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Loading ...Neff: One attack an hour
Hostile nation
by Lisa Neff
Sometimes I say “I hate…”
I say, “I hate peas.” In fact, I’m frightened of them.
I say, “I hate softball,” because I believe it is misused to reserve a better game for boys and men.I say, “I hate litter, smog, cold weather, hair in my food, rocks in my shoes, flat tires, lower back pain and when candidates lie when they know the truth.”
But when I think about the damage caused by hate, I regret that I ever say, “I hate…” and that saying “I hate” comes as easy as “I love…”
Hate, as defined by Webster’s dictionary, is “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury; extreme dislike or antipathy.”
I derive my hatred of peas from fear.
I get my hatred of softball from a sense of injury and injustice.
That hate that comes while watching a campaign commercial espousing known falsehoods, well, that boils out of fear, anger and a sense of injury.
Sometimes I say “I hate…” and sometimes I feel hate, and sometimes I mistake annoyance for hate — because it is difficult to compare my intesne aversion to cold weather to a person’s hatred of a kind of people or an organized effort to rally hate.
The FBI released a new batch of statistics in late October on hate crimes in America in 2007. The report comes out each year just after we observe the anniversary of Matthew Shepard’s murder and just before we observe the anniversary of Harvey Milk’s murder.
The FBI report, based on statistics provided by local law enforcement agencies, indicates a slight drop in hate crime incidents from 2006 to 2007. The bureau reported 9,535 people were targeted in 7,624 hate-crime incidents — 1.3 percent fewer than the year before.
The FBI also reported a 5.5 percent rise in hate crimes motivated by bias against a person’s sexual orientation, as well as another rise in the number of hate crimes against Latinos for a 40 percent increase since 2003.
About 52 percent of the reported hate crimes were classified as assaults and 47 percent involved intimidation.
If the FBI statistics accurately reported the number of hate crimes in America, such crimes would be occurring at about the cruel rate of one attack every hour of every day of the year.
But we know the FBI statistics undercount the number of hate crimes in America for a variety of reasons — victims may not report crimes, the most violent of crimes may not be investigated or prosecuted as bias-motivated crimes, reporting agencies change from year to year, definitions and classifications for hate crimes differ from locale to locale and some agencies do not track or report hate crimes. Mississippi reported zero hate crimes to the FBI for 2007. Alaska reported one bias-motivated crime and Georgia reported three incidents.
A U.S. Justice Department study, using National Crime Victimization Surveys, found that the hate crime rate is probably about 20-30 times higher than the FBI’s annual statistics suggest, that about 191,000 hate-crime incidents occur each year. If that number is accurate, and experts at the Southern Poverty Law Center and other anti-violence organizations believe it is, hate crimes occur at a horrific rate of 22 an hour of every day of the year in the United States.
It would be pie-in-the-sky to think that as the nation is poised to elect its first black president, hate in America would be directed not at people but just peas and litter, cold weather and flat tires.
But I can hope that this week’s election will bring change in Washington in January that will lead to change across America in the years to come.
Enacting the federal hate crimes legislation stalled by the Bush administration would be a start.
We must expand the federal government’s ability to investigate and prosecute bias-motivated crimes when local investigators are unable or unwilling to investigate.
We must make federal funds available to help local agencies offset extraordinary costs that can be associated with hate-crime investigations.
And we must expand the federal hate crimes law that currently covers race, color, religion and national origin to include sexual orientation, gender identity, gender and disability.
Hear, hear!
I am still reading and enjoying your article. So I will only comment on the first part . . . the part about hate.
Hate is getting a very bad rap. Partly due to misinterpretation and partly due to assumption.
Hate is a perfectly normal, human, natural and healthy emotion. It is just as natural and healthy as love, joy, fear, sadness, pride and anger.
The health or toxic nature of an emotion isn’t the emotion itself. Rather, it is the reaction we have to it and the action that the reaction produces. Those reactions get us into all kinds of trouble.
But, while we cannot usually control the emotion, we can usually control the reaction. And we can always control the action produced.
Our own, individual responsibility does not come from the emotion. It does not come entirely from the reaction . . . but our actions are wholly our own and the responsibilities thereof is wholly our own.
Enough with, “I hate [fill in the blank] and so I did [fill in the blank].” We can replace the word ‘love’ for the word ‘hate’ and the fact would be just the same. Perhaps, in our day to day lives, it produces more heartache over the years.
We can learn to control (be responsible for) our actions. That will begin to teach us to tame our reactions. Will it ever change our emotions? I don’t know. I doubt it. But it can begin to direct our
When we change the way we look at things, the things we look at change.
Neil
I just wanted Ms. Neff to know that her down-to-earth and heartfelt approach to her subject matter gives her articles an impact that other columnists don’t have. I have just recently started reading your material and have become a regular reader of your articles. (And a regular forwarder of your articles to friends…)Thank you Ms. Neff!