Hate crimes in America are reaching new highs. The FBI report suggests that minorities like Hispanics and Jewish people are seeing more acts of violence within the last year.
What We Know:
- A hate crime is an act of harm that is motivated by prejudice on the basis of someone’s race, religion, sexual orientation, or other factors. According to a report released on the FBI website, hate crimes in the United States in 2019 rose to the highest levels in over a decade.
- AP News suggests that the increase in hate crimes might be a result of better police reporting. But, America’s rising tensions in the social and political climate (often leading to violence) says otherwise. Advocacy groups, like the Anti-Defamation League, say the data isn’t nearly complete as the report relies only on voluntary reporting by police.
- The report states that there were 51 hate crime murders in 2019 and a significant spike in anti-Hispanic hate crimes. This includes the Walmart shooting in El Paso that targeted Mexicans and left 23 people dead. Authorities attributed the shooting to an attempt to scare Hispanics into leaving the country.
- In another troubling statistic, aggravated assaults rose for the sixth straight year to the highest level since 2001. According to the Daily Bulletin, “such attacks rose 5.9% from 818 in 2018 to 866 in 2019, and have increased 47% since 2013.”
- Anti-semitic acts of violence also saw a quick rise within the last year. Hate crimes targeting Jewish people and Jewish institutions were up 14% in 2019.
Thorough report or not, it is clear that America has a hate crime problem that desperately needs to be addressed.
