Customer Reviews

Hate Crimes (Crime, Justice & Punishment)

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Though a helpful resource for parents and schools struggleing with Youth Hate, it looks and reads like an elementary reader on issues not G rated. Supposedly aimed at creating a "vivid example and careful historical analysis" the book is to "show the deep and painful ways in which prejudice has been expressed". Even a perfunctory reading would conclude it is neither careful nor vivid, showing only a cursory view of the painfulness of prejudice. The unsubstantiated generalities are bothersome to read.

The book is riddled with contradictions: she writes: "the largest percentage of hate crimes are committed by young white men--looking for excitement, so called thrill seekers don't belong to a group" and spends endless pages pointing out leaders of the movements. She mistakenly combines the Christian Identity with the ideology of the Aryan Nations, and claims both to be affiliates of the skinheads with very little if any cited support. She points to leaders of the movement and then incorporates militia cells which are traditionally leaderless. She compares others crimes with elements of open-burning to cross burnings claiming the only distinctions are the hate motivation. Not that notion is theoretically wrong, it is too simple: other arson not involved with prejudice occurs out of hate as well and them some occur for financial gain or pure drunken recklessness. The book ends will 11 unhelpful pages discussing local and globalized efforts to combat hate.

This book missed its mark; it could have been a real tool for parents and teachers dealing with youth subculture of Hate instead of putting itself as an academic composition. Reading like a public service pamphlet supplied by the federal government I am sure many troubled parents, peers and primary schools could utilize the work if it were coupled with a section on coping with white hate in you children, family or school section. In fact I, writing from rural Ohio, will donate my copy to the local library on the chance that a less-academic parent needs it for that very purpose.

As it stands now, the book it is too simplistic to be of worth to anyone else. It does, however, prove to be a good source of photographic depictions of hate which seems to reinforce my point.