Precious Review, Part 1

I had my arm twisted into going to see the movie Precious with a group of friends. As it got the stamp of endorsement from both Oprah and Tyler Perry, I pretty much knew to expect to have my senses mercilessly pummeled with propaganda about how poor, unfortunate and relentlessly abusive the mere act of living is for black women. But I must say, even with that in mind I was still unprepared for what I actually saw in the theater that day.
Not since Birth of a Nation OR Amos and Andy have I seen a movie portray blacks in such a positive light. It was quite possibly the most uplifting movie since Saw I through VI or Hostel. Not since the rough sex humiliation genre was created in pornography has a movie worked so hard to empower women and portray them respectfully. In all seriousness, if this movie was directed by a white person, based on a novel from a white person, and was being promoted as an authentic black experience by white media personalities instead of by Oprah and Tyler Perry, I guarantee you it would be picketed to death and considered a travesty. Yet because it gets the seal of approval from the top victomology tastemakers in Black America today, we have black people not only celebrating the most vile, disgusting minstrel show in decades but also encouraging nonblacks to view the movie in order to learn about the “authentic” black experience. In fact, I’ve encountered black people cry racism against white people who accuse the movie of exploitative and stereotypical and demeaning. That’s how twisted it’s become: we now have blacks not only celebrating insulting black stereotypes but angry at whites for not praising them as well.
The best way to describe this movie is “poverty porn.” I understand the desire to shine a light on unpleasant issues. It can also be arguably positive to be graphic and make the audience uncomfortable in order to avoid sugarcoating something unpleasant and to make the audience really care about something that shouldn’t be taken lightly. But Precious goes far beyond those first two goals and aims for pure shock value and emotional manipulation and twisted titillation. The scenes where the character Precious is being raped by her father shows a montage of shots that include pig’s feet frying (because she’s a fat, greasy piece of meat, get it?), then slow-mo closeups of Precious’ father applying handfuls of Vaseline to his sweat-drenched privates, cutting to Precious being mounted by said father and graphically humped, with shots of Precious’ mother watching from a doorway, then more closeups of bacon frying in fat (in case you missed the ham-fisted (pun intended) metaphor the first time around), then closeups on Precious’ morbidly obese body rocking back and forth from the humping…really now? As the details and depictions of abuse keep getting piled on higher and higher in increasing detail it becomes clear that director Lee Daniels is using the guise of a “message movie” to both giving himself license to be as fetishistic, lurid and morbid with the subject of abuse as he wants to be and giving the audience license to be titillated and scandalized to their heart’s content because everyone knows it’s a “message” movie, which somehow makes the voyeurism noble rather than twisted and indulgent.
The plot, if you don’t know, is about a morbidly obese, dark-skinned Harlem 16 year old illiterate ghetto girl named Precious who lives with her verbally and physically abusive mother, and has been repeatedly raped since the age of 3 by her father, resulting in two pregnancies, one of which resulted in a Down’s Syndrome child named “Mongo” (short for mongoloid). The mother, when not verbally and physically abusing her at length, sometimes takes the time out to sexually abuse Precious as well by forcing her to perform oral sex on her while the mother masturbates. The ghetto black boys in the street taunt her when she walks by and shove her to the ground for kicks. Her mom blames her for the fact that she was raped by her father, is shown cursing out the Down’s syndrome baby Precious has by her father and later trying to injure the second baby Precious has by her father by dropping it and later trying to drop a giant TV on top of Precious and the infant from a great height (the TV narrowly misses). Just as Precious escapes her toxic home environment and moves into a halfway house and starts feeling like she can get a better life, she discovers her father just died from AIDS and she is HIV-positive. But wait! The move ends on an inspirational note. What’s so inspirational after all of that you may ask? Well, Precious gets to beat up her mom in one scene, gets to tell her off and make her feel crappy for once in a later scene before walking out of her life for good, and gets custody of both her kids to boot. Sure she has no job, a death sentence, an 8th grade reading level, no family support system and two kids she has no means to support and who have no one in sight to take care of them when Precious dies, but don’t be fooled it’s an inspirational ending because she gets a small revenge on that mean old mom I guess. Yes, her life goes from outrageously, improbably, cartoonishly shitty to just really, really shitty, which somehow now passes for inspirational. The only thing I’d be inspired to do if I was remotely in Precious’ shoes after watching this movie is commit suicide personally, but hey, I’m not an Oprah fan or a NY Times movie critic so what do I know? As a nonliberal I’m obviously morally depraved or emotionally stunted not to see the beauty of this movie.
