Jacob Richman
Pronouns: he/him
Research Mentor(s): Kelly Wheeler
Co-Presenter:
Research Mentor School/College/Department: English / LSA
Presentation Date: April 20
Presentation Type: Poster
Session: Session 5 – 3:40pm – 4:30 pm
Room: League Ballroom
Authors: Kelly Wheeler, Jacob Richman
Presenter: 45
Abstract
In recent years, the United States has seen a significant uptick in hate crimes. In particular, the Swastika has been used as a representation of an ideology of hate, and has been attached to hatred of various groups of minorities, beyond just the Jewish community. In observing what I am defining as hate crimes as well as their community (or sometimes lack of) response, it is fair to wonder how the introduction of a swastika to a community could warrant such different responses, and conversely, why certain responses were consistently employed. This prompted the following research questions: How do communities respond when the swastika appears in communal spaces? And how might studying those responses give scholars and communities a better understanding about how hate rhetoric functions in practice in order to mitigate its harm and possibly prevent future harm? Silence, Speech, and Support documents 1,339 hate crime incidents from January 1, 2016 to January 20, 2021, gathered from various news sources. From this data, we created visualizations in Tableau to quantify broad trends of the crimes and how communities responded to them. In particular, we noticed three broad categories of response: silence, speech, and support, with each category containing various subcategories of response. These findings were supplemented by creating general linear models and performing statistical tests of significance to identify which explanatory variables are most predictive of each of the community responses. Our findings highlight the differences of responses in communities across the country, categorize the various responses into broad genres, and identify the most significant predictors of these responses to assist in future decision making and responses. While no single action will alter the recent upward trend of hate crimes, a better understanding of the issue and broad publicization of the facts will hopefully push communities in the right direction.
Arts and Humanities, Interdisciplinary
