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What Communities Want: Recognizing the Needs of Hate Crime Targets

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Abstract

The theme of the Third International Conference on Hate Studies, “The Pursuit of Justice: Understanding Hatred, Confronting Intolerance, Eliminating Inequality,” took me immediately to the subject matter of this article: Who is meant to be served by the subthemes of this conference, if not the targets or potential targets of hate crime? An equally important set of questions would ask: What justice looks like from the perspectives of those individuals and groups? What do hate crime victims want, and what do they need? And, what do vulnerable communities want and need?
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What Communities Want:
Recognizing the Needs of Hate Crime Targets
Barbara Perry
University of Ontario Institute of Technology
I
NTRODUCTION
The theme of the Third International Conference on Hate Studies,
“The Pursuit of Justice: Understanding Hatred, Confronting Intolerance,
Eliminating Inequality,” took me immediately to the subject matter of this
article: Who is meant to be served by the subthemes of this conference, if
not the targets or potential targets of hate crime? An equally important set
of questions would ask: What justice looks like from the perspectives of
those individuals and groups? What do hate crime victims want, and what
do they need? And, what do vulnerable communities want and need?
These have been consistent objects of inquiry in much of the hate
crime fieldwork I have conducted over in the past decade. There comes a
point in virtually every survey, interview, or focus group when I ask my
participants what they would like to see done to minimize the risk and
impact of hate crime. In asking for suggested policy initiatives or interven-
tion programs that might ameliorate the damage to community harmony
and mitigate future hate crime occurrences, I generally hope to avoid the
usual pitfall of assuming that I know “what the victim wants” (Garland &
Chakraborti, 2002). My intent in this article is to overcome the historical
arrogance of state or even local initiatives, however well-meaning they
might be, that are not grounded in the expressed needs and wants of
affected communities. I see this article as an opportunity to give targeted
individuals and communities a voice and to remind scholars and practition-
ers who work in the field that hate crime victims and their communities are
a primary reason that many of us are engaged in this emerging, evolving
field of Hate Studies.
All targets of crime deserve services that help them cope with and,
ideally, prevent their own victimization. However, different communities
may experience the trauma of violence in different ways. An Office for
Victims of Crime report (1998) observes that:
Different concepts of suffering and healing influence how victims experi-
ence the effects of victimization and the process of recovery . . . . Meth-
ods for reaching culturally diverse victims must include resources that are
specific to their needs. (p. 157).
9
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The array of services that are currently available, however, tends only
to serve the general needs of victims, regardless of their identities. Those
who are targeted because of their race or religion, those who experience
crime differently because of their sexual orientation or gender identity, and
those who are uncomfortable with the criminal justice system because of
their disability or ethnicity do often require culturally-specific services.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (“CAIR”), for example, serves
the needs and interests of Muslims through advocacy, education, and victim
support. Yet in most countries, these kinds of dedicated, culturally-specific
services are in short supply.
Based in my own research and observance of best practices, I argue
that sensitivity to the cultural needs of affected communities, in a way that
empowers those who are targeted by such violence, is key to effective
delivery of victim services. Such services should acknowledge that the
targets of hate crime have unique needs, and furthermore that the affected
community knows best what these needs are. Alas, current practice does
not generally recognize either of these points. Aside from umbrella anti-
violence organizations like the Anti-Defamation League (“ADL”) or the
Council on American-Islamic Relations-Canada (“CAIR-CAN”), and the
work of Canadian victims’ services providers (McDonald & Hogue, 2007),
very few agencies or organizations specifically address the unique, often
culturally-specific needs of hate crime victims.
Unfortunately, even where hate crime interventions have emerged, the
services offered typically have not reflected the expressed needs of vulnera-
ble communities. This situation represents a failure to provide what the
European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (“EUMC”) (as
cited in Iganski, 2008, p. 96) calls an “ethical” response to hate crime vic-
tims, in which attention is to be given to the “experiences, feelings and
opinion of victims.” To be sure, this “ethical” response has not been the
norm. In spite of the fact that a diverse coalition of organizations represent-
ing marginalized groups initially put hate crime on the public agenda (Jen-
ness & Grattet, 2001), subsequent policies and programs have often been
imposed from the top-down, and have excluded the voices of those most
affected by hate crime.
Victim services clinician Jim Hill (2009) urges service providers to
keep in mind that “it is important that you not try to impose your personal
view of what (hate crime victims) should do. Allow your clients to lead
you in how much, or how little, they want to use group identity to shape
their personal identity” (p.106). In a similar manner, this article attempts to
recognize and bring forth many unheard voices of hate crime, as based in a
practice of asking a community and its various members what they want
and need, listening to those answers, and then striving to respond appropri-
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ately and effectively. Consequently, the article is not an exhaustive list of
what can be done, or what currently exists, in the realm of hate crime pre-
vention and support services. Nor is this article a systematic analysis of any
single research project. Rather, it is a reflection of the cumulative wisdom
of myriad diverse participants, themselves representing similarly varied
communities (and sub-communities), including those within Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual Transgender, Queer (“LGBTQ”), Muslim, Asian, Aboriginal, Jew-
ish, South Asian, and black communities.
The observations provided herein are derived from 15 years of schol-
arly work focused directly on hate crime. My theoretical suppositions have
been reinforced by more than 700 interviews, focus groups, and survey
responses from an array of projects in which I have been involved. The
individual respondents came from all walks of life: unemployed, underem-
ployed, blue-collar workers, and white-collar workers. Some were consid-
ered leaders within their cultural communities because of their roles within
the group, such as an Imam or as the head of a community based organiza-
tion. Participants ranged in age from teenagers to octogenarians. While
none of the samples were representative, they nonetheless reflected a wide
cross-section of the respective cultural groups.
I do not claim here that these participants “speak for” their entire com-
munities. Rather, I see these people as constitutive and from the communi-
ties of which they are a part (Code, 2008). To borrow a phrase, they are
individuals-in-community (Grasswick, 2004, 2011), a model that “conceptu-
alizes knowers as individuals situated within communities, who know pri-
marily through their active engagement with other individuals-in-
communities” (Grasswick, 2004, p. 110). Individuals “know” on the basis
of their own experiences, but also from interaction with others within the
communities they share. They are able to read the perspectives of others—
individually and collectively—and integrate it into their own understand-
ings. In this sense, knowers are situated and interactive. Furthermore, with
Alcoff (1991-1992), I reject the proposition at it is inherently oppressive to
“speak for” others; this proposition has the counterproductive potential of
weakening “political effectivity” (p. 17). The positions of the many speak-
ers in my research are diverse and wide-ranging, reflecting both privilege
and disadvantage. Some were accustomed to “speaking for” their commu-
nities because of their leadership roles; others were not, but nonetheless
“spoke for” themselves, reflecting their own “truths.”
Moreover, any individual is situated in multiple and intersecting com-
munities—as a woman, and a Latina, and a Catholic, for example. This is
also the case for communities, whether locally or globally; these communi-
ties themselves are diverse. It is, of course, insufficient (and in some ways
incorrect) to talk about the Jewish community, or the LGBTQ community,
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or the black community. The general public, policy makers, even scholars
too often homogenize communities and assume, stereotypically, a sameness
of experience within them. There can be dramatic variations within all such
groups—and similarities across them too. Furthermore, each of these
groups is in fact constituted by multiple communities, and by individuals
who move within and across multiple communities, which may or may not
share experiences, perspectives, or place. Indeed, differences are them-
selves overlapping and intersecting.
