A hate crime is when one or more than one person goes against one person or a group, most times including violence, that is motivated by prejudice on race, religion, sexual orientation, or other grounds.
On November 7 (2019) two Mississippi men were sentenced for cross-burning in predominantly african american residential areas.
Graham Williamson and Louie Revette committed this crime because of racial motives. Louis Revette convinces Graham Williamson to do it. It was not the first time that they did things like that. Two years ago, both men built a cross to set up a lit on fire near an African-American resident in the Keys Hill area of Seminary (Mississippi). One of the reasons why they did that was because they knew that burning crosses were used before to threaten, frighten and intimidate African Americans so they used it because they were trying to make all the community members in the neighborhood be afraid.
They use this symbol to represent the Ku Klux Klan also called KKK, this Klan is an American white supremacist hate group, that first of all is against all African Americans. One of the principal symbols that they use is putting on fire a cross made of wood. Being a member of this Klan is secret, only each other can know who is in that Klan.
A federal judge sentenced Graham Williamson when he was 38 years old and 3 years in prison, he pleaded guilty. Instead, Revette was sentenced to serve 11 years in prison.
In my opinion, hate crime is one of the worst crimes that could happen because there are a lot of crimes that are bad but for example, not always, but stealing sometimes people do that because they need the money, but for me hurt somebody because of their skin, their beliefs or orientation sexual is a really serious crime. Now, we have the right to freedom and everybody can express their opinion, so everybody should respect this right and instead of taking care of other people's lives, they should think about why do they need to commit this crime. This is one example of hate crime, unfortunately, in our society we still have people doing this kind of crime.
I think that now they should teach in all the schools, high schools, and universities how to respect each other, for example, they would make think all their students will think over about committing this crime and what they will do if they were born with another color in their skin, they will ask themselves if they would like other people to go against them only because of that.
I believe that now there are fewer people that commit these kinds of crimes but is not only this crime, sometimes there are some comments that people do that hurts the feeling of a lot of the people that in the end they are part of our society and they have the same rights and freedom as any other person
I completely agree with the sentence that the judge put both men, they will have all this time in prison to think about what they did and see that it was wrong and they have this time to get better and improve as a person.
For me, they should talk with the people that they were trying to scare them and apologize, but they do not have to do it because a sentence says that they have to do it, if not because they feel sorry for what they need and they will never do it again.