The big problem with this movie is that it doesn’t care in the least about poor blacks. It just totally exploits them as sideshow freaks to gawk and laugh at, a vehicle to satisfy the various personal agendas of the creators and audience members while pretending to be an exercise in nobility and compassion. I watched it in a predominately black theatre, and many of the scenes the audience was laughing or cheering at were disturbingly inappropriate, and much of that seemed deliberate based on how over-the-top the subject matter was presented.
Let’s look at the people involved in this movie, either as creators or promoters. Lee Daniels, the director, is openly gay and has been very vocal while doing press about this movie to describe how he was abused growing up by his dad for being gay. Oprah has long been vocal about the incest and sexual abuse she received growing up. Tyler Perry has recently come out as a sexual abuse victim and has gone on the record with his childhood horror stories to the press. Mo’Nique, one of the stars of the movie, has gone on the record as an incest and abuse survivor. Sapphire, the author of the book Push that the movie Precious is based on has said that she was an incest victim from the age of 3 years old. And with the exception of Mo’Nique, each of these participants is incredibly obsessed with stories of abuse, sexual depravity and dysfunction in their works.
Lee Daniels was the producer of Monster’s Ball, another piece of depression porn, race baiting and explicit sex scenes masquerading as social commentary and penetrating insight into the human condition. Next he produced the movie The Woodsman that was all about child molestation. Then his directorial debut Shadowboxing was filled with shock-value violence and sex, including an heavily-implied interracial incest angle between stepmom Helen Mirren and stepson Cuba Gooding, Jr. The author of the source material, Sapphire, seems to have a preoccupation with rape and abuse stories in her work. As bad as the movie was, her book is more intense, more graphic and more prurient, describing in detail how Precious performs oral sex on her mother, and ebonically correct passages like this:
He slam his hips into me HARD. I scream pain he come. He slap my thighs as cowboys do horses on TV. Shiver. Orgasm in me, his body shaking, grab me, call me Fat Mama, Big Hole! You LOVE it! Say you love it! I wanna say I DON?T. I wanna say I?m a chile. [...] Then my body take me over again, I come again. My body not mine, I hate it coming.
Afterward I go bafroom. I smear shit on my face. Feel good. Don?t know why but it do. [To the credit of the movie's creators, they somehow found the restraint to leave out the shit smearing. Maybe they did it to avoid an X rating because I doubt it had to do with a desire to exercise good taste]
Tyler Perry’s works are also often filled with harrowing, detailed tales of abuse happening to characters over and over before things are allowed to end on a slightly more uplifting note.
And then there’s the reigning queen of the abuse-fetish, Oprah. Oprah has had a longstanding obsession with harrowing tales of dysfunction, abuse and incest, particularly involving black women (as well as pie-in-the-sky vague self-help cliches). We’ll pick up tomorrow in Pt 2 with an in-depth analysis of Oprah’s career and mindset, and I’ll explain the selfish, self-serving motivation that explains why Lee Daniels, Tyler Perry and Oprah enjoy and promote such stories of dysfunction porn.

(13 votes, average: 4.62 out of 5)
the real shame is that Sapphire seems to be a very good writer, at least from that small excerpt. it’s too bad that we live in an age when cultural and intellectual elites privilige this sort of decedant tripe as “authentic.”
a while back i read the NYTimes review for Pursuit of Happyness, and the reviewer basically dismissed it as a fairy tale. that prompted me to go looking at other reviews, in particular i found the review of Menace II Society to be quite instructive. i wrote about it here:
http://threethingsblog.blogspo.....-results=7
for the most part, the mainstream entertainment industry is only interested in disenfranchised populations as a way to tell their own morality tales. and it’s unfortunate that so many artists see fit to participate in that process.
There’s a couple of reasons why I imagine NY Times considers Pursuit of Happyness a fairytale, even though it was actually based on a living man’s autobiography, and considers Precious realistic even though its based on a work of fiction.
