Hate Groups in Texas

Name

Institution

Hate groups are gangs that attack, malign or intimidate people from a particular class mainly for their beliefs and invariable characteristics. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are over 1007 hate groups in the United States, with California and Texas being the worst hit in number. These groups are actively involved in rallies, crime, speeches, marches, meetings, literature publishing or leafleting. The main groups include Racist skinheads, Neo-Nazi, Christian Identity, Ku Klux Klan (KKK), Black Separatist, and Neo-Confederate. The paper will compare and contrast two of these groups: KKK and Black separatist (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2013).

The most infamous and violent group is the KKK with between 5,000 and 8,000 members, and it is the oldest among the American hate groups. It mainly targets African Americans, immigrants, homosexuals, Jews and Catholics (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2013). Conversely, the black separatists are against interracial marriages and integration and fight for separate black nation. They strongly disintegrate themselves from the white and Semitic communities and are against Jews. The main goal of the KKK group is to challenge white supremacy while that of Black Separatist is to fight for a distinct black country in the United States.

The KKK group mainly sends out its messages through violent attacks, rapes, lynching, and tar-and-feathering. The Black Separatist, by contrast, conveys its messages through racially based hatred in a bid to expose all forms of racism in America. The two groups mainly recruit their members through writing letters and sending messages to targeted people. KKK recruits vigilantes to oppose the civil rights movements, and Black Separatist recruits its members by promoting anti-religious and anti-racial hate speeches as it seeks racial separatism in America. Hate groups have chapters in prisons across the United States including Texas. The prison gangs are violent and race-based, and members join them to seek benefits such as drugs, money, crime ideology, and protection, but the primary goal is protection (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2013).

Reference

Southern Poverty Law Center. (2013). Active U.S. hate groups. Retrieved on 12 Oct. 2013 from http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/hate-map