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Kiara Morales
Professor Stacey Van Dahm
English 2010
April 8th 2018
Depending on the Color of your Skin
“No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background,
or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love,
for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite”-Nelson Mandela. Hate is a
powerful word and affects millions of people. It affects people so much that a hate crime could
occur. A hate crime, is defined as “a person whose motive is discrimination against another
person or persons on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation or national origin” according
to Raymond A. Winbush. Hate crimes started to get recognition in the year of 1989 (which is
fairly recent because it was 29 years ago) but many have not been reported. Higher level
education seems to have a lot of incidents where hate crimes occur. So, what steps do institutes
have to launch to prevent further hate crime? Many campuses across the nation have increased
in diversity, and hate crimes remain unreported, colleges need to endorse precautionary steps to
decrease these racial crimes, the fear the victims suffer and reduce the chances of the crime
escalating to a higher level.
The motivation for hate crimes is unknown, but the behaviour of the perpetrator generates
into three main categories: reactive, impulsive and premeditated. All of these categories have one
thing in common and that is to create fear towards an “outsider”, who is
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someone who does not belong to that particular race group.
The “Reactive” category, is a low-level one meaning that the perpetrator considered
(someone or a situation) “a triggering incident to justify their expression of anger” (Department
of Justice 2) which means they may have caused harm verbally or by showing dominance over a
territory. For example, “You and the others from your group do not belong on this campus”,
(Department of Justice 2). Therefore creating fear upon the outsider.
The second category is impulsive. This category is created due to the actions of the
perpetrator, looking and scouting for their victim. The perpetrators are looking for some kind of
“excitement” and go out their way to look for these victims (Department of Justice 3). The
violator seems to do this because they enjoy the feeling of power over someone who may be
