getting many children to read. In addition, many
words coined or used by Rowling, called “potter-
isms,” have entered the English language. Examples
are “muggles” and “dementors.”
Some conservative Christian groups protested
against the books on the grounds that they glorify
sorcery and the occult and promote the practice of
witchcraft, which is forbidden by the Bible. As a re-
sult, the Harry Potter books were consistently the
most censored children’s books in the United States.
Other Christians defended the books as harmless or
as having the potential for teaching Christian les-
sons to children.
The other books in the series areHarr y Potter and
the Order of the Phoenix(2003),Harr y Potter and the
Half-Blood Prince(2005), andHarr y Potter and the
Deathly Hallows(2007).
Further Reading
Heilman, Elizabeth E., ed. Critical Perspectives on
Harr y Potter. New York: Falmer Press, 2002.
Neal, Connie.What’s a Christian to Do with Harr y Pot-
ter?Colorado Springs, Colo.: Waterbrook Press,
2001.
Nel, Philip.J. K. Rowling’s Harr y Potter Novels: A
Reader’s Guide.New York: Continuum, 2001.
Thomas R. Feller
See also Children’s literature; Culture wars; Liter-
ature in Canada; Literature in the United States;
Publishing.
Hate crimes
Definition Crimes targeting victims because of
prejudice based on race, religion, ethnicity,
gender, disability, or sexual orientation
Responding to national outrage at the large number of vio-
lent acts motivated by extreme prejudice, both the U.S. Con-
gress and the state legislatures enacted laws designed specif-
ically to punish such acts. Some jurists argued that these
laws were inconsistent with the freedom of expression guar-
anteed by the First Amendment, but the Supreme Court re-
jected this argument in an important ruling of 1993.
Hate crimes (also called bias-motivated crimes) dif-
fer from conventional crimes in that they are not
simply motivated by the desire to harm another per-
son or acquire property but are directed at a person
because of his or her membership in a particular so-
cial group, often with the intention of threatening
or subordinating members of that group. Before
1990, twenty states either criminalized or provided
enhanced punishment for illegal acts motivated by
prejudice, and twenty more states enacted such leg-
islation by 1999. Defenders of the legislation argued
that heightened punishment was appropriate be-
cause hate crimes increase social conflict and
threaten entire groups of people.
Congress enacted four major hate crime statutes
during the decade. The Hate Crime Statistics Act
(HCSA) of 1990 requires the Federal Bureau of In-
vestigation (FBI) to acquire and publish data on the
crimes motivated by “manifest prejudice.” The Hate
Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act (HCSEA) of
1994 provided additional penalties for an offender
committing a federal crime while motivated by prej-
udice against the victim’s social category. The
Church Arsons Prevention Act of 1996 provided for
enhanced criminal prosecution for attacks against
houses of worship. The Violence Against Women
Act of 1994, which provided federal remedies for
most gender-based crimes, was ruled unconstitu-
tional on principles of federalism in 2000.Constitutionality of Hate Crime Laws The U.S. Su-
preme Court upheld the constitutionality of hate
crime legislation in the case ofWisconsin v. Mitchell
(1993). Todd Mitchell and his codefendants were
African Americans who had been sentenced to en-
hanced punishments under the state’s hate crime
statute. The state’s high court held that the statute
was unconstitutional because it punished offenders
on the basis of their ideas, thereby having a chilling
effect on freedom of expression. The U.S. Supreme
Court, however, unanimously disagreed and found
the law to be constitutional. Chief Justice William H.
Rehnquist wrote that the law simply punished overt
conduct and that motive played the same role as in
antidiscrimination laws. Only those persons contem-
plating criminal acts, moreover, would have to worry
about whether their speech might be used as evi-
dence under the statute.
The Supreme Court, however, has consistently
held that the First Amendment prohibits criminal
prosecutions for hate speech that is simply deemed
to be offensive or insulting. The case ofR. A. V. v. City
of St. Paul(1992) dealt with a city ordinance that was
used to prosecute teenagers for burning a cross on406 Hate crimes The Nineties in America