Hate crime is defined as "the violence of intolerance and bigotry, intended to hurt and intimidate someone because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability. These crimes have been plaguing our country for centuries, tearing at the very foundation of our country and destroying our neighborhoods and communities. A total of 11,690 law enforcement agencies in all 50 states and the District of Columbia reported 8,063 bias-motivated criminal incidents 8,055 single bias and 8 multiple bias. Since an individual's biases are incidental circumstances to a particular crime, collecting statistics and information on hate crimes is difficult. Over the past 10 years, Congress has passed some pieces of legislation to help shape the future of hate crime initiatives and preventative measures. However, it is unfortunate that Congress has not done enough to keep them from occurring in the every day life of our society. Congress continues to spend its budget money on other issues, many are well spent, but it still overlooks crime legislation way too often.
             Fear, anger and frustration. These are three themes that run throughout all hate groups. Most hate groups form during times of economic hardship or social change. Certain groups of people begin to blame another group for the reason of a major social or economical change. After the Civil War, the South suffered from both economic hardship and drastic social change. For centuries, the south had relied on slaves to harvest crops at plantations. When the slaves were freed, the plantations weren't being worked on anymore, causing the owners to loose a lot of money. When this happened, six former Confederate soldiers started a hate group called the Ku Klux Klan. During the post-Civil War era, the Klan was very popular among southern whites. Their ignorance was feeding the fire that blacks were the root of their problem, when in reality the white's...