Constitutional Issues

William Fullam
Professor Poulsen
Jan 7, 2011

What is a Hate Crime?

Looking at the history of America and the way it has taking shape has put a new perspective

into the how and why things are happening the way they have been. I grew up in a very mixed

cultural area in Massachusetts. In this area of eighty miles long by fifteen miles wide, at the

most, there is a mixture of Brazilian, Mexican, Portuguese, African American, Native American,

and Caucasian. All of different backgrounds and all were searching for the “American Dream”. I

have had the misfortune of growing up as one of only a few white families in a predominately-

black neighborhood. The reason I say unfortunate is that my family is extremely prejudice and I

did not learn the proper way to associate and accept other cultures. This I now see has cast me

into a realm of darkness and bitterness to cultures I have had contempt for and about nothing, I

knew about. By my intolerance of others and their way of life, I may have had the direct effect of

their hatred or intolerance for other “whites”.

I found my genealogy and studied it quite closely for some time. The first Fullam to come to

this country came by way of Ireland. Being of actual nobility in those times from England, he

immediately was taking in by the helping hand of John Adams (yes the second president of the

United States) and was quickly giving work and board. This work turned out to be killing Native

Americans. Fast forward, a couple decades and he turned out to be held for treason against this

country for helping the natives escape the attacks from the military. Being that he felt no danger

or aggression from the wilds’ as he called them there was no need to be killing or attacking

unmercifully. My family continued this practice of helping other people in their time of need was
a trait that followed them around for many generations and continued into the abolition during

the Civil War. Why is it then that my immediate family one hundred and fifty years later hated

and feared the same people that we were helping only a century and a half earlier?

I can now understand through a little studying that it is and has always been about principles

and the feeling of superiority. When a person comes into our lives and threatens to change our

beliefs or the way, we do things we are on a defensive and block the necessary adaptive

reasoning to change if necessary. I believe that we as society have been afraid of letting others be

who they are and adjusting to our own surroundings. It is not my business how others live their

lives as long as it does not affect society as a whole.

Crimes against others based on sexual preference, race, nationality, religion and the like are

what appear to me to be fear based. This fear is absurd and can be derived from any number of

situations. Ego seems to be the most logical excuse for most crimes due to it is usually some

form of peer pressure leading up to the incident. It says on page 15 of the text book Multicultural

Issues that “Angloconformity and resentment of groups….can foster caste thinking and promote

divisions along ethnic, racial, and religious lines. This division, known by theorist as

balkanization, carries the portent of significant racial, ethnic, and religious conflict that is

pathological to social systems and public peace”. This is nothing more than a group of people

that are afraid to let people, which came to this country to escape the famine, tyranny, sickness,

and persecution of their own countries to better themselves, do just that.

I have been living with a principle of acceptance for some time now and it has allowed me to

view others in a light I never knew. To learn that the Mexican culture is very family and

religiously orientated is a wonderful proposition to me. I grew up in a separatist household.

There was not much we did together, except awake and sleep. There is a line in the book
Alcoholics Anonymous, “Instead, we looked at the human defects of these people, and

sometimes used their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation. We talked of

intolerance, when we were intolerant ourselves. We missed the reality and beauty of the forest

because we were diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees”. It is very unfortunate that in

society today we as humans on this planet cannot seem to love and help one another and

that there is still so much fear and contempt towards people and new ideas that can and will turn

us against each other. It is not as if we do not know. It has been millenniums and we still feel the

need to hate, and that is a crime in itself. Hate crimes have stabilized at about 8,000 per year with

approximately 48% being racial, 24 % sexual orientation, 24% religion, and 2% disability. This

is not all violent crimes, this is a total of all reported crimes.

This country has made great strides and accomplishments in the way we treat all that wish to

participate in this great country we live in. From the Civil Rights Act, the Age Discrimination

Act, the Americans with Disability Act, and Sexual Harassment laws this country has made

many attempts to secure the rights and the protection from harm for all citizens. This is the only

country in the world that will provide these civil rights.

Multicultural Issues In The Criminal Justice System (Tarver, Walker, Wallace)

http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/tables/11s0318.pdf