That said, remarkable themes do recur regularly within and across cul-
tural groups in the studies I have conducted. I have closely read respon-
dents’ narratives countless times, seeking identifiable patterns in how
individuals and communities experience and respond to hate crime. In pre-
paring this article, I revisited those stories with an eye toward identifying
common expressions of “needs” and “wants” in terms of anti-hate initia-
tives. In what follows, I preface these observations by defining hate crime,
and identifying the array of harms associated with this form of violence. I
then lay out four “intangibles” as demanded by community members: rec-
ognition, respect, safety, and voice. I follow this discussion with a related
one of presenting concrete strategies, as proposed by respondents them-
selves, to achieve those intangibles: community awareness, community
empowerment, victim services, and criminal justice reform. In this article, I
typically offer only scant comments to express a point. Meanwhile, quota-
tions from surveys, focus groups, and interviews are used liberally not only
to illustrate and provide support to the analysis, but also to give the partici-
pants opportunities to speak for themselves as individuals-in-community.
I. T
HE
H
ARMS OF
H
ATE
In order to understand what a community needs, specifically in regards
to hate crime, it is important first to appreciate the nature of the harms
associated with this distinct form of violence. The following definition has
long framed my understanding of hate crime in this context:
[Hate crime] involves acts of violence and intimidation, usually directed
toward already stigmatized and marginalized groups. As such, it is a
mechanism of power, intended to reaffirm the precarious hierarchies that
characterize a given social order. It attempts to recreate simultaneously
the threatened (real or imagined) hegemony of the perpetrator’s group
and the “appropriate” subordinate identity of the victim’s group (Perry,
2001, p. 10)
This definition is especially useful because it draws attention to two of
the key distinctions between bias-motivated violence and other forms of
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violence. First, bias-motivated violence is not random; it targets particular
people solely because of an identity, usually a minority identity, with which
they affiliate or which the offender (sometimes erroneously) ascribes to
them. Second and clearly related to the first reason, this form of violence
targets a group and not simply an individual. Indeed, in examining hate
crime literature, policy debates, and relevant court decisions, there is an
assumption that such offences are, for that same reason, qualitatively differ-
ent in their effects, as compared to non-bias-motivated offences. Specifi-
cally, Weinstein (1992) identifies three potential levels of harm. While he
speaks of racially-motivated crime, the same could be said for other catego-
ries of hate crime:
[T]hat racial violence causes injury to the victim above and beyond phys-
ical damage, that racial violence causes injury not only to the immediate
victim but also to the victim’s racial or ethnic group, and that racial vio-
lence has particularly pernicious ramifications for society as a whole. (p.
8)
The latter two harms are characterized by Weinstein as in terrorem effects;
these are akin to what Iganski (2001, p. 629) characterizes as the extended
harm to the victim’s group, harm to other targeted communities, and harm
to societal norms and values. In short, these are the distal community
impacts of hate crime.
The first of these types of harm—to the individual target—has been
the subject of considerable scholarly attention. Research suggests that bias-
motivated crimes are often characterized by extreme brutality (Levin &
McDevitt, 1992). Additionally, the empirical findings in studies of the
emotional, psychological, and behavioural impacts of hate crime have
established a solid pattern of more severe impact on bias crime victims, as
compared to non-bias victims (see, e.g., Herek et al., 2002; McDevitt et al.,
2001). The key difference here, as referred to above, is that hate crimes are
very often directed toward one’s core identity. Targets are chosen on the
basis of highly salient physical or cultural characteristics that may be
ascribed to the individual or, alternatively, that may be at the core of indi-
vidual self-identity. In the latter case, in particular, hate crime victimization
often results in the individual’s decreased sense of self-worth:
Whether they were directly or indirectly made towards me, in my opin-
ion, these were hate crimes as they left me feeling lesser than the other
person, as they were directed attacks on my self-esteem and confidence
(Lesbian).
Another related effect is a prolonged fear that the victimization may be
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repeated. For people who cannot or will not alter the provocation for the
attack—their presumed or actual social identity—it is clear to them that
they remain subject to violence at any moment; the sense of vulnerability
and risk remains at a heightened state. Silver et al. (2004) suggest that hate
crime victims are nearly three times more likely to fear revictimization than
victims of non-bias-motivated crimes.
In moving beyond the experiences of the immediate target to the
broader in terrorem effects, we generally enter the realm of speculation.
Many scholars point to the “fact” that hate crimes are “message crimes”
that emit a distinct warning to all members of the victim’s community: step
out of line or cross invisible boundaries, and you too could be lying on the
ground, beaten and bloodied (Iganski, 2001). Consequently, this individual
fear is thought to be accompanied by the collective fear of the victim’s
cultural group, possibly even of other minority groups likely to be targeted.
Few studies have explicitly addressed the veracity of this presumptive
migrating fear (Lim, 2009; Noelle, 2002; Perry & Alvi, 2011). However, in
several of my recent projects I have explored this topic and found that
across affected communities, participants indicate that awareness of the
potential for hate crime enhances the sense of vulnerability and the fearful-
ness within those communities. This effect, after all, is the intent of hate
crime: to intimidate and instill fear in the whole of the targeted community,
not just the immediate victim. Interestingly, when asked to define hate
crime, many participants specifically acknowledge the “message” nature of
these crimes. For example,
[a] “hate crime” is the act of causing personal or property damage with
intent to intimidate because of a person’s religious or sexual beliefs. It is
meant to send a message of intolerance against the “selected” group and
to leave a message of fear. It is also meant to send a message that those
targeted are not safe because of their belief (Muslim female).
Many individuals receive these “messages” loud and clear; they feel equally
vulnerable to victimization, and thus, are fearful. Upon reading a scenario
describing a hypothetical hate crime, a Jewish male observed “When it hap-
pens to someone else (who) identifies themselves the same way as you do,
it might as well be happening to me too. If they hate Jim, if they are willing
to assault Jim, they are certainly capable and willing to assault me too.”
This example highlights one of the key characteristics of hate crime—the
apparent randomness—that makes such violence so terrifying. As many
hate crime scholars have observed, victims are often interchangeable (Lim,
2009; Levin & McDevitt, 1998). The chosen target simply represents an
“other” in generic terms. When he or she is a member of a hated or demon-
ized group, that membership is enough to leave the person vulnerable to
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attack. Further knowledge of the individual’s identity, personality, or status
is unnecessary.
Unfortunately, another in terrorem harm—the adverse impact of hate
crimes on perceptions of national ideals—has also received scant attention
in the relevant literature. Hate crimes are direct threats to the basic princi-
ples of inclusion and tolerance that are said to underlie Western societies.
Writing specifically about Native Americans more than fifty years ago,
legal scholar Felix Cohen (1952) noted that the legal and extralegal mis-
treatment of minorities “reflects the rise and fall of our democratic faith” (p.
