Newswise — Cross burnings, scrawled racial epithets on houses and other expressions of hatred for another race, religion or ethnic group are becoming more regular occurrences in Northwest Indiana, according to ongoing research by Valparaiso University faculty and students that will be presented at a Dec. 1 race relations summit on campus. Valparaiso is a member of the Council on Undergraduate Research.
The University's Community Research and Service Center (CRSC) will unveil an updated online map of nearly 200 bias-motivated incidents that have taken place in Northwest Indiana since 1990 during the summit "No Place to Hate," sponsored by the Race Relations Council of Northwest Indiana.
Dr. Larry Baas, professor of political science, said Valparaiso students working in the CRSC have spent several years tracking bias-motivated incidents in the region. That information will be made available via a map " available on the CRSC Web site at valpo.edu/organization/copc/bias " that shows where bias-motivated incidents have occurred. Links on the map will provide details about each incident, including its location, severity and who the victim(s) and perpetrator(s) were.
"This information can spark discussion about where these incidents are occurring in Northwest Indiana, who the targets are and whether or not progress is being made in reducing intolerance or hatred of others," Dr. Baas said.
Dr. Baas said a gradual increase in bias-motivated incidents appears to be taking place. Since a spike upwards in 2001, there have been approximately twice as many bias-motivated incidents reported annually as in the early 1990s. While a handful of incidents targeting Muslims have taken place following 9/11, those only explain a small portion of the surge.
"The rising number of bias-motivated incidents seems to have more to do with the spread of ethnic groups across the region," Dr. Baas said. "Our communities are becoming more diverse, and you can see on the map how more and more incidents have been taking place in Porter County during the past few years."
While incidents were rare in the early 1990s in Porter County, the annual number of reported incidents has risen considerably and now is approximately equal to the number of incidents reported in more populous Lake County.
Other findings by Valparaiso researchers include:
Race is by far the most frequent motivator and target in bias-related incidents, with 69.4 percent of reported incidents involving race and followed by religion-motivated incidents at 10.7 percent;
The most frequent type of incidents involved bias-motivated physical or verbal harassment (51.5 percent of incidents), followed by bias-motivated vandalism (30.6 percent) and swastika graffiti (6.6 percent);
The level of severity of individual bias-motivated incidents appears to be on an overall downhill trend.
Dr. Baas said the mapping project began after a series of cross burnings and other incidents involving intolerance took place in the late 1990s.
"There were people who said these types of incidents involving harassment and intolerance happened all the time, while others said they were just juvenile pranks that happened on rare occasions," Dr. Baas said. "At the time, we didn't have solid evidence to support either viewpoint."
Since that time approximately 25 Valparaiso students have helped collect data on such incidents, scouring newspaper reports for several dozen different terms. While some incidents may never be reported, the survey of newspaper reports provides a broad overview of the number and different types of incidents taking place in Lake and Porter counties and communities immediately bordering the counties.
"Now we know that there are incidents of racial, ethnic or other types of intolerance happening in our communities on a regular basis," Dr. Baas said. "Getting this information out there to the public helps start conversations about intolerance, how people have been harmed and what to do about this problem."
The "No Place to Hate" summit will take place from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Valparaiso Union, with a keynote address by Nicholas Lundmolfese, director of the Office of Peace and Justice for the Archdiocese of Chicago. Summit registration is $10 and includes lunch and materials; students with identification may attend at no charge.
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