Hellyer Joshua, Gereke Johanna
Mannheim Centre for European Social Research, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany.
Front Psychol. 2024 Jun 27;15:1384470. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1384470. eCollection 2024.
Recent years have witnessed an increase in highly publicized attacks targeting members of ethnoracial and religious minority groups. To date, existing research has primarily focused on the tendency for such "trigger events" to generate violent aftershocks. We argue that beyond such ripple effects, highly salient trigger events significantly increase hate-crime related stress among racial and ethnic minorities. Additionally, we explore whether these effects are limited to the group most clearly targeted, or if they "spill over" to other minoritized communities.
To study reactions to hate crimes, we draw upon national survey data ( = 1,122) in combination with a natural experiment involving the Unite the Right rally and vehicle attack in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. We employ an "unexpected event during survey" design to estimate the causal effect of the Charlottesville rally on stress about hate crimes.
We first show that there was an increase in anti-Black hate crimes in the 2 weeks following the Charlottesville incident. We also find a corresponding increase in stress due to the perception of personal vulnerability to hate crimes among African-Americans. However, we do not observe a significant increase in levels of stress following the trigger event among Hispanics and Asian Americans.
Our results suggest that highly publicized instances of intergroup violence can have significant impacts on stress about hate crime victimization within the target group. However, we find that this effect is short-lived, and that both violent aftershocks and the general climate of fear spurred by hate crimes may be racially bounded.
近年来，针对少数族裔和宗教群体成员的广受关注的袭击事件有所增加。迄今为止，现有研究主要集中在这类“触发事件”引发暴力余波的倾向。我们认为，除了这种连锁反应之外，高度突出的触发事件会显著增加种族和少数族裔群体中与仇恨犯罪相关的压力。此外，我们还探讨了这些影响是否仅限于最明确的目标群体，或者是否会“蔓延”到其他少数群体社区。
为了研究对仇恨犯罪的反应，我们利用全国调查数据（ = 1122），并结合一项自然实验，该实验涉及2017年8月在弗吉尼亚州夏洛茨维尔举行的“团结右翼”集会和车辆袭击事件。我们采用“调查期间的意外事件”设计来估计夏洛茨维尔集会对仇恨犯罪压力的因果效应。
我们首先表明，夏洛茨维尔事件后的两周内反黑人仇恨犯罪有所增加。我们还发现，由于非裔美国人认为自己容易受到仇恨犯罪的侵害，压力相应增加。然而，我们没有观察到西班牙裔和亚裔美国人在触发事件后压力水平有显著增加。
我们的结果表明，广受关注的群体间暴力事件可能会对目标群体中与仇恨犯罪受害相关的压力产生重大影响。然而，我们发现这种影响是短暂的，仇恨犯罪引发的暴力余波和普遍的恐惧氛围可能都存在种族界限。
