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gays and lesbian discrimination
Discrimination about homosexuality
hate crimes in the u.s.
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From what I have identified on hate crimes in my research, the top two motivations for hate crimes are based on race and sexual orientation, “In 2010’s FBI report, of the 7,690 reported incidents, 48. 4 percent of the crimes were racially motivated attacks, with sexual orientation bias coming in second at 19.1 percent.” (DL Chandler,2010) Two of the best examples of these crimes are the James Byrd and Mathew Shepard cases in 1998. These crimes prompted the enactment of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act that was signed by President Barack Obama in 2009. Although the crimes are both very horrific and morbid acts in their own right, they were based on different types of hate racial and homophobia. The James Byrd Case was racially motivated and done by three guys that all had lengthy criminal records, two of them had close affiliations to the KKK, Arian Nation as was evidenced by tattoos on their bodies at the time of the arrest. The second Mathew Shepard case was based on homophobia by two guys that were also known bullies that befriended him and then took him to a remote field and tied him to a fence and robbed and beat him and left him for dead, he was found alive but only to succumb to his injuries 6 days later. In this paper I will concentrate on the James Byrd case.
Case Details :
On June 7, 1998, Jasper Texas, James Byrd, a 49 year old Black was walking down a road and offered a ride by three men( all three where white), Byrd knew one of them men, Shawn Berry, but things went horribly wrong after the men beat Byrd with a bat and then chained him by the ankles and drug him behind a truck for over three miles over rough rural roads . “Forensic evidence suggests that Byrd had been attempting to keep hi...
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...chology of Prejudice and Discrimination, Second Addition
DL Chandler (2012)Racist Murder Of James Byrd Jr. Took Place On This Day In 1998, retrieved from http://newsone.com/2019388/james-byrd-jr-murdered/
Human Rights Campaign (2014)Hate Crimes Timeline, Retrieved from :http://www.hrc.org/resources/entry/hate-crimes-timeline
CNN(1999) Closing arguments today in Texas dragging-death trial, Retrieved from http://www.cnn.com/US/9902/22/dragging.death.03/
CNN(1998) 3 Whites indicted in dragging death of black man in Texas, Retrieved from: http://www.cnn.com/US/9807/06/dragging.death.02/
Elliot R. Smith, Charles R. Seger, Diane M. Mackieh,(2007). Can Emotions Be Truly Group Level? Evidence Regarding Four Conceptual Criteria. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2007, Vol. 93, No 3, 431-446. Retrieved from http://www.indiana.edu/~smithlab/articles/multigroup.pdf
In 1964, Byron De La Beckwith, a white man, stood trial accused in the murder of black Civil Rights leader Medgar Evers in Jackson, Mississippi. Evers was the thirty-seven year old Field Secretary for the NAACP; Beckwith was a member of the White Citizens Chapter of Greenwood, Mississippi. Although the case drew national attention at a time when the country was torn apart by racial strife, two different all-white juries were unable to reach a unanimous decision and both trials resulted in mistrials. It was not until 1989 that a young, white prosecutor in Jackson, Mississippi named Bobby DeLaughter gained interest in the case after reading a newspaper article. DeLaughter set the wheels in motion for Beckwith’s third trial which ultimately ended in his conviction in 1994.
The hypocrisy and double standard that allowed whites to bring harm to blacks without fear of any repercussions had existed for years before the murder Tyson wrote about occurred in May of 1970 (Tyson 2004, 1). Lynching of black men was common place in the south as Billie Holiday sang her song “Strange Fruit” and the eyes of justice looked the other way. On the other side of the coin, justice was brought swiftly to those blacks who stepped out of line and brought harm to the white race. Take for instance Nate Turner, the slave who led a rebellion against whites. Even the Teel’s brought their own form of justice to Henry Marrow because he “said something” to one of their white wives (1).
In 1979 two black assailants forced a man and a women at gun point into the man’s car at a drive-in grocery store. As they were going down the highway the perpetrators robbed both victims, then forced the man out of the car. After a failed escape attempted by the woman, the two men drove her to a nearby
The Emmett Till murder shined a light on the horrors of segregation and racism on the United States. Emmett Till, a young Chicago teenager, was visiting family in Mississippi during the month of August in 1955, but he was entering a state that was far more different than his hometown. Dominated by segregation, Mississippi enforced a strict leash on its African American population. After apparently flirting with a white woman, which was deeply frowned upon at this time in history, young Till was brutally murdered. Emmett Till’s murder became an icon for the Civil Rights Movement, and it helped start the demand of equal rights for all nationalities and races in the United States.
