Document Type

Honors Paper

Advisor

Ana Campos-Holland

Publication Date

2015

Abstract

Hate crimes are informal social control mechanisms utilized in stratified societies to police relative identity boundaries (Perry, 2009). No research has, however, located racially-motivated hate crimes as a form of racialized social control. Considering the long history of racial violence and racialized social control in the United States, the war on drugs, the post-9/11 socio-political context, immigration reforms, and increased attention to racialized police violence, it becomes important to explore the spectrum of racialized social control. In order to do so, this study introduces racially-motivated hate crimes as an informal mechanism of racialized social control. As such, this study engages an explorative and comparative analysis of reported racially-motivated hate crime rates, correctional supervision rates, and immigration enforcement rates in the United Stated of America. The findings capture the continued anti-Black racism, the complicated racialization and criminalization of Latinos, and a drastic intensification in the social control of Muslims, ‘Muslim-looking’ Arabs, and Middle Easterners post 9/11. The mirroring of hate crime trends against patterns of correctional supervision and immigration enforcement illustrates the broad spectrum of racialized social control. Specifically, racially-motivated hate crimes are an informal mechanism of racialized social control that supplements formal and semi-formal control mechanisms.

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The views expressed in this paper are solely those of the author.