17). More recently, in Regina v. Keegstra (1990), Canadian Chief Justice
Dickson concluded that “Hate propaganda contributes little to the aspira-
tions of Canadians or Canada in either the quest for truth, the promotion of
individual self-development or the protection and fostering of a vibrant
democracy where the participation of all individuals is accepted and
encouraged.” In other words, it is possible that the persistence of hate
crime presents a distinct harm to democratic ideals and institutions, insofar
as it reveals the dehumanizing fissures that characterize the societies in
which hate crime occurs and lays bare the bigotry that is endemic within
each (Matsuda, 1993; Waldron, 2012). As such, it may very well be the
case that bias-motivated violence is not just a precursor to greater inter-
group tension, but is also an indicator of underlying social and cultural ten-
sions. In this interpretation, hate crime is but one indicator that the
enshrined ideals of freedom and equality for all are in fact illusory.
Hate crimes researchers and victims alike know that the widely pro-
claimed ethos of inclusion and belonging is not necessarily the daily reality
for vulnerable communities, who both experience and fear violence as moti-
vated by ideals that directly contrast with those norms embedded in the
national mantra. The cultural, social, and political mood in Australia,
Canada, and many other Western nations, in particular, uneasily supports a
simultaneously disabling and enabling environment for hate. The messages
of inclusion, participation, and engagement are contradicted by acts of vio-
lence that are inspired by racism, heterosexism and other related “isms.”
Writing of the Australian paradox, for example, Chris Cunneen (1997)
highlights the irony wherein “a liberal democracy, with its commitment to
anti-discrimination, simultaneously functions within an institutional frame-
work which can be described as having pervasive racism” (p. 138).
Hate crime challenges the sense of belonging that would seem to be so
crucial to inclusive societies (Waldron, 2012). Such crimes can also be a
key point of contact in the negotiation of place and belonging in society.
Indeed, I have long argued that hate crime is a crucial mechanism for the
dance of power. As hate crime victims keenly understand, such violence
represents an unequal exchange, whereby the intent of hate crime is to dom-
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inate and exclude by transmitting a key message that its victims are not
worthy of belonging:
The message is clear. I don’t belong. We don’t belong. Muslims are
made to feel inferior and like they don’t belong, are unwelcomed. Non-
Muslims see Muslims as aliens and a community of people to blame and
their frustrations out on (Muslim male).
The lack-of-belonging message is not just implicit. Often, the language that
constitutes or accompanies targeted assaults is blunt in its intent:
I was just, um, this thing happened to me before. I was once in a library
like few years back in, a Saturday, you know, just reading some books.
And this man just like comes in and looks really close, like he kind of
invaded my personal space and started staring at me and saying things
like “Get back to where you come from. You don’t belong here.” And
very, very hurtful things. I didn’t want to stay there. He was getting
ready to physically like, hit me and I didn’t wanna be in that situation.
So I just like run away. (Muslim female).
A sense of belonging is crucial to social inclusion. Yet people of col-
our, members of religious minority groups, and members of the LGBTQ
communities, for example, are frequently reminded by harassment and vio-
lence that they do not warrant the same recognition as their straight, white,
Christian counterparts. The sense of alienation emanating from this exclu-
sion can be debilitating as it has the potential to inhibit engagement with the
broader society since “persons who do not feel valued in society cannot
contribute or participate to their full potential” (OHRC, 2003, p. 34).
Although hate crimes clearly have these detrimental impacts, it is
interesting to note that these crimes can also provide a catalyst for positive
change. Patterns of persistent violence, or highly publicized cases like
those of Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, can have the unintended effect
of mobilizing victim communities and their allies. Indeed, across multiple
studies that I have conducted, the targets of hate violence can and often do
develop constructive alternatives to the prejudice and violence that con-
fronts them. For example, one Canadian First Nations male indicated his
belief that hate can be unlearned, based on the role of social institutions in
inculcating hate. “I think it is learned. It is learned partly in our educa-
tional system, it is learned in the home and is learned through the media
culture. I would suggest that the only good news is that hate can be
unlearned.”
Whether done individually or collectively among targeted populations,
challenging hate crime and the biases that inform it are often valuable
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processes for those populations. Across my studies, many participants have
been optimistic about the potential for change and suggested progressive
strategies for harnessing the energy of vibrant communities to counteract
both the potential for and the impact of hate crime. For example, “[t]his
story makes me want to help educate people so that future generations will
be more accepting and less afraid. Education is the key to eliminating irra-
tional fears” (Jewish male). Many other participants also noted the con-
structive impact of feeling inspired to react at an individual and/or
collective level:
This kind of story fills me with a lot of emotions. Mainly, reading a story
like this further motivates me to confront discrimination and heterosex-
ism. I do not have any ideas for action on a grand scale, however I would
discuss the incident with as many people as possible to get them thinking
about the issues facing the gay community (Lesbian).
These and other personal narratives, which so many people have generously
shared with me, demonstrate how the anger and frustration that such vio-
lence evokes can also motivate individuals and communities to action.
I preface the following discussion of desired actions, which includes a
lengthy list of strategies for countering the deleterious effects, as offered by
a Canadian First Nations participant in one of my studies:
More information sharing is needed. In all communities. Networking.
Speaking out. Affirmative action. Being proactive. The province of
Ontario and federal gov’t (sic) need to enforce all human rights issues.
More participation of the business community/corporations need (sic) to
finance advertising/meetings/seminars/conferences to show support.
Pharmaceutical companies need to get involved. The law/police/courts
must be participants municipal, provincially and federally. Education.
Education. Education. We need to upgrade and go electronic to get our
message out. U.N. Declaration of Human Rights need (sic) to reinforce
its effectiveness. Churches need to get involved. Aboriginal communi-
ties need to become (sic) invited to participate. Wherever people gather
in a public place, these human rights and regulations need more advocacy
and transparency and action.
While few participants were as proscriptive as this one, most did share their
thoughts and recommendations about what they would like to see done to
mitigate the risk and impact of hate crime. Their responses tended to clus-
ter around two broad sets of interests as outlined below: intangibles and
concrete strategies for cultural, institutional, and structural change.
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II. I
NTANGIBLES
Recognition: The failure to recognize hate crime for what it is presents
a significant barrier to effective responses. Across Western cultures, there
is a tendency to downplay or in fact deny the reality of racism, homophobia,
and other marginalizing structures. This is particularly the case in the con-
text of bias-motivated violence, which is too often disregarded by police,
courts, and politicians alike. Police, for example, may diminish if not deny
the danger faced by individuals or the community at large. Consider the
dismissive words of a police officer in Minnesota, referring to violence
against Native Americans:
I think in the social aspect there’s no conflict, no discrimination; there’s
really nothing. Sometimes people will talk about it, but I don’t think
they, uh, I think they often make it up. I don’t see it, and nobody comes
directly to the station to complain. So, no, if they complain about it, I
think they are wrong (White male).
Such declarations fly in the face of the experiences described so candidly
by people I interviewed across communities. The indifference of law
enforcement to the needs and realities of people whom they are intended to
serve speaks volumes about how police view vulnerable communities.
Where there is “no violence,” there can be no reason for action:
You don’t want to call the police or make an issue of it. They play down
how serious the violence is, how much there is—unless it’s Indians hurt-
ing whites. They see the cases one at a time if at all, so they won’t make
the connections. The cases aren’t related; it’s not about discrimination,
they say. They won’t admit that Indians get hurt more (Native American
male).
