hate crimes weirdness

Chip Berlet cberlet at igc.org
Tue Feb 29 04:35:39 PST 2000


Hi,

Check out the raw hate crimes statistics at:

http://www.publiceye.org/hate/Statistics.htm

and a discussion of hate crimes at

http://www.publiceye.org/hate/Hate99ASA_toc.htm

There are still data collection problems in this data. As the definition of what constitutes a bias-motivated crime (as opposed to a non-bias crime between races, for example) is better understood, the number of Black v. White "hate" crimes has been dropping. If you adjust for population, Jews are the most frequent target, although it is usually vandalism of buildings. Hate crimes against Blacks and gay men frequently involve serious physical injury. Crimes against gays and lesbians are on the rise. Most other figures are relatively flat.

Poor people a more often arrested for economic crimes in any society. (as opposed to thieves on Wall Street). In a society where Black people are disproportionally poor, the arrest figures will reflect that. As the hate crimes data collection gets more precise, I expect to see the Black v. White figures continue to drop and then stabilize at a lower level. This level will still probably be disproportional, however, but the causes are likely to be complex.

Libertarians oppose all hate crimes laws, and this particular statistical mind game is played to convince White liberals that hate crimes legislation is bad because it hurts Black people more than it hurts White people. It doesn't, of course, since the goal of hate crimes legislation is to reduce all hate crimes in the society, which benefits everyone.

Incidently, Sam Smith, who posted this libertarian drivel on his Progressive Review site, stopped being progressive years ago, and now promotes a variety of right wing conspiracy theories and right wing populist forms of anti-government and anti-corporate critique. It's a shame. When I asked him to be more critical of Buchanan's type of anti-globalism, he slammed me, then posted a whole series of attacks on me by his readers.

Sigh...

-Chip Berlet



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