Constructing Hate Crimes: Does Respondent's Racial/Ethnic Identity Matter?

Abstract

This study explores whether and how respondents' racial/ethnic identity affects racial/ethnic hate crime perception, considering the races/ethnicities of the offender and the victim. The data of this study comes from a factorial survey experiment with random vignette assignments among U.S. adults from MTurk (n = 2,021). A set of logistic regression models with robust standard errors was estimated to test the two-way and three-way moderation effects of the races/ethnicities of the offender, victim, and respondent. Results reveal how racial/ethnic groups recognize hate crimes, considering not only the identities of the offenders and victims but also the respondents' own backgrounds. Subgroup analyses further revealed different patterns of racial/ethnic hate crime recognition among minority respondents and non-Hispanic white respondents. Integrating a power-relation perspective and social identity theory, this study concludes that there are racial/ethnic variances in the recognition of racial/ethnic hate crimes, which not only concern the race/ethnicity of the offender and victim but are also related to respondents' identity. Social identity theory partially explains the observations through group image management and ingroup favoritism. Additionally, the perception of racial/ethnic hate crimes is primarily driven by the Majority-Minority pattern, regardless of the group membership. This study calls for further efforts not only in researching the role of race/ethnicity in relation to racial/ethnic hate crime recognition but also in advancing the practice of hate crime reporting and data collection by an enhanced understanding of group identity among individuals as well as law enforcement.