Impact of Hate Crimes Speech

Impact of Hate Crimes

Tombstones are knocked over and broken in cemeteries in Toronto and Kitchener. A Mosque in Pickering is the target of an arson attack. A Hebrew school in Montreal is firebombed, causing extensive damage to the library. Campaign signs belonging to UJA Federation of Greater Toronto are defaced – with the words “Jew Nazi” written across the faces of old men and young children. The windows of a synagogue are smashed. A Sikh caretaker is murdered for no reason other than his faith. A gay man is beaten because he is gay.

All of these acts are hate crimes. As such they are roundly condemned by the overwhelming majority of citizens. But why?

There are a number of reasons. Hate crimes offend our sense of moral fair play. The notion that an individual can be singled out for violent or differential treatment because of religion or skin colour or sexual orientation is repulsive to us. We instinctively rebel against such behaviours, recognizing them to be remnants of an unevolved past.

We also recognize, I think, that hate crimes have a corrosive effect on the strands that hold together our society. A society that permits the victimization of a minority group by the majority ultimately condemns itself to a slow inward collapse as its very soul disintegrates.

But all of this is at a very high level. What is the impact of hate crimes on those who are victimized by them?

To answer that question it is first necessary to identify who are the victims. As my point of departure I ask you to consider an incident that took place in Toronto in March 2004. Sometime during the evening of March 14, 2004 13 homes in a quiet neighbourhood were made the target of vandalism. Automobiles and homes were damaged. In at least two cases swastikas were drawn. In one of these latter cases, the home of Ichiel Leib and his mother, Maria, was vandalized with a swastika and the words, “Jewz Suk”. Mrs. Leib is a Holocaust survivor. In this particular case there were three specific sets of victims: The Leib family; Holocaust survivors; the Jewish community.

To the Leib family the incident was a nightmare. They had lived a pleasant life in their home in Thornhill, in a community that has a significant Jewish population. All of that was now turned upside down. Were they safe? Who could have done such a thing? What did this incident say about the nature of safety and security in Canada?

For Holocaust survivors (and Toronto has one of the largest populations of survivors in the world), the effect of the swastika was electric. It re-opened painful memories of the past and prompted some within that community to ask if “it was starting all over again”. They saw in this incident, and others like it, a foreboding shadow of the rise of intolerance and the collapse of individual human rights.

For the larger community, the incident was seen, variously, as confirmation that anti-Semitism was alive and well in Canada or as “one damn thing after another” Both responses pose challenges to us. In the first case, the sentiment that underlies the statement is that hate is an intractable human emotion and that we will never be rid of it – and that we are forever doomed to be victims of it. The second case is more troubling. In a month where homes were vandalized, gravestones were overturned, synagogues and schools were vandalized and signs belonging to the community were marred with swastikas and “SS” lightning bolts, there was a response from the community that was almost fatalistic in its content. It was as if a portion of the community shrugged its shoulders and said, in effect, “so what else is new?”

I suggest that each of these responses tells us something important about the way that hate crimes affect their victims – and why each of us should be concerned by those responses.
Hate crimes teach their victims that the world is not a safe place, that there is danger lurking and brings home the unfortunate truth that “bad things happen to good people”. The trauma experienced can have long lasting effects. This is especially true in the case of children who are directly or indirectly targeted by the attacks. This comes through very clearly when one listens to interviews of students who attended the United Talmud Torah School in Montreal, which was firebombed in April 2004. More than one student commented on how hard it was to see the destruction of a place where they had worked and had fun for years. This is a key element in tallying the repercussion of hates crimes: the loss of a sense of safety – of belonging.

Then there are those who observe the incidents of hate crime through the prism of history. They recall that the road that lead to the most horrific excesses of the Holocaust began with evil words and then escalated to evil deeds. In such cases, the conclusion can be drawn that our society is too fragile to ensure the rights of all of its citizens. The result is a lessening of confidence in the systems of society that ought to function for the benefit of all.

Then there those whose only association with a particular incident is their membership in the targeted community. What impact does this have on them? In response to a recent act of vandalism that occurred in the City of Vaughan (a suburb of Toronto), CJC’s National Director of Community Relations observed that “It’s like a constant drip, drip drip. It’s corrosive to our community. No community should have to put up with this kind of garbage”. It is this image of a slow acid burn that draws my attention. That these incidents occur on a regular basis; each of them cuts, but no cut is so deep as to be fatal. Despite that, the accumulation is debilitating and wears away at the confidence that all citizens should have in their safety and their place within a civil society.