Hate crimes increase a sign of racial tension
A Lombard woman awakens to find a racial slur inscribed in bold red paint on the side of her home.
Workers discover a hanging noose and graffiti containing the N-word inside a Home Depot under construction in South Elgin.
Police arrest a high school junior in Gurnee after he makes racially charged comments about blacks and brings a noose to school.
The suburban crimes are the latest in a series of racial incidents across the country in the aftermath of the uproar over the "Jena Six."
On Sept. 20, more than 20,000 people rallied in Jena, La., in support of the six black teens arrested on charges they beat a white student after several racial events unfolded that included white students hanging nooses near school.
Locally, police are investigating whether the copycat reports are hate crimes -- motivated by prejudice based on race, religion, sex or ethnicity. Experts say it's common to see such retaliatory crimes after an incident receives national notoriety.
For example, after the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks, the FBI reported that anti-Muslim hate crimes skyrocketed from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001. The 1992 Los Angeles riots were sparked after three police officers were acquitted of beating taxi driver Rodney King despite a videotape that many described as showing a beating.
What is surprising, one expert noted, is widespread reaction in America. He said one only has to read the debate on mainstream news sites and other Internet blogs to see the country's continued tensions over race.
"There's an apparent deep-running anger in mainstream white America that this incident has uncovered," said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.
"They see it more as political correctness gone berserk than a civil-rights movement.
"The country is not doing well racially. I'm not suggesting it's 1954, but there is a definite trend in which we are moving in the other direction again."
Most of the dozen or more occurrences reported across the country in the past two months involved a noose left at a school, workplace or home. For example, a noose was found Tuesday on the office door of a black professor at Columbia University in New York.
In Illinois, the number of hate crimes reported to police dropped nearly in half since the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks. The Illinois State Police chronicled 360 in 2001, compared to 191 last year. The FBI is releasing its latest report chronicling national hate-crime statistics next month.
But Potok said his group noted a 40 percent growth, from 602 in 2000 to 844 last year, in organized hate groups in the past five to six years. He attributes it largely to the immigration debate.
Experts say copycat offenses are most often committed by males, ages 14 to 22, who rarely -- less than 5 percent of the time -- are members of a hate group but who do harbor some animosity that is racially driven. To them, the national event acts similar to a green light.
"Racism runs very deeply in this country and people are looking for what they consider to be a safe opportunity to express that," said Leonard Cavise, a DePaul University College of Law professor. "Other people do it because they think it's a nice prank. We see this a lot with kids. They understand society still has a high tolerance for racism."