The FBI hate crimes report is out. Click here for a summary and check out a couple of interesting articles examining local relevance. For instance, in California, San Francisco has more of such crimes than anywhere in the state. And how about this? Mississippi reported no hate crimes.
So that means it is safer to be in Mississippi than San Francisco, right? This is the kind of interpretive question I enjoy posing to my students. Let’s see how readers do.
San Francisco embraces and celebrates homosexuality so people feel more free to be in parades, have physical contact in public with their partners, etc. – all of which exposes them to the deleterious actions of deranged individuals. The people living in MS do not expose themselves in this manner and tend to live more quietly so they do not garner as much attention or cite anger as much as the individual gyrating in bikini bottoms while walking in a parade. While there are those that would celebrate this or ignore it, there are also those that are deranged enough that it angers them. I also believe it is inherent in men to protect women, so while these deranged individuals might feel it is justified to perpetrate a crime toward a man, I feel they would hesitate more with a woman.
How about this? There were no hate crimes dealing with sexual orientation reported in Montgomery County Maryland! There were 20 related to religion. Go figure
Why Male Homosexuals to such a large degree and not Female Homosexuals (forgive the labels, I am just using what they are using).
This one seems fairly easy to me. Its clear in our culture that female homosexuality is tolerated much more than male homosexuality. You hear men talking all the time about wanting to see two women together. And while I’ve heard women say they enjoy watching two men together, it is not on the same level. Add this to the fact that many straight and repressed-homosexual men have this deep dislike/hatred of male homosexuality because of what they see it representing – AND the fact that most hate crimes are committed by males, and you have a recipe for disaster.
Many men in this country are taught by parents and the media that real men don’t cry, they don’t show emotions and they don’t have feelings – at least they aren’t to talk about them. Gay men, on the other hand are usually much more at ease with talking about sensitive issues such as this. – Sorry all, this is just a tangent I wanted to throw in 🙂
Well:
You don’t want to be an African-American, Jewish, Male homosexual.
Per capita…the last two categories seem like very small communities…so the numbers seem quite alarming.
An interesting discussion for our blog might be, why Jews? Why Male Homosexuals to such a large degree and not Female Homosexuals (forgive the labels, I am just using what they are using).
Ah yes, they all are not hard. However, many people mess up even the simple stuff.
Wow…this is a simple one:
a local paper states about this:
“”The data are only as reliable as the reporting agency,” said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP’s Washington Bureau…
The 1990 Hate Crimes Statistics Act requires federal officials to collect and compile the data but doesn’t require states to submit it.”
“Jaribu Hill, executive director of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights, said she’s not surprised there were no hate crimes reported in Mississippi last year, although she has investigated cases of noose hangings and racist graffiti aimed at intimidating black employees. “There is no serious monitoring going on,” she said.”
Other things to consider? Immigrants often do not report such crimes if in the country illegally, GLBT individuals are often not included in hate crime legislation, and often individuals do not know how to interpret the law to categorize a crime as a hate-crime.
Sounds like you have to have better oversight, more accurate standards/requirements for reporting, the SAME laws everywhere regarding hate crimes (to be comparable), and people who actually feel safe enough to step forward.
Easy one Warren.
Having spent a lot of time in San Francisco it is likely that a slap gets reported as a hate crime whereas in MI it just might be considered an inconvience and false report crime.
If I recall correctly data on hate crimes are only tabulated in states that have hate crime laws.
Mississippi does not have a hatecrime law for GLBT citizens, so if there is no law, there is no statistic to report to the FBI, so it will be zero until otherwise. The crimes are still in the statistics, but not included in hatecrimes, I suppose they’re just included in the regular crime numbers.
“So that means it is safer to be in Mississippi than San Francisco, right?”
Equally valid interpretation (without having more data): It’s safer to be in San Francisco than Mississippi, where hate crimes aren’t acknowledged or taken seriously.
Warren said:
So that means it is safer to be in Mississippi than San Francisco, right?
No, it means that fewer hate crimes are reported in Mississippi than in San Francisco. That doesn’t necessarily mean that there are fewer hate crimes in Mississippi.