The Struggle against Hate Crime: Movement at a Crossroads
![handle is hein.journals/nylr73 and id is 578 raw text is: THE STRUGGLE AGAINST HATE CRIME:
MOVEMENT AT A CROSSROADS
TERRY A. MARONEY*
INTRODUCTION
Hate crime,' far from being an anomaly, has been a means of
maintaining dominant power relationships throughout United States
history.2 Hate crime may be defined as acts of violence motivated by
animus against persons and groups because of race, ethnicity, religion,
national origin or immigration status, gender, sexual orientation, disa-
bility (including, for example, HIV status), and age.3 Thus defined,
* I would like to thank Brendan Fay, Thomas Hilbink, James B. Jacobs, Leslie Kahn,
Jennifer Mason, Janet Prolman, Paul Schmidt, Jonathan Simon, the staff, volunteers, and
clients of the New York City Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project (AVP), the students
of the New York University School of Law Institute for Law and Society, and all those who
agreed to be interviewed for this Note.
1 For purposes of this Note, the terms hate crime, bias crime, and bias motivated
violence are used interchangeably.
2 For example, the systematic extermination of Native Americans could be character-
ized as hate crime. See James B. Jacobs & Kimberly Potter, Hate Crime, Law & Identity
Politics (forthcoming 1998) (manuscript at 115-16, on file with the New York University
Law Review) (detailing extent of organized campaigns of white violence against Native
Americans); James B. Jacobs & Jessica S. Henry, The Social Construction of a Hate Crime
Epidemic, 86 J. Crim. L. & Criminology 366, 387-88 (1996) (same). But see Jacobs &
Potter, supra (manuscript at 43) (quoting legal director of University of Maryland's Center
for the Applied Study of Ethnoviolence as claiming that [m]ass murder is mass murder;
it's not a hate crime).
3 This definition includes acts of personal violence, threats, intimidation, harassment,
or attacks against property motivated in part by such animus, as well as acts in which the
victim is merely perceived to be a member of the target group. This definition is broader
than many used in state and federal hate crime laws, see infra Part 11.B, in that it encom-
passes immigration status as a corollary of national origin and includes animus based
on gender, age, and sexual orientation. See infra note 163 and accompanying text. The
National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium has advocated for inclusion of immi-
gration status in the definition, because persons who attack Asian Pacific Americans fre-
quently invoke perceived immigration status. See National Asian Pacific Am. Legal
Consortium, 1995 Audit of Violence Against Asian Pacific Americans: The Consequences
of Intolerance in America 11-12, 26 (1996) [hereinafter Violence Against Asian Pacific
Americans 1995].
This definition does not include hate speech, or words expressing animus without
any actual or clearly implied threat of violence. Such speech, however, often creates a
climate in which violence may flourish, whether committed by the speaker or by others
emboldened by such speech. See generally Group Defamation and Freedom of Speech:
The Relationship Between Language and Violence (Monroe H. Freedman & Eric M.
Freedman eds., 1995) (presenting collection of conference reports arguing that language
itself can be form of violence and that group defamation creates climate of hatred and
oppression); The Price We Pay: The Case Against Racist Speech, Hate Propaganda, and
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The Struggle against Hate Crime: Movement at a Crossroads
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