In Pursuit of Happyness the black man is the responsible parent and the black woman is a hot mess and a deadbeat. Strike one. Will Smith’s character is lifted out of poverty without the help of white liberals or liberal do-gooder agency employees like social workers. He is elevated by his own hard work, his hustle and the help of white capitalist businessmen (who probably vote Republican). Strike 2. And even worse, not only are racism, oppression and (conservative) white people never shown as contributing factors to his misery, the screenplay rarely if ever mentions race at all. It’s inconsequential to the story! No black victimology anywhere. Strike 3. Not only does the movie not pander to white liberals in showing improvement of a black person, it goes even further and gives the “wrong” type of white people a positive contributing role in the black person’s uplift.
Precious, however, hits all the right notes in pandering to liberal narcissism.
That’s a disturbing trend I’ve noticed. When I saw Black Snake Moan (another bit of exploitation theater, using poor whites instead of blacks) in the theaters two years ago, I remember some dickheads who laughed all the way through the scene where Christina Ricci’s character beats her mother up with a shovel, a scene that wasn’t supposed to be funny. During the showing of Watchmen, which was the only movie I’d ever seen that made me literally nauseous, at least a third of the audience was cheering and chuckling during the scene in which the Comedian tries to rape the Silk Spectre. I almost walked out of the theatre right then because I felt like I was going to vomit. God, these people are loathsome.
Ferdinand Bardamu´s last blog ..Women don’t get to define female beauty
[...] on November 18, 2009 by Ferdinand Bardamu If you haven’t already, you should check out this post by T. aka Ricky Raw, in which he skewers the recent “poverty porn” flick Precious. This [...]
Mr. T,
Another wonderful post. For all the reasons you cite, I must be dragged to a theater. I think I’ve gone twice in the last seven years. Many, if not most movies today are crimes against civilization. If that sounds like an old man wagging his finger, I don’t care.
Look forward to Part 2.
Too much depravity actually makes a film less effective at making its point. Alfred Hitchcock’s movies work so well because the violence and depravity are so unusual in the very normal world of his main characters that, when they do appear, they are truly shocking.
good review, T. i’m morbidly curious about this movie now, in the same way i am about seeing lars von trier’s the antichrist.
[...] the film “poverty porn,” as some have suggested? I think it uses Precious’ degraded home life as a kind of spectacle, to give audiences [...]
I came across your old blog back in the day and am glad I found you. Your writing is exquisite and you just broke it down like no other. I’ve always had a love dislike relationship with Oprah and many Blacks in entertainment for precisely the reasons you mentioned above. Toni Morrison’s writing is beautiful but the subject matter hurts my soul. There certainly seems to be an imbalance with how we are depicted and who is in charge of telling our stories.
It is such a shame that black seems to equal poor, depraved, ignorant, hopeless and helpless. I am happy that I did not see the movie. I only saw a preview and started crying. I don’t need to see crap that is tantamount to soul murder because I’ve had enough challenges in my life. And those of us who have been victimized by rape and childhood sexual abuse need love and support. I have found from personal experience that continuously dwelling in the misery of sexual abuse will disallow one from true healing.
The soul cannot forget such traumas, and healing is a process. It pains me deeply that these horrible experiences are not only graphically depicted but exploited for fucking profit.
This post has deeply touched me; your writing is so good I can taste it. Thank you.
For PUAs and MRAs – Understanding Why PUA and MRA are Hate Groups
The seven-stage hate model: The psychopathology of hate groups
FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin/March 1, 2003
By John R. Schafer, MA and Joe Navarro, MA
The Hate Model
The manifestations of hate are legion, but the hate process itself remains elusive. Limited research in this field precluded the development of a comprehensive hate model. Understanding hate groups is essential for the development and implementation of successful intervention strategies, which depend on an understanding of the hate process. The proposed hate model consists of seven stages, including how hate groups define themselves, how hate groups target their victims and taunt them with verbal insults and offensive gestures, and how hate groups attack their victims with or without weapons.1
Definition of Hate
Hate, a complex subject, divides into two general categories: rational and irrational. Unjust acts inspire rational hate. Hatred of a person based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or national origin constitutes irrational hate.
Both rational and irrational hate mask personal insecurities. Everyone experiences personal insecurities in varying degrees throughout their lives. The more insecure a person feels, the larger the hate mask. Most people concentrate on the important issues in life, such as earning a living, rearing a family, and achieving personal goals. These pursuits give meaning and value to life.2 Nonetheless, irrational hate bleeds through day-to-day activities in the form of racial barbs and ethnic humor. Not all insecure people are haters, but all haters are insecure people.
