In recent years, college campuses across the United States have been th scene of bias-related incidents. Stu dent-run newspapers and radio sta tions have ridiculed racial and ethnic minorities, threatening literature has been stuffed under the doors of mi nority students, graffiti endorsing th views of White supremacist organiza- tions such as the Ku Klux Klan have scrawled on university walls. some cases, there have even been vio. lent clashes between groups of White and Black students (Bunzel 199 Prejudice can re sult from ethnocen- trism--the tendency to assume that one's culture and way of life represent the norm or are superior to all others. Ethnocentric people judge other cul tures by the standards of their own group, which leads quite easily to prejudice against cultures viewed as inferior. One important and widespread form of prejudice is nacism, the belief that one race is supreme and all others reinnately inferior. When racism prevails in a society, members of subordinate groups generally experience prejudice, discrimination, and exploitation. In 1990 concern mounted about racist attacks in the United States, Congress passed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act. This law directs the Department of Justice to gather data ost crimes motivated by the victim's race, religion, ethnic- ity, or sexual orientation. In 1998 a total of 9,235 hate crimes were reported to authorities. Some 58 percent of these crimes against per sons involved racial bias, while 16 percent reflected bias based on sexual orientation; 16 percent, religious bias and 10 percent, ethnic bias. As Figure 10-3 shows, laws against such crimes vary from state to state (Department of Justice 1999a: 58-59). A particularly horrifying hate crime made the front pages in 1998: In Jasper, Texas, three White men with possible ties to race-hate groups tied up a Black man, beat him with chains, and then dragged him behind their truck his body was dismembered. Numerous groups in the United States have been victims of hate crimes as well as prejudice. In Box 10-2 on p. 264, we examine prejudice against Arab Americans and Muslims living in the nited States. The activity of organized hate groups appears to be increasing, both in reality and in virtual reality. While only a few hundred such groups may exist, there were at least 2,000 websites advocating racial hatred on the Internet in 1999. Particularly troubling were sites disguised as video games for young people, or as "educational sites" about cru saders against prejudice, like Martin Luther King, Jr. The technology of the Internet has allowed race-hate groups to expand far beyond their traditional southern base to reach millions (J. Sandberg 1999).