A Crime By Any Other Name: The Semantics of Hate

Abstract

I have become increasingly dissatisfied with the continued reliance on the term “hate crime,” due in large measure to the often willful scholarly and public misunderstanding and misuse of the phrase, wherein references are made to such processes as “the criminalization of hatred” (Dority 1994). In response to such tendencies, like Gail Mason (2001, 253) in her recent Law and Critique article, “I wish to raise some questions about hate as a heuristic device.”