With respect to rational hate, haters do not focus as much on the wrong done to them or others, but, rather, on their own helplessness, guilt, or inability to effect change. The object of rational hate often is despised or pitied.3 In the same way, irrational hate elevates the hater above the hated.4 Many insecure people feel a sense of self-worth by relegating a person or group of people to a lower status.5
Skinhead Groups
During a 7-year FBI investigation of skinhead groups in Southern California between 1992 and 1999, specific patterns emerged. Skinhead groups typically consist of uneducated, young, white males between the ages of 13 and 24 who have no long-term prospects for success. Although many come from single-parent, dysfunctional families, some exceptions exist. For example, members of the Western Hammerskins in Hemet, California, had high school educations and came from two-parent, middle-class families. Further examination revealed that both parents made long, daily commutes to work in Los Angeles and left their teenage children unsupervised. The lack of parental supervision and guidance spawned personal insecurities similar to those found in skinheads who come from dysfunctional, single-parent environments.
Fortunately, most skinhead groups are not well organized and lack the leadership structure found in the majority of street gangs engaged in “for-profit” criminal activities. However, the Western Hammerskins group has a stronger leadership hierarchy than most skinhead groups, and it boasts a very active recruitment program. Potential members receive a recruitment package, which includes a swastika armband, a T-shirt with white supremacist slogans, white supremacist literature and band stickers, and other supremacist materials. Recruiters also pass out business cards embossed with the Western Hammerskins’ logo and the recruiter’s name and telephone number. The group’s higher educational level may explain the sophistication of its recruitment techniques.
Skinhead groups subdivide into two categories: criminally motivated and hate motivated. Criminally motivated skinhead groups spend most of their time engaged in for-profit criminal activities, such as drug sales and burglaries. Incidental to their criminal activity, they commit hate crimes. The San Fernando Valley Peckerwoods (SVP) in California was a criminally motivated skinhead group. SVP members primarily sold methamphetamines and committed residential burglaries. Periodically, SVP members attacked minorities with weapons and, on one occasion, placed packages resembling bombs near an apartment complex where African-Americans lived. Members intended for the fake bombs to frighten current residents to relocate and to discourage other African-American families from moving into the complex.
Conversely, hate-motivated skinhead groups dedicate the majority of their time to hate crimes.6 Incidental to hate crimes, these hard- core skinheads commit petty thefts or sell small amounts of narcotics to support daily needs, such as food, cigarettes, and alcohol and other drugs. The Nazi Low Riders (NLR) skinhead group located in Lancaster, California, exemplifies a hate-motivated skinhead group. At one time, NLR members spent their time prowling the streets of Lancaster looking for minorities to attack. The NLR matured to the point where their members routinely beat and stabbed minorities, and, in one instance, murdered an African-American.
Haters cannot stop hating without exposing their personal insecurities. For example, at the onset of the FBI investigation, FBI authorities told hard-core members of the NLR that they would arrest them if their hate violence continued; yet, the hate violence persisted. The FBI similarly warned the members of the SVP who, however, stopped or were more surreptitious concerning criminal activities, and their hate violence ceased. The reaction of the SVP members comported with general criminal deterrence literature. The reaction of the NLR members did not, however, because hate, not criminal acts, was their primary motive.
Interviews of both criminally motivated and hate-motivated skinheads may explain this phenomenon. Criminally motivated skinheads identified themselves as criminals first and haters second. They also expressed a degree of personal security in their status as criminals. The criminally motivated skinheads possess a certain sense of self-worth; hence, they have fewer insecurities. However, this was not the case with hate-motivated skinheads. The explanation by one 15-year-old NLR member typified the thought process of hate-motivated skinheads. He said, in effect, “I dropped out of school in the eighth grade, but I stopped learning midway through the sixth grade. I covered my body with hate tattoos. I couldn’t get a good job if I wanted to. No one would hire me. Once, I tried to get a job at a fast food restaurant, but the manager refused to hire me because the restaurant served multiracial customers. If I quit being a skinhead, I have nothing. I am nothing. I have no choice but to be a skinhead. I expect to die a young, violent death.”
