A hate crime is a crime, typically one involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, or other grounds. Hate crimes root from discrimination: direct, indirect and harassment. Direct discrimination is unfair treatment of another person because of a specific characteristic. Indirect discrimination is laws and policies that put a specific person to a disadvantage- for example the law may apply to everyone but because of your specific characteristic, the law hits you harder than others. Harassment is an unwanted, offensive, humiliating, and an intimidating act directed at you because of your age, race, sexual orientation, religion or disability.  An example of discrimination is police brutality – people are sometimes treated or profiled by the police because of their skin colour or how they dress.  

 

An example of a hate crime is the Charlston Church shooting. This was a mass shooting that occurred June 17th, 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church – the crime was based on white supremacy. 9 African Americans were shot and killed during prayer.  The shooter (Dylan Roof) was part of a white supremacist group since 2012, and was inspired by the “Black-On-White" shooting that happened in 2012.This led his to act upon his thoughts on revenge and wanting to start a race war. This mass murder crime could have been prevented as Dylan's beliefs on race were very strong - his goal was to start a race war.  

 

To conclude, reporting hate crimes or standing up for the person in need what each and every person should need to do. Hate crimes can include- threatening behaviour, assault, robbery, damage to property, inciting others to commit hate crimes and harassment.