a white man who said he would kill and dismember them if they moved into his neighborhood.36