Skinheads converge, get drunk, take drugs, and, at some point, spontaneously seek out hate targets to attack. They conduct little, if any, planning before committing hate crimes. One hate-motivated skinhead put it best when he stated, “We don’t look for trouble but somehow trouble always finds us, and we’re ready to deal with it when it comes.”
The Hate Model
Several academic authorities on hate crimes in America identified three types of bias crime offenders: the thrill seeker, the reactive offender, and the hard-core offender.8 They described the reactive offender as one “who grounds his attack on a perceived transgression, such as an insult, interracial dating, or a neighborhood integration.”9 The authors’ model incorporates the thrill seeker and the hard-core offender, but redefines the concept of the reactive offender. This phenomenon can be described as secondary justification; skinheads routinely use this technique to instigate attacks. For example, a group of skinheads encounter a mixed-race couple and shout racial slurs. If the couple reacts in a manner other than a submissive one, the skinheads perceive that behavior as an act of aggression. The skinheads later tell the police they merely defended themselves against aggressors. The skinheads, of course, leave out the fact that they acted as the instigators. Secondary justification is difficult to detect because skinheads can interpret a simple glance as aggressive behavior.
Secondary justification also exists on a larger scale. When a community reacts to a hate crime, skinheads perceive that reaction as aggressive, which reinforces the notion that skinheads must defend themselves against a common enemy. Secondary justification places the skinheads in a victim status and rationalizes continued violence. To further illustrate this principle, a skinhead, with a swastika tattooed on his cheek, walked into a jewelry store to buy a ring for his girlfriend. The skinhead became incensed when the Jewish clerk treated him poorly. The skinhead later commented that if Jews treated him with more respect he would not hate them so much. The skinhead clearly saw himself as a victim, although he openly displayed a provocative symbol of hate on his face.
Empirical observations show that hate groups go through seven stages in the hate process. Haters, if unimpeded, pass through these seven successive stages without skipping a stage. In the first four stages, haters vocalize their beliefs. In the last three stages, haters act on their beliefs. A transition period exists between vocalization and acting out. In this transition period, violence separates hard-core haters from rhetorical haters.
Stage 1: The Haters Gather
Irrational haters seldom hate alone.10 They feel compelled, almost driven, to entreat others to hate asthey do. Peer validation bolsters a sense of self-worth and, at the same time, prevents introspection, which reveals personal insecurities.11 Further, individuals otherwise ineffective become empowered when they join groups, which also provide anonymity and diminished accountability.
Stage 2: The Hate Group Defines Itself
Hate groups form identities through symbols, rituals, and mythologies, which enhance the members’ status and, at the same time, degrade the object of their hate. For example, skinhead groups may adopt the swastika, the iron cross, the Confederate flag, and other supremacist symbols. Group-specific symbols or clothing often differentiate hate groups. Group rituals, such as hand signals and secret greetings, further fortify members. Hate groups, especially skinhead groups, usually incorporate some form of self-sacrifice, which allows haters to willingly jeopardize their well-being for the greater good of the cause. Giving one’s life to a cause provides the ultimate sense of value and worth to life.12 Skinheads often see themselves as soldiers in a race war.
Stage 3: The Hate Group Disparages the Target
Hate is the glue that binds haters to one another and to a common cause.13 By verbally debasing the object of their hate, haters enhance their self-image, as well as their group status. In skinhead groups, racist song lyrics and hate literature provide an environment wherein hate flourishes. In fact, researchers have found that the life span of aggressive impulses increases with ideation.14 In other words, the more often a person thinks about aggression, the greater the chance for aggressive behavior to occur. Thus, after constant verbal denigration, haters progress to the next more acrimonious stage.
