Hate crime

A hate crime (also known as a bias-motivated crime) is a prejudice-motivated crime, often violent, which occurs when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her membership (or perceived membership) in a certain social group. Examples of such groups can include but are not limited to: ethnicity, disability, language, nationality, physical appearance, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. Non-criminal actions that are motivated by these reasons are often called "bias incidents".

"Hate crime" generally refers to criminal acts that are seen to have been motivated by bias against one or more of the types above, or of their derivatives. Incidents may involve physical assault, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, mate crime or offensive graffiti or letters (hate mail).

A hate crime law is a law intended to deter bias-motivated violence. Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech in that hate crime laws enhance the penalties associated with conduct that is already criminal under other laws, while hate speech laws criminalize a category of speech. Hate speech laws exist in many countries, but in the USA, they are in conflict with the first amendment right to freedom of speech, so have repeatedly been overturned as unconstitutional.

Hatred

Hatred (or hate) is a deep and emotional extreme dislike. It can be directed against individuals, groups, entities, objects, behaviors, or ideas. Hatred is often associated with feelings of anger, disgust and a disposition towards hostility.

Ethnolinguistics

James W. Underhill, in his Ethnolinguistics and Cultural Concepts: truth, love, hate & war, (2012) discusses the origin and the metaphoric representations of hate in various languages. He stresses that love and hate are social, and culturally constructed. For this reason, hate is historically situated. Although it is fair to say that one single emotion exists in English, French (haine), and German (Hass), hate varies in the forms in which it is manifested. A certain relationless hatred is expressed in the French expression J'ai la haine, which has no equivalent in English. While for English-speakers, loving and hating invariably involve an object, or a person, and therefore, a relationship with something or someone, J'ai la haine (literally, I have hate) precludes the idea of an emotion directed at a person. This is a form of frustration, apathy and animosity which churns within the subject but establishes no relationship with the world, other than an aimless desire for destruction. Underhill (following Philippe Roger) also considers French forms of anti-Americanism as a specific form of cultural resentment. At the same time, he analyses the hatred promoted by Ronald Reagan in his rhetoric directed against the "evil empire".

Light-on-dark color scheme

A light-on-dark color scheme is a color scheme that uses light-colored text on a dark background and is often discussed in terms of computer user interface design.

Originally, computer user interface images were formed on CRTs. The phosphor was normally a very dark color, and lit up brightly when the electron beam hit it, appearing to be green or amber on black, depending on phosphors applied on a monochrome screen. RGB screens continued along a similar vein, using all the beams set to "on" to form white.

With the advent of teletext, research was done into which primary and secondary light colors and combinations worked best for this new medium. Cyan or yellow on black was typically found to be optimal from a palette of black, red, green, yellow, blue, magenta, cyan and white.

The opposite color scheme, dark-on-light color scheme, was originally introduced in WYSIWYG word processors, to simulate ink on paper.

Whether it is easier or healthier to read text on a dark background is disputed by vision and perception researchers; there is similar dispute between users.