Sumblog 9

Climate of Fear, reading 38 in our text highlights the problems of discrimination and hate crimes pressed upon undocumented immigrants living in the northeast United States. It summarizes how “social institutions, such as the criminal justice system and the government often contribute to the creation of a climate of hate directed at immigrants.” (p.525). Suffolk county of New York state is home to six of the top 100 wealthiest zip codes in the entire nation, and though there are many affluent families there are also those living much more modestly. The stratification systems in place to maintain a degree of segregation are clearly seen in the legislation. “County Executive Levy in June 2006 mocked activists demonstrating against hate crime violence and the mass eviction of zoning laws” (p.530) was quoted after several incidents of Hispanic minorities who were targeted on while walking on the streets and beaten severely simply for their ethnicity. All of the examples in the reading mention that “in most cases the attackers are white males in their teens or 20’s” (p.529) often members of the high school athletic teams and it is important to note that these crimes are always committed in groups. Whether it’s as direct as jumping a person on the street or implementing stricter policies to target undocumented immigrants; the groupthink phenomenon fuels the discrimination. My own personal experience parallels the examples in the text, how all of the incidents are made up of a group of people bullying one other person and never one person by themselves bullying another. As the book mentions how people reported being chased on foot into the woods by vehicles  and shot by bb guns and pepper spray in drive-bys I thought back to a time a few years ago where I was out on my motorcycle riding home when a group of high school aged kids in a truck were blatantly swerving in and out of my lane getting closer each time to the point where I was forced off the road, needless to say it was infuriating. I couldn’t imagine someone getting as much enjoyment by themselves as they would terrorizing others in a group, though I’m sure it’s happened before. So in summary regardless of the scale, social institutions have a way of blinding people’s inherent morality and permitting them the confidence and justification to act out uncharacteristically.

This media piece is a song such as a million others that talk about the large scale discrimination of government institutions.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0mhP4zfa3qc