Over the course of two hours, seven Asian women were attacked in New York City. These attacks are similar to others that have happened across the country in the last few years and are the opening to this week’s discussion on deviance, the violation of social norms. While we often think of deviance in terms of a person’s bad behavior, broader global events highlight that both individuals and nation-states can violate social norms.
The attacks and violence Asian Americans are experiencing are examples of hate crimes. Specifically, hate crimes consist of criminal behavior directed at individuals or groups based on their race, ethnicity, disability, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or religion. Sadly, the United States has a long, long history of hate crimes. Native Americans experienced unimaginable horrors because of deviance combined with hate. Asians, Blacks, and Latinos were the victims of lynching across the American South and West because of deviance combined with hate. While the Tulsa Riots are the most noted example of a mob perpetrating hate crimes against Black Americans, dozens of other examples exist. Asian American history includes whole communities destroyed because of deviance combined with hate. Synagogues and Mosques have been attacked because of deviance combined with hate. Members of the LGBTQIA+ community have been verbally and physically attacked because of deviance combined with hate. If considered broadly, one can see that the goal of these hate crimes was not simply to hurt a single victim but instead to incite fear in the broader community on a social, economic, and political level. While the term terrorism is typically applied to foreign actors who use violence or the threat of violence to influence the political process, the perpetrators of these atrocities surely qualify as domestic terrorists.
Moving beyond the borders of the United States, one can analyze the events in Ukraine as a form of state-sponsored deviance. The Russian government, led by President Putin, has attacked Ukraine without provocation. Not only are physical weapons in play, but so is cyber crime that targets the computer systems of an individual or group. One example involves the international hacking group Anonymous taking down Russian television programming and playing the Ukrainian national anthem in its stead. This Russian war has caused a breakdown of social values, norms, and order, resulting in social instability, what sociologists refer to as anomie. The events surrounding this war have deeply shaken our global collective conscience, a set of shared attitudes, beliefs, and ideas about how things should be in society. Nations around the world have taken action against Russia with formal social control by leveraging groups and organizations whose specific function is to control the behavior of members of societies and reinforce social norms. The NATO alliance and the global SWIFT banking system are examples of formal social control on an international scale. Informal social control is also being exercised in an effort to stop President Putin. This involves individuals and groups that unofficially reinforce social norms. To that end, Russian oligarchs are starting to speak out against the war, and many Western officials hope their informal comments can influence Putin’s behavior.
While historically, society may have looked the other way when faced with deviance fueled by hate, our 21st-century sensibilities call for a stronger response. Thankfully, formal institutions designed to enforce, arbitrate, and carry out the laws of the society are now at play under the umbrella of the criminal justice system. In New York City, the police department’s Hate Crime Task Force is investigating the incidents as opposed to sweeping them under the rug. Over in Europe, leaders are gathering evidence against Putin to present to the International Criminal Court for war crimes. While these may not be fast or easy solutions to the problems presented in this blog, they do show that society is finally listening.