This observation resonates with Gail Mason’s (2012) assessment of the
public response to a series of racist attacks against Indian students in Aus-
tralia. There, too, racist motivations were minimized by politicians and the
media in favour of evasions and euphemisms that framed the violence as
isolated, opportunistic, or symptomatic of broader crime patterns. Repeat-
edly, political leaders, in particular, were at pains to avoid even using the
term “racism.”
In light of this neutralization, it is not surprising that hate crimes vic-
tims and their communities seek recognition and acknowledgement of
identity:
A person can and should be able to be proud and say that, “Yes, I’m a
Canadian, but I also identify as this.” So I want to walk through the
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streets and not be indistinguishable from everyone else. I want to be
distinguishable, I want to, I want people to recognize me as what I want
them to recognize me as. So I want to be able to walk in the street and
somebody say, “Yes this person is a Muslim and a Canadian” (Muslim
male).
Equally important, however, is that these individuals and communities also
seek recognition of the violence perpetrated against them as hate crime.
Justice Canada researchers Susan McDonald and Andrea Hogue (2007, p.
30) concur on this point, stating that “victims need the hatred behind these
crimes identified and acknowledged by the criminal justice system.” Like-
wise, a gay male whom I interviewed offered this assessment:
They’re not exactly there to protect me. But at the same token, all I
expect them to do is maintain the law and pursue the case. If they do it
objectively and impartially and they observe my civil rights, I’m not
going to complain about them.
Respect: Acknowledgment of the bias motivation behind such vio-
lence would also go a long way toward bringing victims another key “intan-
gible”—respect. First and foremost, vulnerable communities crave respect
from other people and from the state. Simply put, “I look forward to, I
guess, everyone accepting and respecting me” (Gay man). A young Mus-
lim woman expressed this hope almost poetically:
I would like to see all of humanity to hold hands! Unite! And love and
respect one another as we are all human and at the end of the day! This is
done by simply demonstrating to people that we all cry, feel, bleed, and
sleep. We are all equal!
Targeted communities, and their individual members, simply want to be
treated with the justness and esteem which is their due. The sort of denial
noted above sends the message that these communities are not valued or
deemed worthy of the same protections as those in the mainstream. But it is
the violence itself that most strongly underscores the lack of respect that
racialized, gendered, and other marginalized communities experience:
It’s like we are still being alienated even though we have so many rights
to practice our religion freely. It’s just that we feel like we still feel
cannot fit in society. And I think that’s a main issue for a lot of Muslims
because we want to be accepted; we want to be respected, but because of
certain practices or beliefs that people do not understand, we feel like,
okay, we have to hide that or conceal that in order to just have like a
harmonious relationship maybe in the workplace, or in the school, or any
realm in life for that matter. Just to be respected (Muslim female).
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Obviously, the intent of the violence referred to here is to express to these
groups that they are not welcome, they do not have anything to contribute
to the nation, and they in fact somehow represent a diminution of the
national culture.
In the face of this hostility, the following perspective is illustrative of
the preferred alternative:
We need to honour the essence of what each individual brings; their
strengths, their talents, their challenges . . . . That we honour the essence
of who you are be it Muslim, be it Ukrainian, be it gay, be it lesbian, be it
transgender (Gay man).
Until this respectful vision is realized, communities will continue to be
fearful.
Safety: As a means of managing this fear in the interim, community
members will strive to “create a safe place and to start to let people know
that it is a safe place” (Lesbian). The theme of identifying or creating safe
spaces is very common among and within targeted communities, as the risk
of victimization is pervasive in many settings and for some, there is, to their
mind, no safe space. One transgender woman spoke at length about her
perceptions of safety and what that entailed for her:
I think one of the real problems with safety, I don’t know where it is safe
in Toronto, when I started my transition people could easily identify that
I was trans all the time and I faced constant harassment and people star-
ing at me, giving me dirty looks, talking to each other ridiculing and
mocking me. I had to adapt to the experiences of nearly being physically
assaulted and my feeling was that I was never safe anywhere and that
lead to being very reclusive, isolating, which then tied in with severe
depression and suicide attempts. So there’s the practical issue of safety,
but then there’s the subjective experience of safety that is radically
altered by those experiences you have and without the involved balance,
even just harassment, bullying, ridiculing and mocking takes a tremen-
dous toll on us.
This sense of safety/unsafety is an inevitable outcome of a vulnerabil-
ity that is experienced as normative and ubiquitous. Regardless of context,
there is a constant fear of assault among members of frequently targeted
communities. The violence and threat of violence that permeates their lives
is one of the key factors that continue to remind marginalized communities
of their liminal status. Some manage this threat by ignoring it as much as
possible:
I’ve gotten to a point in my life where I kind of just put blinders on to
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everyone around me, but when I’m walking downtown with friends, my
friends will catch people looking or whatever and “What are you looking
at?” and stuff like that. Or they’ll say “Hey. Did you see that?” I mean
I’m aware of what’s going on around me but I don’t focus on it because if
I did, I’d probably be hanging from a rope. I mean it would just, like you
said that constant oppressions, discrimination, harassment. I can’t, can’t
have that (Transgender woman).
Faced with the normativity and ubiquity of fear-inducing violence, mem-
bers of vulnerable communities learn to negotiate their safety, to create
“safety maps” (Mason, 2009). They adopt an array of strategies for manag-
ing their vulnerability, often through changes in behavioural patterns. Par-
ticipants have expressed the necessity to alter their performance of identity
in accordance with what they recognized as the socially established rules
for “doing difference.” They report changing routine activities, habits, and
ways of being in the world:
Even if you ran to escape they still chased after you. I then knew to
travel/move in packs with friends. Never walk alone, bring reinforce-
ments/witnesses and cell phone (Gay male).
In this respect, the potential for bias-motivated violence serves its intended
purpose of enforcing appropriate public performances of identity at the very
least. It is in this context that communities and individuals long for
places—cultural, physical, psychic—where they can feel safe:
We need more spaces like that for people who don’t know where they
belong, who yearn for a sense of belonging. ‘Cause I yearn for a sense of
belonging. I think I’m getting to find my place now (Lesbian).
Voice: The inclusion of affected groups into relevant conversations on
community security is key to the creation of these safe spaces and to effec-
tive community and victim services more generally. In short, communities
and their members want to be heard, to have a voice in policies, practices,
and initiatives that affect them. Rather than the paternalistic imposition of
programming by a “benevolent” state, anti-hate initiatives must also be
informed by those in the best position to understand what is needed—mem-
bers of targeted communities themselves, including those who have actually
experienced hate crime. Otherwise, policymakers run the risk of develop-
ing counter-productive initiatives. For instance,
Some in the OHRC created their trans definition some ten years ago . . .
there are actually some, some very discriminatory items they have in the,
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22 JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES [Vol. 12:9
their definitions, I could pretty much guarantee they did not consult trans
people on that (Transgender woman).
This example is a powerful reminder of the downside of excluding the
expressed needs and indeed the voices of affected groups from policymak-
ing. Doing so runs the risk of creating strategies that are far removed from
the experiences and informed insights of targeted individuals and communi-
ties. As in this case, exclusion can result in policy that reinforces rather
than mitigates the marginality of these groups.
