Hunting Hate

On New Year’s Day 1993, a tourist visiting Florida for the Christmas holidays was kidnapped from a mall parking lot by three men. They drove the victim out to a lonely part of town where they called him names and robbed him. The men then doused the victim with gasoline and set him on fire. The tourist, a black stockbroker from New York, was left to die. The white kidnappers congratulated each other and openly bragged about what they had done “for the white race.” The tourist, Christopher Wilson, fortunately lived through his ordeal and a year later saw his assailants convicted of attempted murder.

Wilson’s assault was one of more than 7,000 hate crimes reported to the police in 1993. Some experts estimate that only one in 10 hate crimes is reported to the police. Still, according to federal statistics in 1993, there were more than 20 murders, 100 cross burnings, and thousands of assaults and acts of vandalism reported as hate crimes. Victims were members of many racial, ethnic, and religious groups. Fifty percent were black, 35 percent white, and 8 percent belonged to other ethnic groups. Religious minorities reported 18 percent of the hate crimes and gays and lesbians 12 percent.

The impetus for these crimes varies. Sometimes a wave of hate crimes occurs after a Ku Klux Klan rally or a concert that draws a large number of neo-Nazis. In some cases, such as the Los Angeles riots, hate crimes are sparked by distrust, anger, and alienation. Hate crimes may also be influenced by political rhetoric — gay-bashing might crop up in the midst of a political campaign either adding or removing civil rights protection for lesbians and gays.

Most of those who commit hate crimes are between the ages of 14 and 26. If they are white, homophobia and resentment towards minorities, combined with perceptions of reverse discrimination, form the core of hatred. For youth of color it is anger at racism generalized towards anyone white. Homophobia and gang violence play a part, too. Perpetrators of hate crimes are generally armed with guns, knives, and — the most-favored weapon — baseball bats. Frequently, alcohol and drugs free people’s inhibitions to commit hate crimes. But crimes are also committed in the cold sobriety of hatred.

The Center for Democratic Renewal, with headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, works to stem the epidemic of hate crimes. We were first established as the National Anti-Klan Network by community activists outraged by the 1979 killings of five anti-Klan protesters in Greensboro, North Carolina. (See Southern Exposure’s “Mark of the Beast,” Fall 1981). The center has since grown into a national research center on hate groups. We have helped thousands of victims and many communities. Our work includes helping to get laws passed, conducting training, and offering dependable analyses of hate groups and bigoted activity in the United States.

The center has developed and refined its process of assisting people over the years. When we get a call about a hate crime committed in a community or against a person, the first thing we do is get as many facts as possible about the situation. Since most hate crimes are not reported to the police or covered by the media, we often have to start the documentation process. We match reports from the victims with our research on hate activity in the area.

Sometimes victims are re-victimized by insensitive treatment by authorities. We counsel victims about their rights, offering to intervene with the police if necessary. We can serve as a bridge between the victim and the police, who often don’t see eye to eye.

The center can help establish links to the community. Often victims need support from their neighbors. The media need background information on hate crimes and groups in the area. And local leaders need specific advice on how to respond appropriately.

No formula exists for every situation. The community would not take the same action for a racist elected official as it would for a robe-wearing Klansman. The center helps each community develop a combination of tactics including research, lawsuits, public rallies, op-ed pieces, press conferences, and community forums.

Credible and detail-oriented research is especially important. Whether dealing with a hate group or a racist politician, the community group must find out everything that is available about the person or groups involved. To facilitate this work, we offer training on how to follow paper trails of legal and government documents, how to keep tabs on elected officials, and how to use the Freedom of Information Act to look at reports of investigations on individuals and institutions.

This kind of legwork proved important when the center was called in to assist in investigating suspicious deaths of prisoners in Mississippi jails. We were able to provide information on hate groups in the counties under scrutiny.

Involving the community is a key part of our work. The center sees hate crimes as injurious to the entire community regardless of who the victim is. To address only the immediate hate crime is like putting a bandage on a cancerous skin tumor. It may cover the sore, but it does nothing to heal the problem. The actual crimes merely bring to a head long-simmering feelings of hate and resentment. Our strategy is to turn a crisis created by the crime into an opportunity for long-term community action and healing.

That strategy has been effective in Screven County, Georgia. The center was called because of Klan activity there. During the course of our investigation, we helped a local group, the Positive Action Committee of Screven County, document discrimination in the public school system. The center then helped the committee file a formal complaint with the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education. When the probe by the government didn’t satisfy the community, an effort to get the principal dismissed followed. The principal is now on the local school board, and activists have begun a voter registration drive and are seeking a candidate to run for the school board to counter the destructive presence that is now on the board. The Positive Action Committee now works on police brutality, economic development, and a host of other pressing concerns. Their work shows what can happen when the community becomes involved. In this case, a limited, short-term project of looking into Klan activity led to long-term community renewal and participation in the democratic process.

Unfortunately, as the center has honed its skills over the years, so have hate groups. They have become more sophisticated, organizing their assaults less on individuals and more on civil rights laws, enforcement agencies, and programs and policies for the poor and underserved. Using a seemingly reasonable tone in the literature and speeches, they now organize in mainstream society, not just the margins.

To respond to this shift in tactics by hate groups, the center has adjusted its programs and policies to speak to the issues of racism and white supremacy in its larger social context. We have extended our activities to include women’s rights, gay rights, the environment, and immigration, all of which are under assault from hate groups and their allies in the extreme right. In this fashion we have stepped out of the business of counting hate crimes into the business of prevention and policy work.

In the field of women’s rights, we have taken on two major incursions of white supremacy. We created Women’s Watch in 1992, an anti-abortion monitoring project. Monitoring and research by Women’s Watch has proved that the Klan and neo-Nazi groups are involved in the anti-abortion movement. Such findings may help explain the assassinations and bombings by anti-abortionists, and also help to discredit and expose these radical elements within the movement.

The second project involves examining the current thrust of governments to establish population and development policies for their countries. This is most significant for western countries. Because of their history of racism and colonialism they may fall prey to tendencies to re-invent certain eugenical and genocidal practices towards immigrants, refugees, and people of color. This is particularly relevant for the United States, where local officials may blame immigration for current economic and social problems.

In the environmental area, the center participates in examining the issue of environmental racism — the practice of locating toxic and hazardous facilities in communities of color. This is a pressing issue considering the fact that people of color are 50 percent more likely to live in areas with toxic facilities than their white counterparts. In more than one case local activists have found that many of these decisions are not made randomly.

Can these efforts stop hate crimes and hate groups? No, but our vigilance can make it uncomfortable for those who might consider such tactics and for those whose silence signals acceptance of these tactics. We are not able to be everywhere we are needed. Our limited resources and staff prohibit us from sending an organizer to every town or traveling to meet with every victim. What we can offer is a buffer of support for those who need it. We help communities address increasingly complex solutions for problems of racism and injustice. The real change doesn’t come overnight. But it doesn’t have to wait, either.