ABSTRACT
Ethnoviolence is an act or attempted act motivated by group prejudice with the intention to cause physical or psychological injury. These violent acts include intimidation, harassment, group insults, property defacement or destruction, and physical attacks. The targets of these acts are persons identified because of their race or skin color, gender, nationality or national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or other physical or social characteristic of groups defined to be socially significant. Hate crimes became part of the public and sociological lexicon with the agitation for the passage of a federal hate crimes statute. Based on the characteristics of perpetrators of hate crimes who were apprehended usually in street or residential incidents, early researchers pointed to white teenaged boys as the major perpetrators. The act is surely not irrelevant, but its effect is interwoven with the past experiences and personality of the victim, the status and power of the perpetrator, and the social context in which the act occurs.