This article is one attempt to overcome the omission of the voices of
targeted groups. Following these participants’ identification of the
“intangibles” noted here—including voice—I turn now to explore the par-
ticipants’ suggestions for concrete strategies by which to mitigate the risk of
hate crime.
III. C
ONCRETE
S
TRATEGIES
In part, the elusive goals noted above—recognition, respect, safety,
and voice—require concrete action, whether among the targeted communi-
ties themselves, the broader community, or the state. Those goals will not,
and therefore cannot be counted on to emerge organically from what is an
inherently racist, homophobic, and otherwise bigoted culture. Concentrated
efforts are necessary to ensure their development and sustainability.
Affected communities are very clear on what they see as the building
blocks needed to move beyond hate toward inclusion and respect as part of
what I have referred to elsewhere as a “positive politics of difference”
(Perry, 2001). Such an approach would require more than mere efforts to
assimilate “others,” or merely “tolerate” their presence. Rather, a “positive
politics of difference” challenges us actually to celebrate our differences.
Of course, doing so requires that much of our current way of ordering the
world be radically altered (Perry, 2001, p. 236). A positive politics of dif-
ference, by necessity, operates at multiple levels and in multiple sites simul-
taneously, something that people within affected communities fully
understand. Participants across research projects have specifically identi-
fied several key forms of intervention: community awareness, community
empowerment, victim services, and criminal justice reform.
Community Awareness: Based on an extensive series of oral and writ-
ten submissions on hate crime, the Ontario Hate Crime Community Work-
ing Group (2006, p. 32) came to the profound conclusion that:
. . . hate is so commonplace and institutionalized that is it almost impossi-
ble for those outside the vulnerable communities to fully appreciate its
magnitude or to recognize it as a scourge on our society as a whole . . .
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when the public lacks cultural awareness and understanding of differ-
ence, this contributes to exclusion, victimization, fear and tolerance of
hate crime.
This sentiment has arisen often in my interactions with community mem-
bers. There is a strong consensus that the public lacks awareness and
understanding about diverse communities and the impacts of their
victimization:
Well there is no real awareness. People, I mean I think that just lately
they’ve had a couple of documentaries and done some stuff on main-
stream television that people have become a little bit aware of (Trans-
gender woman).
The lack of public awareness and understanding is unsurprising, as
people rely too much on stereotypical representations of marginal groups.
The realm of popular images is fraught with stereotypes which both under-
lie and justify the differential treatment of subordinate groups. In line with
an essentialist understanding of difference, the overriding theme is that of
inscribed traits, wherein “the stereotypes confine them to a nature which is
often attached in some way to their bodies, and which thus cannot easily be
denied” (Young, 1990, p. 59). They help to distance white from not white;
male from female; Christian from non-Christian; able-bodied from disabled.
Almost invariably, the stereotypes are loaded with disparaging associations
that, for example, suggest inferiority, irresponsibility, immorality, and non-
humanness. Consequently, they provide both motive and rationale for
existing social hierarchies and, often, violence.
It is at these points of representation that community members fre-
quently insist that policy must be developed in order to minimize the risk of
hate crime. Enhancing awareness and understanding begins to break down
these hate-enabling images. Generally, participants envision this interven-
tion as ideally occurring on two levels: informal public awareness cam-
paigns and formal education initiatives in the schools.
Awareness campaigns represent one medium for effectively influenc-
ing people’s attitudes on an array of social issues, ranging from drunk driv-
ing to improving the environment. An assessment of public media
campaigns in the United Kingdom suggests the mechanisms by which such
awareness building initiatives might work:
Once a media initiative is published or projected, consumers ‘read’ that
product. They may react as conscious, analytical learners, pondering the
media’s treatment of race and other aspects of diversity. They may try to
integrate thoughtfully and critically this learning into their own personal
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24 JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES [Vol. 12:9
ideational frameworks, attitudinal structures, and value systems. On the
other hand, they may uncritically absorb or reject different multicultural
lessons. They may react and learn by unconsciously relating these new
ideas into their existing knowledge, perceptions, attitudes, values and
behaviour (Sutton, Perry, Parke, & John-Baptiste, 2007, p. 21).
Affected communities seem to value the potential inherent in such initia-
tives. More than any other strategy, participants across my studies stressed
the importance of building awareness through challenging prejudice and its
attendant violence:
The stories need to be told—our stories, our histories, from our perspec-
tive. They forgot about the residential schools here in America. They
forgot about Indian children that were stolen from Indian reservations
and that didn’t come home and are dead out there or were killed out
there. We need to remind that Indians came first, that they have a his-
tory, stories (Native American male).
Likewise, a Muslim woman shared her thoughts on how awareness-raising
on violence can render meaningful to others those terrible practices and
painful experiences:
And you can have public educational campaigns and videos created sort
of looking at these scenarios: some visible girl walking down the street
and a stupid guy in a car throwing something at her. People are gonna
see and be like “Oh my God I’ve done that” or “I know somebody who’s
done that.” They think about it and they say it’s really stupid. We have
to maybe do public education around it but that has to be rooted in talk-
ing to the people who are actually having things happening to them, not
necessarily the people who are concerned and haven’t had stuff happened
to them.
However, most participants emphasized the need for more focused attention
on formal education and on the failure of public schools to adequately
address the historic and contemporary place of diverse communities. The
standard model of education was described as a one-way street that reflects
the paradigms of cultural imperialism. Western youth learn white, Chris-
tian, straight culture, history, and beliefs, but rarely do they learn a great
deal about the parallel and intersecting dimensions of the life-ways of
others. One participant suggested that “there needs to be unlearning. Like
our public education is part of the problem” (Lesbian).
Recognizing this problem, many participants spoke in favour of a re-
invented educational system. Here are two sets of voices, from two differ-
ent communities:
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They need to listen to us, hear us. We know our culture best; we know
how to tell our stories. I get so angry when they bring in all these people
to teach our children about ourselves. Why can’t our teachers do that?
Let us decide what to teach, how to teach it (Native American female).
A. I think education in the school. If they start in schools, when the kids
grow up, they will know that human beings are human beings, it does not
matter what they look like, where they come from.
Q. So what is your suggestion?
A. They should be telling the kids in schools that they should not dis-
criminate against somebody because of the different skin colour, they eat
different food, or they pray differently. When the kids are young when
they learn when they grow up they will remember these things (Muslim
male).
There was, in fact, widespread consensus across the individuals and
groups in my studies on the importance of transformed and transformative
education. As highlighted by the above statements, there must be an
expanded scope for including the voices, histories, and experiences of
marginalized groups within public schools if the prejudices underlying hate
crime are to be disrupted in the long term.
Community Empowerment: It is not only the dominant culture that
must be challenged to prevent hate crime. Targeted communities also rec-
ognize the roles that they must play, both in confronting hostility and in
working to protect and empower themselves. Indeed, the marginalized
groups who bear the brunt of hate-motivated crime have not been passive
victims of the varied forms of violence they experience. On the contrary, in
recent years many of them have become very active in asserting the legiti-
macy of their identities, challenging hatreds like heterosexism, patriarchy,
racism, and bigotry, and resisting the cultural and individual forms of vio-
lence to which they are subject.
