October: National Hate Crime Awareness Week
National Hate Crime Awareness Week takes place in October every year, and is an opportunity to raise awareness of what hate crime is and stand by those affected by it.
National Hate Crime Awareness Week encourages us to consider how we can respond to hate crime when we witness or are victims to it. This can help to ensure people report instances of hate crime, victims get the support they need and those committing it are met with justice.
Hate crime includes any criminal offence targeted at someone that is fuelled by hostility or prejudice related to the individual’s disability, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation or transgender identity.
Hate crime is particularly important to talk about on Holocaust Memorial Day, as we remember victims of genocide, a crime carried out on a group of people due to their identity. Hate crimes will always take place on the path to genocide as a precursor to the killings, as a means to dehumanise those who are deemed ‘different’. Jews in Nazi Germany, for example, were the subject of offensive propaganda, labelled ‘vermin’ and had their businesses, homes and synagogues attacked on Kristallnacht in 1938. Disabled people, gay people and Roma and Sinti people were among other groups targeted by the Nazis.
See our HMD discrimination lesson plan, which teaches Key Stage 3, 4 or 5 learners about hate crime, antisemitism (anti-Jewish hatred) and anti-Muslim hatred.
The National Hate Crime Awareness week website explains how you can report hate crime and who to report it to. Alternatively, you can report antisemitism through CST or anti-Muslim incidents with TellMAMA.
