The F.B.I. released its 2008 data on hate crimes in the U.S. The figures suggest that American hatred is on the rise, but not my much: only about 2 percent. The highest upticks occurred for hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation (up 11 percent) and religion (up 9 percent).
A few other patterns in the data:
A “victim” could be a person, installation, building, or “society” in general. However, the F.B.I. doesn’t provide a good definition of “society” as victim. Interestingly, only three hate crimes had multiple biases, meaning that the offender was expressly targeting a victim for more than one reason. (You can hear Andy Rooney‘s voice: “Apparently those who commit hate crimes can’t multi-task.”)
Hate crimes seem to go up in the spring and summer months (hibernation?). Hate crimes against whites do occur, though they make up only one-fourth as much as anti-black crimes; the hate crimes against blacks make up nearly three-fourths of all race-based hate crimes. Whites make up about 79 percent of the American population: they commit about 60 percent of all hate crimes. (Six percent of the offenders had “multiple races.”)
The geography of hate crimes varies considerably. Thirty-two percent occurred near homes, 17 percent on highways and streets, 12 percent near schools and colleges, and 4 percent near churches/synagogues/temples. Regionally, it is difficult to make definitive assessments because the number of reporting agencies varies by states. In 2008, there were 2,145 agencies that reported, up from 2,025 the year before. California does a good job of tracking, while Pennsylvania and Georgia are lax. Hard to say whether there is more racism in one place than another, and there is little mentioned about the reasons why reporting (or resources to respond to incidents) might vary.
Indeed, overall, the significant differences in reporting make the F.B.I. report illuminating but limiting. Comparing hate crimes across years would be futile. Nevertheless, the reports are useful as they yield a snapshot portrait of one form of violence at one point in time.
President Obama signed a new law covering hate crimes against those who are attacked for reasons based on gender, gender identity, disability, and sexual orientation. One wishes the law could also have prompted more systematic reporting and data collection.
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As an empiricist, I’m skeptical about the use of this data. In any data on crime one must distinguish between crimes and crimes that were reported. This is even more of an issue here, because the propensity to report hate crimes may be correlated with what you are trying to measure.
Probably a bigger problem is that the label of hate crime depends on the police’s determination of the motive. I have no idea how one would control for differences in the cross section and over time of how such motivations are determined.
“Whites make up about 79 percent of the American population…”
That seems way high. Are you sure they’re/you’re not throwing hispanics in with whites?
And if so, you have to consider that as a major flaw in this reporting, since there is a huge amount of race-based violence between hispanics and blacks, particularly in cities with gangs, like LA.
Over the past few years both the attention and awareness a category of crime called a ‘hate crime’ has increased and the definition of what a ‘hate crime entails has been added to.
I am not sure we are in a postion to objectively evaluate this data, at this time.
These statistics are suspect at best. Hate crimes are such a hot-button issue, I doubt municipal police forces can be much of a reliable source for reporting such sensitive data.
Also correct me if I am mistaken, but if the proportion of hate crimes committed by those identified as white is less than that of their proportion in the entire U.S. population, does that mean whites are not the “most racist” Americans? Where is the difference made up?
How do they know the cause of the crime was motivated by hate? I am not denying such things don’t occur, but how do you distinguish between a crime and a hate crime?
Do perpetrators of “hate crimes” actually confess to them based on the victims race/national origin/ sexual orientation? How does anyone measure this?
I guess I don’t understand how something as complex and nebulous as motive can be measured by a simple statistic.
Of course, it doesn’t help that “hate” crimes are relative–white on black is defined, typically, as hate but not the reverse. Seems that part of the concept of hate crimes is to create the impression that whites are more likely to commit crimes against blacks (e.g., “blacks make up nearly three-fourths of all race-based hate crimes”), when the reverse is true.
And, @2, Hispanic is not a race. Hispanics can be of any race.
There are numerous problems with using this data for year-to-year comparisons. This point was recently made by Mark Thompson at the League of Ordinary Gentlemen blog: http://www.ordinary-gentlemen.com/2009/11/the-annual-misuse-of-hate-crime-statistics/
You note these problems later in your post yet still remark on time trends in the opening paragraph. Did you somehow account for the differences in the number of agencies reporting for your analysis?