For some, this process begins with an awareness of the rights to which
they are entitled—legal, political, and social—and then extends to an exer-
cise of those rights. In short, in order to become more self-aware, all com-
munities should receive education on the nature and use of the rights to
which they have access:
I guess something that I think is really important is, ah, getting the com-
munity to be more confident in itself. Because, I think people, I think we
should see ourselves as any other minority that has rights, ah, and that
should advocate for them. The francophone community, for example, in
Ontario doesn’t shy away from that at all. I mean they make themselves
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26 JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES [Vol. 12:9
heard, which is good. It’s great. Um, but I feel like Muslims are, like,
sometimes apologetic, sometimes we’re, I mean we see, a lot of, a lot of
the time, I mean, we see, the opportunities that are given to us are like
our rights as something like, something like, charity. . . But I think that
will come with also, you know, with time because I feel that second or
third generation Muslims, ah, are more confident about that; whereas our
parents would be like, no. Thank god they let us come here, you know
(Muslim female).
The importance of rights-education connects to a point made earlier in
this article, on the potential for hate crime itself to serve as a catalyst for
positive change. For example, the racially motivated murders of Michael
Griffith (Howard Beach, 1996) and Yusuf Hawkins (Bensonhurst, 1989)
inspired widespread demonstrations condemning the racism of the perpetra-
tors’ communities, as well as the racist culture of New York City generally.
On a smaller scale, the Asian community in central Ontario, Canada,
responded to alleged incidents of hate crime against Asian anglers north of
Toronto in the summer and fall of 2007. Indeed, community outcry
resulted in the establishment of an inquiry into those events, which in turn
resulted in more responsive law enforcement efforts (Ontario Human Rights
Commission, 2007, 2008).
Another example is the remarkable strength and resilience of Native
Americans in the face of the everyday violence described in my interviews
with them. As Frideres (1993, p. 508) puts it, “with the emergence of
Native identity, the sense of alienation experienced by many Natives has
been dispelled by a new sense of significance and purpose.” In fact, Native
Americans currently enjoy resurgence in numbers, as well as growth in
nationalist identity. The frequently violent “anti-Indian” activism that has
emerged in areas like the Great Lakes and the Pacific Northwest (Shuford,
2012) has engendered a renewed pride in American Indian identity, and
with it, recognition of the need to pursue that which is theirs by right (Perry,
2008). In short, Native Americans have mobilized around their cultural
identities, as well as their legal and political sovereignty. Clearly, these
examples of oppressive violence stimulated rather than disabled the com-
munities. From the observations of participants in these studies, there is
ample evidence to suggest that targeted violence can have the unintended
effect of inspiring similar mobilization across communities. Isolated as
well as ongoing patterns of discrimination and related violence can and, in
many cases, do trigger community-based reactions in the interests of social
justice.
Interestingly, some community members in my studies have identified
internal barriers to their ability to realize similar solidarity, and thus
respond to discrimination and hate crime. At the outset, I noted the hetero-
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geneity within cultural groups. In line with this reality, then, hate crime
must also be seen as a multiethnic and multicultural problem, not just a
black/white issue. Hate, violence, and other conflicts within and across
communities may present challenges. For example, a transgender woman
complains that there is “a lot of transphobia within the gay and lesbian
community as well—that needs to be addressed.” She went on to say that:
(post-Stonewall) however almost immediately the people got involved to
sanitize what being gay, lesbian, queer meant. And so that meant that
gay men had to be straight acting and gay women had to be straight
acting and the trans women had to be invisible, because they don’t exist
and so in terms of our rights today, we do not have the same queer rights
as other queer people (Transgender woman).
Similarly, a Muslim woman challenges her community to:
. . . see who is not in the room? If you’re in a room and it’s completely
made of the Muslim community and there’s no one there who is Shia and
you know there’s a sizable Shia population in your city. . . But they are
not there. And there’s also no one from the Somali community and we
have a large Somali community here. You should be like: where’s the
Somali community because that’s a huge voice that you don’t understand
that you need to have at the table. But we really don’t do that. That’s a
serious challenge.
Ultimately, community members who noted these contradictory posi-
tions emphasized the need to build solidarity and strength within a commu-
nity. In the words of one lesbian, “[w]hat I would like to see is a real
showing of solidarity. It’s becoming so cliquey, you know, but a lot of that
is because our community became incestuous; ‘cause it was so small.”
Likewise, a Muslim male speaks of his involvement in a Muslim coordinat-
ing council meant to bring together Muslims with non-Muslims, but also
Muslims with Muslims:
This is the first time that we’ve tried to get all the Muslims together to
uplift the most vulnerable in the community who now have to depend on
the government or they cease to help like the, battered wives, or youth in
detention, or people with disabilities or mentally ill, or refugees and so
on. And our second objective is to reach out to fellow Canadians of other
faiths to try to promote human rights, and dignity and equality for all
Canadians, including aboriginal people in particular. And this is the first
time that we’ve brought Shias and Sunnis together in Ottawa.
Initiatives like these suggest the potential of developing community
supports organically, within or across ethnic, racial, religious, or gender
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28 JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES [Vol. 12:9
lines. In short, such intercultural projects recognize the value of community
building through coalitions. Only by acknowledging and overcoming the
“fragmentation” of community can collective action be an effective brake
against hate crime.
Moreover, despite the heterogeneity within and across social groups,
the groups most likely to be targeted have often experienced similar (if not
the same) types of oppression. In other words, blacks, Jews, Asians, homo-
sexuals and others, as groups, all have suffered various degrees of discrimi-
nation and victimization; so too have many of their members and others
assumed to be members. Yet, rather than acknowledging these commonali-
ties and histories and forming coalitions for social change, subordinated
social groups have often resorted to intergroup and intra-group conflict.
While the causes of such conflict are surely complicated and warrant more
careful research, it appears as if they have so internalized the dominant
aspects of white masculine supremacy that this is the primary lens through
which they can view one another. Intercultural coalitions must challenge
essentialist assumptions, both within and across groups, about identity that
insist on irreconcilable differences between races, religions, genders, forms
of sexual orientation, and so on. Perhaps by transcending the artificial
boundaries we use to divide ourselves, we might transcend oppression and
violence accomplished through them.
Marsiglia (1998) explicitly argues that this kind of integration of iden-
tities can provide the foundation for a politics of resistance and confronta-
tion, as lesbians of color, for example, struggle against their simultaneous
racial and sexual marginalization. Likewise, Jenness and Broad (1998)
argue that existing anti-violence projects themselves represent the conver-
gence of four social justice movements around a shared problematic, insofar
as the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay and lesbian
movement, and the victim’s rights movement share a commitment to coun-
tering discrimination and its related forms of violence. The anti-violence
projects, of which Jenness and Broad (1998) write, reflect not only local-
ized social movements but also the power of collective action that con-
sciously crosses boundaries. Despite their diverse interests, perspectives,
tactics, and strategies, these projects nonetheless coalesced around shared
experiences of “violence, victimization, civil rights, and compensation in
light of symbolic and material discrimination” (Jenness & Broad, 1998, p.
174). Such coalitions do not force their members to “pluck out” one part of
their identities; they resist the fragmentation which otherwise alienates peo-
ple from their multiple communities, and from the rich variation of their
own identities.
