ABSTRACT
Hate crimes are contemptible acts. Their toll only begins with the victim. These crimes ultimately impact society itself by contesting the liberties and quality of life of some of its members. There are countless examples of perpetrator–victim combinations where the perpetrator is a member of a dominant social group and the victim a member of a minority one; there are also occurrences of the opposite. Wisconsin v. Mitchell 508 U.S. 476 (1993), the case that affirmed the constitutionality of hate crime statutes, involved an African-American perpetrator and a white victim. There are also examples of minority-on-minority hate crime as discussed earlier. In the last several years, there have been a number of hate crime convictions of Latinos who have targeted Blacks or Black families in various communities in Los Angeles and Compton, California. Undoubtedly, the opposite has occurred as well. Frank Collin (real name Cohen) a Jewish man, was a member of the American Nazi Party and later founded the National Socialist Party of America. Both organizations were strongly anti-Semitic and sought to agitate the Jewish community. There are even reports of neo-Nazis (some of them of Jewish ancestry) attacking Jews in the state of Israel. Although it can be argued that the impact of hate crime is far worse when the power differential between the perpetrator and the victim is perceived as large, the victimization experience is still harmful regardless of which social group the victim or perpetrator belongs.
