Session 7: Race, Age and Disability, 1

3rd Global Conference

Thursday 3rd November – Saturday 5th November 2011
Prague, Czech Republic

Hate Speech Victimization among Rutgers School of Criminal Justice Students
Sevgi Coban
Department of Sociology, Hacettepe University, Turkey

Race, nationality, religion, gender and sexual orientation are the most frequent but not only targets of hate. There are many other categories such as nationality, disability, gender, ancestry, political affiliation, age, marital status, union membership, economic or social status (Gerstenfeld 2004: 98).

Modern controversies bring about new forms of discrimination, Gerstenfeld (2004) argues. There is a recent decline on bias and prejudice, some scholars insist on what is happening is that “the form of prejudice is changing and that the new type, which they call modern, symbolic, or aversive racism is more subtle” (Gerstenfeld, 2004: 94).

Rosenberg (2003) claims, “Given the trend toward globalization and the instant transnational reach of the internet (…) a purely contextual approach would seem insufficient if not downright inadequate” (Rosenfeld, 2003: 1524).

On campuses, cultural diversity set the stage for cultural encounters. In this study, following Gerstenfeld’s perspective, victimization of various forms of hate from violence and intimidation to new forms such as online and implicit forms among students of Rutgers School of Criminal Justice. Rutgers University’s Newark Campus is the most diverse national university in the United States in 2008 (Morse, 2008).

A survey for various kinds of hate speech was conducted among 100 Criminal Justice students. Twenty nine students reported victimization because of their race (14 students), nationality (5), religion (4), gender (3), sexual orientation (1) and other reasons (2). Seventeen of the incidents were verbal/online/implicit while others were against victims or property.

Download Draft Conference Paper (pdf)

Bullying the Roma Minority by Radical Racist Groups
Zsuzsanna Vidra
Centre for Policy Studies, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary

In my paper I will address the issue of bullying vulnerable ethnic groups and the role of the state and that of other social actors in such matters.

I will use the example of a recent case when paramilitary radical right wing racist groups threatening the Roma minority in a village in Hungary for weeks where the state was reluctant to interfere and defend its citizens whose lives were in danger. These groups using salient racist symbols marched into the village claiming that the there had been harsh conflicts between the Roma and the non-Roma population and that the state was impotent to put an end to the unbearable situation. In response some civil activists spoke up by starting a media campaign to call the attention of the government and the international public to the situation.

The case was not unprecedented. In the last couple of years, Hungary has seen the rise of extreme right wing radicalism. The radical racist discourses have, to some extent, “infected” the mainstream discourses. Regardless of political affiliation, cultural determinism has been widely accepted and shared by moderate politicians, journalists and other opinion leaders.

In my presentation I will analyse media coverage of the event (articles published in print as well as on-line media, ranging from the extreme right to the civil right’s defendants side) using discourse analysis. The main discursive positions will be revealed in the analysis.

Based on this case study I will make some conclusions as to what factors lead to bullying of ethnic groups and what mechanisms, internal and/or external, make states act or refrain from acting? What can other social actors do or achieve in these kinds of situations? What are the legitimating discourses used by the different actors and how these discourses influence social action? To this latter question we will only give a hypothetical answer since the link between discourse and action is an intricate thing that is difficult to grasp either methodologically or theoretically. However, revealing discursive positions and juxtaposing them with “concrete actions” (of all actors: government, radical right groups, civil activists, etc.) will give us some ideas about how discourse might influence action and vice versa. It might be of great importance in order to understand cases when bullying takes place: how verbalism might lead to action (either in a positive or a negative way).