Beyond the Numbers: Hate Crimes and Cultural Trauma Within Arab American Immigrant Communities
| Author | Nicole J. Hendricks,Joel Miller,Naomi Sugie,Christopher W. Ortiz |
| Date | 01 January 2007 |
| Published date | 01 January 2007 |
| DOI | 10.1177/026975800701400106 |
International
Review
ofVictimology.
2007,
Vol.
14,
pp.
95-113
0269-7580/07$10
© A B
Academic
Publishers
-
Printed
in
Great
Britain
BEYOND
THE
NUMBERS:
HATE CRIMES
AND
CULTURAL
TRAUMA
WITHIN
ARAB
AMERICAN
IMMIGRANT COMMUNITIES
NICOLE
J.
HENDRICKs•t,
CHRISTOPHER
W.
ORTIZ#,
NAOMI
SUGIEt
and
JOEL
MILLER+
t
Institute
of
Justice,
New
York,
USA
#Vera
Institute
of
Justice
and
Utica
College,
New
York,
USA
+university
of
Malaga,
Spain
ABSTRACT
The
events
of
September
II,
2001
reverberated
through
many
Arab
American
communities
across
the
country
in
ways
that
other
Americans
have
not
experienced.
During
the
period
directly
following
the
attacks,
people
of
Arab
descent
were
harassed;
churches
and
mosques
were
damaged,
and
in
a
few
instances
people
were
physically
attacked,
shot,
or
killed.
In
cities
and
towns
with
high
concentrations
of
Arab
Americans,
public
hostility
and
suspicion
grew
due
to
outside
pressures.
Utilizing
interview
data
from
a current
national
study of
relations
between
Arab
American
communities
and
law
enforcement,
we
explore
issues
of
victimization,
the
perceived
prevalence
of
hate
and
bias
crimes
among
immigrants
of
Arab
descent
and
law
enforcement,
and
community-level
feelings
of
vulnerability
and
fear
in
a
post-September
11
environment.
In
addition,
we
examine
the
degree
to
which
federal
policies,
media
attention
and
law
enforcement
practices
have
led
to a
sense
of
community-wide
victimization,
which
we
label
as
a
type
of
cultural
trauma.
Bearing
the
brunt
of
enforcement
actions,
Arab
American
communities
are
grappling
with
the
insecurity
and
fear
that
has
come
from
increased
scrutiny
in
the
name
of
security
for
others.
Keywords:
Victims,
trauma,
Arab
American,
immigrants,
community
policing,
terrorism
Many
immigrants
leave
their
home
countries,
sometimes
fleeing
oppressive
regimes
(Culver,
2004),
with
the
hope
that
they
will
enjoy a greater
degree
of
*
Nicole
J.
Hendricks
(formerly
Nicole
J.
Henderson),
Institute
of
Justice,
New
York,
USA
and
Department
of
Criminal
Justice,
Holyoke
Community
College,
303
Homestead
Avenue,
Holyoke,
MAO
1040,
USA.
This
project
was
prepared
by
the
Institute
of
Justice
and
supported
by
Grant
No.
2003-U-CX-1020
awarded
by
the
National
Institute
of
Justice,
Office
of
Justice
Programs,
U.S.
Department
of
Justice.
Points
of
view
in
this
document
are
those
of
the
authors
and
do
not
necessarily
represent
the
official
position
of
the
U.S.
Department
of
Justice.
96
economic
opportunity
and
safety
and
security
in
America.
Prior
to
September
11,
Arab
American
communities
across
the
country generally received
no
more
attention
from
law
enforcement
than
other
immigrant
groups.
In
fact,
scholars
had
even
debated
whether
successful
assimilation had left
the
more
established
Arab
American
communities
politically
and
culturally 'invisible'
in
the American mainstream
(Naber,
2000).
Following
the
attacks,
federal
policies
and
activities, including
the
USA
PATRIOT
Act,
the
special
registration
of
visitors
from
select
Arab
countries,
voluntary interviews,
and
ongoing
detentions
and
deportations
have
often
targeted
Arab
Americans
and
American
Muslims
in
the
name
of
national
security (Chishti eta/.,
2003).
The
events
of
September
11
reverberated
through
Arab
American
commu-
nities across the
country
in
ways
that
other
Americans
have
not
experienced.
During
the period directly
following
the
attacks,
people
of
Arab
descent
expe-
rienced varying levels
of
harassment,
from
workplace
discrimination,
verbal
abuse
and vandalism ofhouses
of
worship,
to
severe
hate
crimes
such
as
shoot-
ings
and
murders (Levin
and
McDevitt,
2002).
HATE
CRIMES
AND VICTIMIZATION
Beginning
in the
1980s,
special
attention
has
been
paid
to
drafting legislation
around
bias-motivated behavior
(Gerstenfeld,
2003;
Levin
and
McDevitt,
2002).
While
hate victimization
can
be
broadly defined
as
harm
done
to a
victim
by
a perpetrator
who
is
largely
motivated
by
hatred
of
some
evident
characteristic
of
the
victim,
variations
in
hate
crime
legislation
across
states
and
at
the
federal
level
make
it difficult
to
provide a universal definition. For
the
purposes
of
this article,
we
view
hate
victimization
in
two
ways.
First,
we
focus
on
crimes
motivated
by
bias
or
prejudice,
a definition that is consistent
with
the Federal Bureau oflnvestigation's
(FBI)
definition.
Second,
we
focus
on
incidents
such
as
hate
speech
and
other
types
ofharassment that
while
they
may
not
be
criminal,
are
motivated
out
of
bias or prejudice
(Al-Mateen
eta/,
2001).
In
the United States, hate
crimes
motivated
by
racial
bias
have
historically
targeted predominately
African
Americans
and
Latinos (Espiritu,
2004
),
and
according
to
a
study
by
Parker eta/.
(1993),
this prevalence has led to in-
creased
fear
ofhate
crimes
among
these
groups.
Law Enforcement Responses
The
Federal Bureau
of
Investigation's
(FBI)
Uniform
Crime
Reports
(UCR)
data categorize hate
crimes
reported
on
the
basis
of
racial
bias,
disability bias,
sexual-orientation
bias,
religious
bias
and
on
the
basis
of
ethnicity or national
origin
(U.S.
Department ofJustice,
1999).
According
to
Roberts
(1995),
only
an
estimated
10
to
30
percent
of
all
hate
crimes
are
reported
to
law
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