Asia Williams
Despite the election of our nation’s first African American President, African Americans remain by far the most frequent victims of hate crimes. A hate crime is defined as a crime motivated by racial, religious, gender, sexual orientation, or other prejudice. A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. Congress has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." This isn’t an innate characteristic, it is a learned characteristic. Individuals are taught or they learn how to harbor hatred and utilize it to bring harm upon others. Yet, despite the election of President Barack Obama as our nation’s first African American President, African Americans were the group most likely to be the targets of race-based hate crimes, according to a federal report. According to the FBI's HCSA report, more than twice as many hate crimes were reported against African Americans as against any other group.
About 131 million people were reported voting in the 2008 U.S. presidential election, an increase of 5 million from 2004, according to a report by the U.S. Census Bureau. The increase included about 2 million more black voters, 2 million more Hispanic voters and about 600,000 more Asian voters, while the number of non-Hispanic white voters remained statistically unchanged. With this report I am not naive to believe that non-Hispanic white voters did vote for President Obama. Which indicates that some individuals were not bias in voting for an African American for President of our nation.
However, there is a growing number of hate crimes against African Americans. It is evident that there is an intend not only to injure and kill individuals, but to terrorize them. Why is it that individuals will bring harm upon another? It is my opinion that individuals with low self-esteem are more likely to demonstrate bias against individuals who are different. It can also be that the election of the first African American president and the issues of abortion, gay