Victim Services: In light of the layered foundations and impacts of
hate crime and the diversity within and across the affected communities,
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effective responses are grounded in victim-centred approaches (Iganski,
2008) that understand and acknowledge the impact of hate-motivated
crimes on individuals and on the targeted community as a whole (McDon-
ald & Hogue, 2007, p. 32). Awareness and knowledge of how hate crimes
affect “others” in our midst allows service providers to implement services
that are appropriate to localized dynamics. For example, programs serving
undocumented workers who are targets of hate violence might include an
“anonymity” guarantee, whereby their immigration status would not be
reported to authorities. Ultimately, the key to effective delivery of victim
services is sensitivity to the cultural needs of the victim’s community, in a
way that empowers targets and potential targets.
From the perspective of community members with whom I have spent
time, the paramount need in this context is for someone to listen and call
upon when in crisis:
And trying to help kids my age. Because I’ve seen too many kids com-
mit suicide over this because people aren’t accepting over it. Because
they don’t know how to talk and they don’t have anyone to talk to. So I
think more programs out there to help at-risk youth to come into the
programs and to help them (Gay male).
There’s more concerted effort to make spaces for queer youth and to have
it so there is something that people can look for. There are people they
can find as mentors. And to talk about what’s going on. Or just find
someone to help them get through the few years before they leave their
town. Or find someone they can share their experiences with (Lesbian).
These comments link back to earlier points about the importance of recog-
nition, respect, safety, and voice. Here, communities and their members are
simply asking that they have access to service providers who will listen and
acknowledge the pain of ongoing targeting. For many victims, this atten-
tion provides the opportunity they need to have their experiences validated
and also eases their anxieties by encouraging them to speak about their
experiences. Jim Hill’s (2009) widely used manual for Canadian victim
services providers includes explicit reference to this kind of validation:
NGOs involved in interviewing victims should take into account that one
of the victim’s biggest fears is that he or she will not be believed . . .
NGO staff—as well as police officers and others—can respond to victim
accounts by saying that they are sorry about what happened. This vali-
dates the victim’s feelings without pre- judging the results of further
investigation and reassures the victim that he or she is valued as a person.
(p. 47)
Such an approach can go a long way in making victims feel respected.
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30 JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES [Vol. 12:9
Moreover, being able to talk through their experiences can be empowering,
or at least cathartic, as victims have the opportunity to reflect on and thus
understand their experiences.
Perhaps, then, it is not surprising that another suggested approach that
emerged on several occasions revolved around some form of restorative
justice. A lesbian spoke highly of her own experiences with restorative
justice processes:
Well, my experiences with community accountability have been sort of
groups of people who know someone who’s been a perpetrator of vio-
lence and a survivor of violence and work out a plan to hold that person
accountable. I’m very new to this concept of—and it mostly only works
if you know the person who’s a perpetrator and have an interest in chang-
ing—but it’s based on the belief that everyone can change their
behaviours and their actions through a communal process of education
and communication. Which is a really neat idea. And I think that would
be really awesome to see more dialogue going in Kingston going on
about that.
At the individual level, Mark Walters, in his on-going work (e.g., Wal-
ters & Hoyle, 2012), suggests that a restorative justice model can have posi-
tive outcomes for victims in some contexts. In particular, many of the
harms suggested at the outset of this article might be mitigated by engaging
the victim and offender in a safe, mediated conversation. Levels of fear,
anxiety, and anger, for example, have been found to decrease after these
interventions (Walters & Hoyle, 2012). However, the restorative justice
model goes beyond victim-offender mediation to promote involvement of
the victim, the offender, and the communities of which they are a part in the
justice process. Restorative justice interventions help to restore victims’
and communities’ losses by holding offenders accountable for their actions,
and by making them repair the physical and emotional harm they have
caused. Such interventions also focus on changing the behavioural patterns
of offenders so that they become productive and responsible members of
society. The restorative justice model places emphasis on everyone whom
the crime affects—including the general community, the victim and offend-
ers’ communities, as well as the victim and the offender—to ensure that
each gains tangible benefits from their interaction with the criminal justice
system.
Umbreit, Lewis, and Burns (2003) highlight two elements associated
with restorative justice initiatives that have particular relevance to the com-
munity impacts of hate crime:
The entire community is engaged in holding the offender accountable and
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2014-15] WHAT COMMUNITIES WANT 31
promoting a healing response to the needs of victims, offenders, and the
community as a whole (p. 3)
and
[w]hile it is important to address the immediate needs of crime victims
and offenders, involving community members in the process of doing
justice helps to build stronger, more connected, caring communities. (p.
4)
This alternative, then, specifically addresses the community impacts of hate
crime, allowing any affected party a place at the table. Moreover, who
comes to the table is variable, and depends on the incident in question.
Ordinarily, the dialogue begins with victims, offenders, and significant sup-
port persons whom each may bring with them. Additionally, however, the
process is as likely to include representatives of the neighbourhood, the
larger community or the targeted community, who can speak precisely to
the nature and intensity of how the violence affected them as well. Accord-
ing to many of those with whom I have spoken, few if any of the benefits
associated with restorative justice are to be found within the traditional
criminal justice system.
IV. C
RIMINAL
J
USTICE
R
EFORM
The law is not a friend to trans women, no part of, no interaction with the
law on any level can be considered safe, it’s inherently dangerous (Trans-
gender woman).
Like this transgender woman, affected communities are particularly
concerned with the real or perceived capacity of state agencies—especially
law enforcement—to deliver “justice” to victims and their communities.
State practices, policy, and rhetoric have often provided the formal frame-
work within which hate crime—as an informal mechanism of control—
emerges. State actions and inactions that, at individual and institutional
levels, stigmatize, demonize or marginalize traditionally oppressed groups,
legitimize the mistreatment of these same groups on the streets, as well.
Community members’ experiences bear out their fears that their victimiza-
tion is not taken seriously. An Ontario study by the Hate Crime Community
Working Group (HCCWG, 2006, p. 29) supports this observation:
The working group heard repeatedly from vulnerable communities, par-
ticularly Aboriginal and African Canadian communities, of their lack of
trust of the police, the futility of reporting, and their fear of re-victimiza-
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32 JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES [Vol. 12:9
tion by the police and the courts system . . . . They consistently spoke of
their experience of police abuse and racial profiling.
It is perhaps telling that very few participants in my studies have mentioned
criminal justice initiatives as a key means by which to intervene in hate
crime. Indeed, one participant noted that extensive protective legislation
exists—rights law and hate crime statutes, for instance—but that this legis-
lation has not served affected groups well thus far. In fact, legislative mea-
sures have been effective in the displacement, assimilation, and
deculturation of many groups. Thus, the study participant quoted below
questions the value of criminal justice initiatives:
You know, the disease of racism is one that, you know, public policy can
only go so far in terms of correcting it, I mean, you can only legislate and
enforce up to a certain point, and I think we’re, in terms of the existing
civil rights law, are we all the way there, no, maybe not in terms of the
law itself, okay, but I think that on the enforcement end of it, more could
be done . . . it’s almost like somebody has to get killed before they take a
serious interest, you know, somebody dies and then they’ll really prose-
cute to its fullest extent, but short of that . . . (Native American male).