Stage 4: The Hate Group Taunts the Target
Hate, by its nature, changes incrementally. Time cools the fire of hate, thus forcing the hater to look inward. To avoid introspection, haters use ever-increasing degrees of rhetoric and violence to maintain high levels of agitation. Taunts and offensive gestures serve this purpose. In this stage, skinheads typically shout racial slurs from moving cars or from afar. Nazi salutes and other hand signals often accompany racial epithets. Racist graffiti also begins to appear in areas where skinheads loiter. Most skinhead groups claim turf proximate to the neighborhoods in which they live. One study indicated that a majority of hate crimes occur when the hate target migrates through the hate group’s turf.15
Stage 5: The Hate Group Attacks the Target Without Weapons
This stage is critical because it differentiates vocally abusive haters from physically abusive ones. In this stage, hate groups become more aggressive, prowling their turf seeking vulnerable targets. Violence coalesces hate groups and further isolates them from mainstream society. Skinheads, almost without exception, attack in groups and target single victims. Research has shown that bias crimes are twice as likely to cause injury and four times as likely to result in hospitalization as compared to nonbias crimes.16
In addition to physical violence, the element of thrill seeking is introduced in Stage 5. Two experts found that 60 percent of hate offenders were “thrill seekers.”17 The adrenaline “high” intoxicates the attackers. The initial adrenaline surge lasts for several minutes; however, the effects of adrenaline keep the body in a state of heightened alert for up to several days.18 Each successive anger- provoking thought or action builds on residual adrenaline and triggers a more violent response than the one that originally initiated the sequence.19 Anger builds on anger. The adrenaline high combined with hate becomes a deadly combination. Hard-core skinheads keep themselves at a level where the slightest provocation triggers aggression.
Stage 6: The Hate Group Attacks the Target with Weapons
Several studies confirm that a large number of bias attacks involve weapons.20 Some attackers use firearms to commit hate crimes, but skinheads prefer weapons, such as broken bottles, baseball bats, blunt objects, screwdrivers, and belt buckles. These types of weapons require the attacker to be close to the victim, which further demonstrates the depth of personal anger. Attackers can discharge firearms at a distance, thus precluding personal contact. Close-in onslaughts require the assailants to see their victims eye-to-eye and to become bloodied during the assault. Hands- on violence allows skinheads to express their hate in a way a gun cannot. Personal contact empowers and fulfills a deep-seated need to have dominance over others.
Stage 7: The Hate Group Destroys the Target
The ultimate goal of haters is to destroy the object of their hate. Mastery over life and death imbues the hater with godlike power and omnipotence, which, in turn, facilitate further acts of violence. With this power comes a great sense of self-worth and value, the very qualities haters lack. However, in reality, hate physically and psychologically destroys both the hater and the hated.
Model Application
Anecdotal evidence suggests that this hate model has a wider application. For example, when a coworker becomes a hate target for reasons other than race, sex, or national origin, the hater immediately seeks out others in the office who dislike, or can be persuaded to dislike, the hated coworker (Stage 1). The group establishes an identity using symbols and behaviors. They use a lifted eyebrow, a code word to exclude the hated coworker from a lunch invitation, or any number of other actions to demean and isolate. The haters even may adopt a name for their group (Stage 2). At this point, the haters only disparage the hated coworker within their group (Stage 3). As time passes, the haters openly insult the hated coworker either directly or indirectly by allowing disparaging remarks to be overheard from afar (Stage 4). One morning, the hated coworker discovers his desk rearranged and offensive images pasted over a picture depicting his wife and children (Stage 5). >From the sophomoric to the terroristic, acts of hate have the same effect. Eventually, the haters sabotage the hated coworker’s projects and attempt to ruin the individual’s reputation through rumors and innuendoes (Stage 6). In so doing, the haters make the work environment intolerable for the hate target (Stage 7). Scenarios like this occur every day across America and, indeed, around the world. The targets of hate may change, but the hate process remains constant.
Assessment
Assessing and analyzing skinhead groups can help investigators tailor intervention strategies to each hate group, thus increasing the probability of successful intervention and rehabilitation. Law enforcement can assess a skinhead group by first determining if the group is hate motivated or criminally motivated. The best method to establish motivation is through oneon-one interviews, although reviewing police reports and criminal histories prove adequate determining factors as well.
Second, investigators should measure the maturity of the group, which is not determined by the chronological age of the group’s members but by the collective actions of the group. Violence constitutes an important maturation indicator. Comparing the group’s activities to the stages in the hate model can determine the maturity of a skinhead group. Mature groups commit more violent acts than immature groups.
An additional step in the assessment process involves gauging the strength of the group’s mythology. Immature groups have simple mythologies, whereas mature groups have more complex and stubborn mythologies. Studying group mythologies proves difficult because they represent the aggregate of a group’s common beliefs, experiences, symbols, and rituals.
