ABSTRACT
This chapter expresses that a racist society produces racist violence and victimization. The United States very complex immigrant heritage, together with its long and checkered race relations history, "makes this society a uniquely valuable source of insight and experience with regard to the volatile mixture of race, ethnicity, nationality, and immigrant status". Racist victimization, whether it is referred to as xenophobic violence, ethno-violence, right-wing extremism, hate crime or bias crime, may take many different forms. Federal hate crime legislation was introduced and debated as early as 1985, and the first federal statute, the Hate Crime Statistics Act, was passed in 1990. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that between 2000 and 2003, 191,000 incidents of hate crime have occurred annually. All one can hope for is that tolerance, rationality, compassion, and respect for equality and human rights similarly will soon be a global reality as well.