In short, within my studies, the common failure to suggest legal responses
to hate crime is no doubt a reflection of the lack of trust in the criminal
justice system. It also accurately reflects the historical lack of sensitivity
with which the criminal justice system has responded to minority victims of
crime generally. Inevitably, the experiences of marginalized communities
shape their perceptions as to the brand of justice they expect to receive.
Cumulatively, perceptions of over- and under-policing reinforce the antipa-
thy, if not outright hostility, toward police and compound the historically
strained relationships between affected groups and the criminal justice sys-
tem. Consequently, community members often raise these kinds of con-
cerns about police, specifically, when talking about hate crime:
I guess when talking about distrust and the authorities, I think it precedes
even, like, I mean for me, I’ve always been allergic to the cops. I think
it’s like a general distrust and the whole system, like, I don’t want to be
part of the system kind of thing (Muslim female).
Some of my friends were having a party. The police showed up. Once
they realized most of the men were gay the police began telling they
should do pushups and other “manly” things along those lines. They also
started referring to my transgendered friend as “it.” When I heard about
this I was furious. My friends did nothing because they were afraid (Gay
male).
To lessen the impact I think the crimes have to be taken seriously. Once
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2014-15] WHAT COMMUNITIES WANT 33
we see that if a mosque is vandalized and people take it seriously and it’s
reported and they make a real effort to bring the perpetrator to justice as
they do for vandalism of a church, synagogue. When they start treating
those crimes equally, then you’ll see that Muslims will probably start to
see that they are taking our concerns seriously and they’ll feel like they
are a legitimate member of this society (Muslim female).
The last of these three statements is especially significant in that it
refers back to previous discussion of community needs for recognition,
respect, and safety. Recognition, in particular, must come not just from
fellow community members or other members of society, but clearly also
from those who are entrusted with protecting the rights and safety of all. As
first responders, very often police have a key role in giving recognition to
all victims.
Currently, this concern for achieving recognition has particular
resonance within Muslim communities. Indeed, Muslims have been among
the most critical of police, especially in terms of their tendency to over-
survey those perceived to be Muslim or middle-Eastern (CAIR-CAN,
2006). Many Muslim participants have spoken about both police failure to
treat seriously their victimization while simultaneously engaging in height-
ened surveillance of their community. Ultimately, across participating
groups there was significant mistrust of law enforcement and both implicit
and explicit calls for changes in how police interact with affected groups.
Of course, police officers work within a specific legislative context.
Victims recognize this, and indeed, find fault with that structure as well.
“Even if they (perpetrators) were arrested,” complained a Jewish male,
“they probably avoided being convicted and sentenced for the ‘hate’ aspect
of the crime as the current legislation makes it too difficult to prove!” As
this comment makes clear, many victims recognize that there are limitations
in the law that must be addressed, including the possibility that the “hate
crime” threshold is too high.
The transgender community, in general, is even more critical of a leg-
islative framework that in many jurisdictions does not explicitly recognize
gender identity as a protected category. Several transgender participants
shared their disdain for weak statutory provisions, as illustrated by the com-
ments of this transgender woman:
Well for me, it’s actually like being like everybody else and getting a
human rights bill passed; and a bill that has some teeth in it. Right now
there’s no teeth in the bill and there’s no, there’s really nothing, I mean,
they say there is and, yeah, different provinces have it and companies
have it, but there’s not something that’s all inclusive that are protecting
us right now (Transgender woman).
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34 JOURNAL OF HATE STUDIES [Vol. 12:9
As is the case for transgender people, law can by its silences exclude
groups from the protections that are afforded to others, such as in the failure
to include particular groups in hate crime or civil rights legislation. The
way forward in such cases is to lobby for legislative reform. Canada, for
example, is on the verge of including gender identity in its federal human
rights framework as it has been passed by the House of Commons. The
hope is that the Senate will follow suit.
Exclusionary legislation, or the failure to enforce protective legisla-
tion, raises questions about the particular group’s legitimacy and place in
society; in some cases, such legislation and inaction explicitly defines a
group’s “outsider” status. As I have argued elsewhere, “law is a dramatic
form of political and cultural expression which . . . is implicated in the
shaping and valuing of difference” (Perry, 2001, p. 228). But law is not an
immutable behemoth; rather, “it is vulnerable to the impact of ongoing
struggles . . . . It is itself a site at which raced and gendered relations of
power are enacted” (Perry, 2001, p. 229). Ultimately, law continues to have
value in material and symbolic terms, and it must be addressed at those
levels in the name of pursuing justice for all.
C
ONCLUSION
Although this article reflects a broad level of analysis, it presents and
examines many voices from numerous communities who identify with race,
ethnicity, faith, gender expression, and sexuality. Common to all of these
communities is the need for those intangibles to which I referred: recogni-
tion, respect, safety, and, of course, voice. Yet as I have also suggested and
tried to show, diverse communities, and the individuals within those com-
munities, have diverse needs, wants, and experiences. Thus, the ways that
these core values of recognition, respect, safety, and voice will be ensured,
through concrete initiatives, can and likely will vary according to context.
The next step is to engage in determinate conversations with affected com-
munities in order to extract, in more detail, their preferred means of inter-
vention and service. This article should be seen as a call to action among
scholars and practitioners to expand and specify those community-specific
strategies.
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... In addition to using those platforms for communication, there are users who utilize the same platforms to promote hate. These individuals who spread hate see social media platforms as a potential place to recruit individuals from a wider audience (Awan, 2017;Bertram, 2016) and to amplify fear in the community (Bertram, 2016;Perry, 2014). ...
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... Many home grown hate-individuals are inspired to join hate-organizations because they see a community that supports their views on social media (Awan, 2017;Bertram, 2016), specifically they tend to see it as a place where they feel "safe" (Guiora & Park, 2017). However, people who have experienced hate directly are fearful that they will re-live it (Perry, 2014), while individuals who may not have experienced hate are fearful that they could be attacked in the future (Perry, 2014). Similar to how hate-oriented individuals want to feel a sense of belong in a community, individuals who are fearful of hate also want to find a community where they feel safe (Perry, 2014). ...
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... Un alto capital cultural confiere a los individuos una serie de conocimientos, competencias y recursos a través de los cuales otorgan significado a las experiencias vividas, a la vez que procura menor riesgo de TEPT (Marks, Woolverton y Murry, 2021). De forma similar -aunque no idéntica-opera el activismo como fuente de enseñanza sobre realidades complejas que, bajo una retórica de vindicación y justicia social, facilita el conocimiento, la reflexión y la de(construcción) de la identidad individual y colectiva, puesta en favor de la transformación social (Bebbington, 2005;Perry, 2014;Serrano, Martín y De Castro, 2019). ...
... Es importante destacar que la participación en movimientos sociales, por sí misma, representa una respuesta transformadora frente a las victimizaciones imparciales (Bebbington, 2005; Serrano, Martín y De Castro, 2019). La existencia de espacios de encuentro y emprendimiento común genera altas cotas de satisfacción personal al impulsar la articulación sinérgica de diversas dimensiones de la resiliencia (individual, familiar y comunitaria) (Perry, 2014;Serrano et al., 2019). Y, aunque a priori, este enfoque no es sustitutorio de recursos tales como la atención psicológica, tiene un impacto innegable en el bienestar de los sujetos de estudio. ...
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