gressor’s belief that the victim is less than human, and is to blame for all of the difficulties experienced by the aggressor. Hate crimes are based on these two moral disengagement mechanisms. I feel that people who commit hate crimes do so as they blame the victim for an obstacle or low point in life, which then leads to the dehumanization, which leads to the aggressive behavior, and so on and so forth.There is no concrete way of stating why people commit hate crimes. What the theory of moral disengagement does is open the door to understanding how the people who commit hate crimes live with themselves on a day- to - day basis, and justify what they do to others. It says in the article that, when combined, several disengagement factors potentiate each other rather than simply producing additive effects. This explains why and how people commit hate crimes in that it shows how the state of mind is reached. Things such as bureaucratization, urbanization, automation, and so on and so forth are seen as instigators of self-regulated behaviors, but nonetheless, the cause of hate crimes is still not something that can be readily defined in black and white terms. Moral disengagement is a means to an end in the case of hate crimes, as it tells the how, but only partially the why.In the fairly recently released movie American History X, the acts of dehumanization and blaming of minorities was rampant, as that is what the basis of the main characters’ (Danny and Derek) hate was founded on. Without someone to focus their hate one, they would have had nothing to do. However, when a black man killed “Danny’s and Derek’s” father, they began to hate. Therefore, one can see that it is not so much a matter of moral disengagement causing hate crimes, but moral disengagement that allows hate crimes to be committed in a manner such that the person committing the crimes is not as offended by their actions as th...
