Hate Crime and Class Vulnerability: A Case Study of White Nationalist Violence Against Unhoused Indigenous People

Abstract

Advocates and academics have increasingly called on governments to recognize anti-homeless violence as a hate crime and type of domestic extremism, representing a broader trend in Westernized countries for responding to social issues through anti-hate policies. Can these approaches protect unhoused people? Drawing upon ethnographic interviews and observation with 50 unhoused community members in a Canadian city, we outline their experiences with anti-homeless and anti-Indigenous violence. Our findings show how hate crime approaches often (1) fail to consider intersectionality, especially how class contributes to vulnerability, and (2) overlook place-based victimization and how institutions enable class vulnerability. We call for more localized analyses of hate crime and introduce the concept of ‘cumulative risk of hate crime victimization’ to help address intersectionality.