The Psychology of Hate Crimes talks about how many Offenders have no other motive than that they don’t like people who are, and look, different from them. This extreme form of prejudice is created from stereotypes that society has labeled people as. The only way that stereotyping would stop is if we can change the mindset of people. And we can do that by changing the laws. 

You may ask, How do we change the mindset of people? An article from Psychology Today has some answers. It reads, “In 1975, the Swedish government enacted a law requiring front-seat passengers in private cars to wear a seat belt. Before this law, roughly 30% of people were wearing seat belts. A few months after the law went into effect, 85% of people wore seat belts.” (Luttrell) This is not all, they also found that after the law was enacted, people thought seat belts were more comfortable, less inconvenient, and more effective at preventing injuries, compared to responses in the 1971 survey.” (Lutrell) So the laws didn't just change the behavior or the people, it also changed their mindset. If we strengthened hate crime laws, we could change people's opinions and change the prejudice that some people have. 

This ProCon article speaks about how some people are against stronger hate crimes laws because they argue that these laws would further separate minorities. But I disagree. If different minority groups are targeted more than others, we need to give them more laws because they are in more need. For example, if Black Americans are being targeted 10x more than white Americans, we shouldn't give them the same amount of hate crime laws. Because then it would help out a group that didn't need help in the first place. Fair isn't always equal. 

I recently created a survey that was taken by 13 CMS students. The question was, “Have you ever heard of a hate crime against someone with whom you share a religion, race, ethnic background, or sexual orientation with?” The result was that almost 70% of the students said yes. This is not right nor fair.  Hate crimes are more common than people think, and children are affected as well as adults. When a person hears of a hate crime committed against someone like them, it hurts their self-esteem to know that people can hate you for what you look like, and what you believe in. Being Jewish, I know that there is a lot of antisemitism in the world.  And honestly, it makes me scared and upset. And to know that almost 70% of students who took my survey in the class feel the same way is very upsetting. 

Additionally, I interviewed my mom to see her opinion on hate crime laws. While asking the question… “Do you think that stronger hate crime laws would lessen the number of hate crimes and why?” She said, “Definitely...very often hate crimes aren't labeled and prosecuted as hate crimes...For example, the recent shooting in Atlanta is still not being called a hate crime even though six of the eight victims were of Asian American descent” From her response I can see that my mom is upset about the recent shooting in Atlanta not being called a hate crime when it appears to be targeted at a certain race. This could change if we had more clear laws defining what a hate crime is. 

Hate crimes can happen to too many people, and they need to be better prevented and stopped. Stronger laws are needed to be in place and enforced for this to happen. Anyone can fall victim to a hate crime. That’s why this topic is so important and should be talked about more. I know that not everyone can change laws and fix a huge problem like this, but something that everyone can do is try and not create stereotypes. Because in the end, this is all caused by stereotypes.