ABSTRACT

This chapter describes the concrete, visceral forms of Islamophobia before foregrounding the nature of race hate crimes and vulnerability. Hate crimes can involve race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and/or transgender identity. Rather than focusing on ideology and organised groups, hate crimes can occur in everyday life among individuals. The vulnerability framework allows a more situational, personal analysis of a hate crime. Vulnerability expands the range of factors at play while permitting a focus on the interaction within the hate crime. Due to the asymmetric power relations based on domination of discourse, vulnerability and physical and verbal intimidation, the interaction becomes a “colonising cruelty” of experience. In the case of hate crimes, changing linguistic practices to avoid assault and to conform to a prevailing climate that demands the visibility of their communication means that English and the “monolingualism of the other” overpower the multilingual practices of the victims.