Hate crimes and what should be done about them?

During times of crisis, individuals frequently exhibit an unfortunate tendency to safeguard themselves while searching for scapegoats to hold responsible for the predicament.

These trends became more apparent in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks on New York and the Pentagon. Arab Americans, who had previously integrated into society, became the victims of hostility, enduring verbal abuse, e-mail harassment, shoplifting, and even murder. Fearing for their safety, Arab students left the United States and returned to their home countries.

According to Irvin Staub, a psychology professor from Amherst, Massachusetts, who specializes in aid, altruism, and prevention of sociopolitical conflict, "we find ourselves in a mindset where we feel the need to safeguard ourselves and scrutinize those who aren't part of our community. Being victimized, whether as an individual or a group, diminishes one's sense of self and creates a perception that the world is a more perilous place."

While most Americans may not publicly act on any sense of distrust that may have arisen after the 9/11 attacks, there have been instances of hate crimes and discriminatory behavior. These incidents range from verbal abuse to violent crimes such as the killing of a Sikh gas station owner in Arizona or the attempted hit-and-run of a Pakistani woman in a Huntington, NY parking lot. It is difficult to determine the exact number of such incidents that have occurred nationwide, but as of September 30th, the FBI was investigating almost 90 alleged hate crimes and numerous other reported incidents.

Psychologists who specialize in the study of social and clinical phenomena have identified significant distinctions between individuals who engage in hate crimes and those who exhibit less severe biases toward Arab Americans. Nonetheless, experts like Irvin Staub emphasize the importance of understanding these biases as existing on a spectrum, and within a broader cultural and political landscape. Educating people about Arab-American citizens and their contributions may be a useful strategy in preventing hate crimes and other forms of prejudice.

The burden of criminals

Edward Dunbar, a psychologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his team of graduate students have spent the last year studying hate-crime offenders in the Los Angeles Police Department. Using a clinical and forensic perspective, they have examined various factors, including motivation, childhood history, and level of pathology, to gain a better understanding of what drives these offenders.

According to Edward Dunbar, PhD, a psychologist from the University of California, Los Angeles, hate crime offenders do not exhibit traditional symptoms of mental illness such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. However, they do exhibit a high degree of aggression and antisocial behavior.

As per Dunbar's analysis, these individuals do not meet the criteria for a traditional diagnosis of mental illness. However, they display a persistent level of instability, disturbance, and problematic behavior, which increases the risk of future violence. He also stated that these offenders had experienced high levels of abuse from their parents or caregivers during childhood and had learned to use violence as a way of resolving family conflicts.

Dunbar has found that offenders who commit biased crimes tend to be more premeditated than those who commit spontaneous crimes. For instance, homo-bashers may travel long distances to locate their victims in places where they can be found, indicating a significant degree of premeditation. Additionally, Dunbar notes that individuals who commit hate crimes tend to have a pattern of such behavior, beginning with minor incidents and escalating to more serious ones.

Staub remarks that regrettably, the present social environment may provide a more socially acceptable outlet for such individuals to act on their emotions than they would typically have. "A crisis like this can provide a channel for them to release and express these emotions," he explains. "Individuals who have gone through traumatic experiences and have not had the chance to recover often hold more hostility and are more prone to express their hostility towards their own groups rather than towards society at large."

Bernadette Park, PhD, and Charles Judd, PhD, psychologists from Whversiulder, shed light on the reasons behind the quick and widespread distrust of Arab Americans after the events of September 11, aside from the fact that they share the same ethnic background as the terrorists. Their research, in line with that of other social psychologists, shows that people tend to identify more with groups that share homogeneity rather than with their own group, a phenomenon known as the "outgroup homogeneity effect."

Judd stated that when people come across members of a group they don't belong to, they tend to view them as more alike to each other than their own group members and tend to give more attention to their group membership rather than their individual traits. He further explains that this happens because stereotypes about outgroup members are more pronounced than those about ingroup members, causing people to overlook individual differences among outgroup members and categorize them as a group that is disliked.