- on June 23, Williams was driving when a heavy car came up from behind him and tried to force his car off the embankment and over a cliff with a 75 ft. drop off. The bumpers of the two cars were stuck and the cars had to pass right by a highway patrol station, which was a 35 mile and hour zone, but the car was pushing his at 70 miles per hour. Williams started blowing his horn hoping to attract the attention of the patrolmen, but when they saw they just lifted their hands and laughed. He was finally able to rock loose from the other car’s bumper and make a sharp turn into a ditch. He went to the police about it, but they would not do anything because he was black. The police in Monroe never did anything to help blacks
On their way home, on the night of June 17th, 1966, they were pulled over by a white police officer and escorted to the scene of the crime, as they fit the possible description of the criminals they were looking for (two black men in a white c...
"Timeline of events: Trayvon Martin shooting case." Global News 12 July 2013. Web. 20 September 2013. .
“New Century Foundation to Release Interracial Crime Report.” 1999. n. pag. Online. AT&T Worldnet. Internet. 30 Nov 2000. Available: www.amren.com/colorpr.htm
. Spaid argues that hate crime laws, sometimes referred to as “reform laws,” are ultimately ineffective, harmful, and maintain an oppressive and violent system in which it claims to resist. These laws “include crimes motivated by the gender identity and/or expression of the victim,” (79) implicated in seven states across the country, such as the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, created after the hate murders of these two men fueled by bigotry and hate. Proponents of these laws argue that they would work as “preventative messages,” and increase the regard in which these crimes are considered, under the terms of preserving the humanity of these victims, often trans women, while increasing their visibility. These
Shortly after the news of Martin Luther King’s assassination spread, “sporadic violence erupted in Harlem and Brooklyn’s . . . section . . . in two predominantly Negro communities” (Johnson 1). With a total of twelve men arrested and violence brea...
From the summer of 1979 to the summer of 1981, at least twenty-eight people were abducted and killed during a murder spree in Atlanta, Georgia; these killings would come to be known as the Atlanta Child Murders. While the victims of the killings were people of all races and genders, most of the victims of the Atlanta Child Murders were young African-American males. These murders created great racial tension in the city of Atlanta, with its black population believing the murders to be the work of a white supremacist group. (Bardsley & Bell, n.d., p. l) However, when police finally apprehended a suspect in the case, they found it was neither a white supremacy group, nor a white person at all; it was a 23 year-old African-American man named Wayne Williams. (“What are”, n.d.)
Hate crime legislation is needed. Crimes are on the upswing, becoming more public, more violent, and more acceptable in certain places of society. Without the proposed laws there is little chance that this shall become any less prevalent. As NGLTF, the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, a well-respected agency who fights for equal rights for homosexuals, stated in their December 1997 article, the exclusion or removal of sexual orientation from hate crimes legislation by law makers is morally indefensible at a time when anti-gay violence is widespread. Failure to address this critical problem sends a dangerous message to law enforcement and the public that anti-gay violence does not exist, or worse, is somehow less reprehensible than violence against other minorities.
When the topic of hate and bias crime legislation is brought up two justifications commonly come to mind. In her article entitled “Why Liberals Should Hate ‘Hate Crime Legislation” author Heidi M. Hurd discusses the courts and states views that those who commit hate and bias crimes ought to be more severely punished. She takes into consideration both sides of the argument to determine the validity of each but ultimately ends the article in hopes to have persuaded the reader into understanding and agreeing with her view that laws concerning the punishment of hate and bias laws should not be codified. Hate crime is described as a violent, prejudice crime that occurs when a victim is targeted because of their membership in a specific group. The types of crime can vary from physical assault, vandalism, harassment or hate speech. Throughout the article Hurd tried to defend her view and explain why there should be no difference of punishment for similar crimes no matter the reason behind it. Her reason behind her article came from the law that President Obama signed in 2009 declaring that crimes committed with hatred or prejudice should have more sever punishments. While the court has their own views to justify their reasoning behind such decisions, in the article Hurd brings up points and facts to prove the wrongfulness of creating such a law. However, though Hurd has made her views clear in the following essay I will discuss reasons why the penalties are justifiable, why they should receive the same degree of punishment, less punishment and my personal view on the topic.
“…Everybody jumped on him, and beat him senseless… Everybody was hitting him or kicking him. One guy was kicking at his spine. Another guy was hitting him on the side of his face… he was unconscious. He was bleeding. Everybody had blood on their forearms. We ran back up the hill laughing… He should have died… He lost so much blood he turned white. He got what he deserved…” (Ridgeway 167). The skinheads who were beating this man up had no reason to do so except for the fact that he was Mexican. Racism in this day and age is still as big of a problem as it was in the past, and as long as hate groups are still around to promote violence, society is never going to grow to love one another.
Scapegoating is when a person irrationally blames their failures on others, therefore not taking responsibility themselves. The “scapegoating theory says that prejudiced people believe they are society’s victims” (Schaefer 38). It is always someone else’s fault that things do not go their way and the person “… transfers the responsibility for failure to some vulnerable group” (Schaefer 38).