In 2017, hate crime in America had its biggest jump in a decade, according to the F.B.I. From 2016 to 2017 the number of hate-related crimes jumped 17 percent. The majority of the crimes, 60 percent, were due to race. The jump is certainly not unexpected with the nationalist sentiment inside the White House. But the dramatic increase really doesn’t tell the whole story. Here’s what’s important to know. It comes from the excellent Daily 202 column in The Washington Post.
— “Of the hate crimes that likely occur each year in our country, only about 1 percent are reported in official federal statistics,” estimates Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute.
— One especially startling figure: The FBI’s new report shows anti-Semitic hate crimes rose 37 percent in 2017.“The new FBI data comes less than a month after the worst anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history — a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 and wounded six,” Devlin Barrett notes. “The suspect in that attack has been charged with dozens of federal hate crimes, and that one incident alone accounted for nearly as many hate crime killings as were recorded all of last year in the United States: 15.”
The FBI has released its hate crime statistics for 2017. According to reports submitted by 16,149 law enforcement agencies, there were 7,175 criminal incidents — a 17% increase over last year. https://t.co/VgKpWYQFFM
— Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) November 13, 2018
This is not a regional problem. Hate is nationwide. The Southern Poverty Law Center has produced a map that shows how widespread hate has become.
The SPLC reports there are now 953 hate groups operating across the country.