My social justice topic that I chose was Hate Crimes in the United States.

I wanted to
show how hate crimes have progressed with very little done about them. A hate crime is
crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity,
religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. I chose this topic because it is a very
real fear of mine. I have had attempts of hate crimes against myself by others and it is a
very frightening thing to happen. I dont want other to have to have the fear of feeling
like they have to always look over their shoulder because of what someone may do
because they see two guys or two girls show affection towards each other. My perspective
has changed slightly on that I did not realize truly how often hate crimes happen, and
most of these crimes are due to race.
The first project I chose to revise was my profile; I originally had done this as a
PowerPoint presentation. By the time I had finished and turned this in I was told this was
more a report style and that I would have to turn in a new profile or change the one I had.
I took the feed back I received and redid my profile as a completely new one and this was
on a young transgender girl who was killed for being true to herself. When I stated this
profile I knew I wanted to do one that was LGBT related and so it was not hard for me to
come up with one right away. The hardest part was putting all my information down into
a flowing profile. I read a lot of different hate crime reports and wanted to pick one that
would make a good profile that would really stand out, I wanted to write one that was
different then what we have heard before like the one about Mathew Sheppard. Everyone
knows what happened and I felt it would be better to have one done on someone who is a
transgender person from a different place in time. With all the media talking about
transgender and the bathroom issues I felt this was a good choice. My final draft I added
a lot more detail about Gwen and put in a few direct quotes. I also found a couple poems
that I added to give it a little more of a personal touch and add some feeling.
My Hate Crime report was one of the easier pieces I put together. This was originally
going to be by profile and the feedback I got was that it was more a report, I only needed
to add a few work-cited links and it would fit as my report. When I started looking for
information to use I found a ton if information I compiled into a power point report. I
used information that covered all types of hate crimes with different people. I had no
negative feedback on this report. Using a different medium like the power point was the
most fun. I liked being able to see what I was trying to tell instead of just reading
something. Im a visual learner and this made it easy for me to portray the story I wanted
to write.
My last piece was the position argument; I did not like this one at all and thought it was
very difficult for me to write. Out of the four pieces we had to do this was the hardest for
me to do and took me the longest. I also got the lowest grade on this piece. So I changed
the medium and turned this into a political cartoon. From my readings of all the
information that I had read throughout the semester the main message I had received and
hate crimes are a very serious thing in the United States but no authority prosecute hate
crimes they get changed to some other crime. The laws we have on hate crimes a weak
and do not help the ones they are meant to support. I was at home eating chocolate cake

and thought was is more American then cake PIE! So I drew a slice of apple pie with
an American flag coming out, and on the side a big scoop of hate crime ice cream.
In conclusion this course has taught me many new was of writing. I now see that I can
express my ideas in different mediums and still be very effective and persuasive. One part
I have learned to get better at was to take criticism and to use it to better my work.
Listening is a very important aspect I have learned and will apply to my life to better
myself when given different ideas or ways to do things.