Clark McCauley, Ph.D., a professor of psychology at Bryn Mawr College and co-director of the Solomon Ash Center for the Study of Anthropopolitical Conflict at the University of Pennsylvania, points out that the "outgroup homogeneity effect" is even stronger when people have little knowledge about a particular group, as is the case with Arab Americans before September 11. According to McCauley, Americans' lack of historical knowledge and the concentration of Arab-American communities in specific areas have contributed to this ignorance. As a result, people tend to attribute a cultural "essence" to groups they know little about, mistakenly believing that it defines the entire culture. For Arabs, this essence is often viewed as militant and extremist. McCauley notes that Americans' misconceptions about Arabs as hostage-takers during the 1980 Iranian hostage crisis and as anti-Israeli terrorists have reinforced this view. Additionally, McCauley suggests that the term "hate crime" is problematic since little is known about the emotion of hate. Instead, he thinks of these crimes as motivated by anger, fear, and ignorance.

Dr. Russell Fazio, a social psychologist at The Ohio State University, has conducted research on "automatically activated attitudes" towards different races. He was the first to create a test that measures the positive or negative association between whites and blacks without directly asking participants for their views. This technique involved flashing pictures of black or white faces briefly and observing whether it affected the speed with which participants identified the meaning of positive or negative words. The findings indicate that many whites have negative attitudes towards blacks that are automatically activated, even if they claim not to consciously hold such views.

According to Fazio, the current crisis has led to the development of negative attitudes towards Arabs among many Americans. These attitudes may be automatically activated when interacting with an Arab American, resulting in a negative tone during the interaction.

Dr. Russell Fazio, together with Tamara Towles-Schoen of Indiana University, conducted a study on the effect of automatically activated attitudes on behavior, which may result in avoidance. In the study, white participants were asked to respond to social situations involving black individuals. The study found that whites did not react negatively when observing scripted interactions between blacks, such as a waiter serving a black customer in a restaurant. However, in non-scripted situations, such as living with or dating a black person, the negative effects were stronger. The more negative attitudes that were automatically activated, the more reluctant the participants were to interact with the person.

Dr. Fazio suggests that this kind of avoidance behavior may also have been experienced by Arab Americans in the aftermath of the September 11 crisis, where they may have been brushed off by fellow Americans due to the negative attitudes automatically activated towards them.

Understanding hate crimes

Psychologists Jack Glaser from the University of California at Berkeley, Donald Green from Yale University, and journalist Jay Dixit studied why some individuals turn their racial discomfort into extreme actions. They explored the attitudes of white racists by joining internet chat rooms. In a study soon to be published in the Journal of Social Issues, the team chatted with white racists by creating fictional scenarios of threats to white supremacy, ranging from local to national levels. They described situations in which black individuals were competing with whites for jobs, moving into white neighborhoods, or marrying white women. The study revealed that the more blacks were perceived to invade white cultural bastions, the more violent the response became. The prospect of a black-white marriage, for example, created a more significant reaction than job competition.

In a related study, Green, Glaser, and Andrew Rich, another political scientist, challenged a long-standing belief in the literature on hate crimes. They debunked the idea that economic factors predict levels of hate crimes. Several studies in racial hotspots, such as Los Angeles and the South, as well as a statistical analysis of a 1940 study by Yale psychologists Carl Hovland and Robert Sears, had suggested a correlation between cotton prices and lynching. However, the team's research suggested that sociocultural factors were a more plausible explanation for the increase in hate crimes.

Rotate the bias around

Psychologists have been considering ways to address the prejudice and bias crimes that have increased since the events of September 11, recognizing the deep-seated roots of such responses. One approach is to apply American values, such as inclusion and the right to free speech, to the way we understand Arab Americans, as well as Arabs and Muslims worldwide. The Bush administration's move to label discrimination against people of different races, religions, or ethnicities as un-American is a positive step in this direction, and citizens and the media can further promote the idea that America is a nation of immigrants with diverse backgrounds. 

Real contact with Arab Americans and learning about their culture, as well as our own history, can facilitate greater understanding, according to Thomas Pettigrew, a research psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and Linda Tropp, a visiting fellow at Boston College. Pettigrew notes that German Americans were scapegoated and faced violence during World War I, which many Americans are unaware of. Rather than solely reacting to the current crisis with fear, we can view it as an opportunity to expand our horizons and relationships with others, suggests Staub. This can help prevent hate crimes and ultimately, terrorism, as well as promoting healing from recent tragedies.