Symbols, Rituals, and Mythology
Fully understanding hate groups involves identifying and defining their unique symbols, rituals, and mythologies. Symbols give greater meaning to irrational hate. Haters use symbols for self- identification and to form common bonds with other group members. Additionally, they often swear allegiance to these symbols. For example, the swastika, a simple symbol, served as a powerful rallying point for the Nazi movement and helped mobilize an entire country.21
Each hate group adopts its own symbols or borrows them from others. Symbolic words and nonverbal behaviors reflect individual disdain and serve as advertisements to attract fellow sympathizers. Offensive language is the most common expression of dislike for others. Hate groups also display contempt by using nonverbal gestures, such as a Nazi salute. Clothes, short haircuts, military boots, tattoos, and bumper stickers also represent symbols that can effectively communicate hate.
Symbols, however, are not enough to unify a group; therefore, more organized hate groups incorporate rituals, which serve two functions. First, they relieve individual group members from deep thought and self-examination. Second, rituals reinforce beliefs and fortify group unity.
The hate group’s experiences, beliefs, and use of symbols and rituals combine to create group mythologies. Mythologies unify disparate thoughts and act as filters through which group members interpret reality.22 Group mythologies can have profound effects on its members.” A group with a powerful mythology results in one resistant to ideological challenges, and, therefore, it is more dangerous.
Mythologies nurtured, reinforced, and protected from outside ideas provide a forum where group members can escape individual responsibility. “When we lose our individual independence in the corporateness of a mass movement we find a new freedom-freedom to hate.”24
Interviewing Techniques
Ironically, skinheads, especially hate-motivated skinheads, talk to anyone who will listen, including law enforcement officers. One investigator who knew little about white-supremacist ideology simply asked skinheads why they hated,what their tattoos meant, and how skinhead groups were organized. Numerous interviews and observations substantiated the initial information obtained by the investigator. On the other hand, criminally motivated skinheads are less likely to talk because they act more like criminals. Investigators should determine the motivation of skinheads when planning interview strategies.
Hate-motivated skinheads have well-rehearsed answers for questions, such as “Why do you hate?” “Can’t you see what you’re doing is wrong?” “How would you like it if someone picked on you because of your race?” Skinheads answer smugly; they feel secure as skinheads. Because hate masks personal insecurities, interviewers should temporarily forego questions about why skinheads hate and strive to identify the skinheads’ personal insecurities. Interviewers should begin this probe by asking skinheads about their family relationships, which probably represent the source of the skinhead’s insecurities because a sense of who people are and where they fit in society typically develops within the family structure. Interviewers also should explore skinheads’ future plans, educational goals, and desired employment. This forces skinheads to see themselves as they really are. If forced to look at themselves, skinheads become vulnerable, less resistant to rehabilitation, and, in law enforcement settings, more likely to confess. This process could take several hours or many months depending on the resistance level of the skinhead. This strategy proves less effective when interviewing criminally motivated skinheads because they view themselves as criminals who hate, rather than haters who commit criminal acts. More traditional interviewing strategies have proven successful with criminally motivated skinheads.
Intervention Strategies
An accurate assessment of skinhead groups is critical to developing intervention strategies.
Dismantling immature skinhead groups proves easier than breaking down sophisticated skinhead groups. Skinheads not solidly committed to supremacist ideology more likely will respond to rehabilitation attempts than hard-core skinheads.21 Skinheads who have not passed from Stage 4 (rhetoric) to Stage 5 (violence) will prove more receptive to rehabilitation strategies than those skinheads who commit violence.
Investigators should approach criminally motivated skinhead groups by using tactics similar to those used against criminal street gangs. Disrupting the activities of mature, hate-motivated skinhead groups requires time and more elaborate interdiction strategies because such groups are more unified and committed to their beliefs. Conversely, aggressive prosecution constitutes an efficient means to disrupt immature, hate-motivated skinhead groups.
Law enforcement used this technique to dismantle Peer Pride, an immature, hate-motivated skinhead group in Palmdale, California. The FBI learned about Peer Pride when the group hung a noose from a tree in front of the home of an African-American family. Five Peer Pride members taunted the family with racial slurs and demanded that they move out of the neighborhood. Local law enforcement initially treated this incident as a prank because hanging the noose was the only reported hate activity by the group. However, a neighborhood canvass determined that Peer Pride members periodically sat in front of a local fast food restaurant and shouted racial slurs at the African-American patrons. Instead of leniency for the first-time offenders, the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Hate Crimes Unit recommended harsh sanctions, including jail sentences. The effect was immediate. The group disbanded and no other similar problems occurred in the neighborhood. The incident, in and of itself, could have been interpreted as a prank, but, in reality, the group was passing from Stage 3 to Stage 4 in the hate model.
