ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an examination of tensions between feminist critique of the state and activist efforts to address hate crime. There are two concrete reasons why law enforcement agencies have been central targets of educational campaigns on the recognition and response to hate crime. First, throughout the history of organized policing—long before the likes of Sergeant Stacey Koon and Mark Furhman took center stage—police officers frequently have been accused of discriminatory conduct and civilian abuse. Second, police officers play an important role in the treatment and success of hate crime prosecution. The chapter focuses on the concrete effects of the institutionalization of hate crime, both in the law and in the popular lexicon of late twentieth century United States. An examination of common usage, even among progressive scholars, would find that hegemony often appears as a synonym for "dominant culture," or "the state's" version of reality.
