ABSTRACT

IT IS BEYOND QUESTION that the recent eruptions of racist, anti-Semitic, and anti-gay violence have focuses unprecedented attention on the topic of hate crime. Indeed, the media chronicles of hate crimes are given fresh installments at alarmingly regular intervals. It seems we are in the midst of a hate “crime wave” (Fishman, 1978). It is fitting, then, that a national law journal has dubbed the 1990s the “decade of hate—or at least of hate crime” (Rovella, 1994).