In contrast, the Lancaster NLR group was a mature, hate- motivated skinhead group. Four NLR members beat an African-American transient to death to earn the right to wear lightning-bolt tattoos. According to the group’s ritual, members only can earn lightning- bolt tattoos by killing minorities. A review of police reports related to NLR criminal activities clearly showed the NLR group progressing through the seven stages of the hate model.
School administrators and teachers can use the hate model to informally assess hate group activities on campus. Identifying the stage in which a hate group is operating provides valuable information to determine how dangerous the group is and what type of intervention strategies to employ. Early intervention increases the probability of success, especially before the transition period from rhetoric (Stage 4) to violence (Stage 5). These strategies can range from informal sensitivity instruction to more formal programs, such as the Juvenile Offenders Learning Tolerance (JOLT) program administrated by the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office Hate Crimes Unit. JOLT is a model intervention program intended for first– time, low-level offenders who face potential criminal prosecution and school disciplinary action.
Conclusion
To develop and implement successful intervention strategies to deal with hate groups, law enforcement personnel first must understand the hate process. The hate model identifies the multiple stages of the hate process. Investigators can use this model to identify haters who have not yet transitioned from hate rhetoric to hate violence and target them with intervention programs, which have a higher probability of success. Likewise, law enforcement personnel can identify and target hard-core haters with appropriate interdiction strategies. Knowing how the hate process works helps interviewers penetrate the hate mask and address the hater’s underlying personal insecurities. If investigators can attenuate these personal insecurities, haters will become more receptive to rehabilitation. Identifying and understanding the stages of the hate process constitute the first steps in controlling hate violence.
Skinhead groups subdivide into two categories….
“Empirical observations show that hate groups go through sevens stages in that hate through seven process. ”
“An accurate assessment of skinhead groups is critical to developing intervention strategies.
Endnotes
1 The authors based this article on their observations and interviews of several hundred self-described skinheads, defined as “usually white males belonging to any of various, sometimes violent, youth gangs whose members have close- shaven hair and often espouse whitesupremacist beliefs,” Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10th ed. (1996), s.v. “skinhead.”
2 See Eric Hoffer, The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1989).
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Statistics, however, reveal that most hate crimes are not committed by hate groups. See U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Hate Crime Statistics 2000 (Washington, DC, 2001). For more information on collecting hate crime, see U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, Training Guide for Hate Crime Data Collection (Washington, DC, 1997).
7 Raymond Paternoster and Alex Piquero, “Reconceptualizing Deterrence: An Empirical Test of Personal and Vicarious Experiences,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 32 (August 1995): 251-286.
8 See Brian Levin, “A Dream Deferred: The Social and Legal Implications of Hate Crimes in the 1990s,” The Journal of lntergroup Relations 20, no. 3 (Fall 1993): 10, citing Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt, Hate Crimes: The Rising Tide of Bigotry and Bloodshed (New York, NY: Plenum Press, 1993).
9 Ibid.
10 Supra note 2, 93-94. 11 Supra note 2, 93-94. 12 Supra note 2, 99.
13 Supra note 2, 92.
14 Charles W. Turner and John F. Layton, “Verbal Imagery and Connotation as Memory Induced Mediators of Aggressive Behavior,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 33 (1976): 755-763.
15 Supra note 8, 10.
16 Supra note 8, 9.
17 Supra note 8, 10.
18 Dolf Zillerman’s research is described in Daniel Coleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York, NY: Bantam Press, 1997), 60-62.
19 Ibid.
20 Supra note 8, 8.
21 William L. Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (New York, NY: Fawcett Crest, 1960), 71.
22 Daniel C. Maguire and A. Nicholas Farnoli, On Moral Grounds: The Art, Science of Ethics (New York, NY: The Crossroads Publishing Co., 1991), 164-167.
23 Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1988 31.
24 Supra note 2, 100.
25 Supra note 8, 10.
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