The FBI recently released their 2019 hate crime statistics, and with it the media concentrated on certain narratives. Here’s the top news headlines that pop up with a Google search of “2019 hate crimes.”

• AP: Hate Crimes in US Reach Highest Level in More Than a Decade
• NPR: FBI Report: Bias-Motivated Killings At Record High Amid Nationwide Rise In Hate Crime
• NYT: Hate Crimes in U.S. Rose to Highest Level in More Than a Decade in 2019

As with last year and the year before, all of the media narratives are negative. And as with last year, I’ll break down the statistics, provide some context and present a wide variety of narratives that can be constructed. As you’ll see, one could easily mislead by choosing some and omitting others. Some of these narratives you’ll find in the mainstream articles, many you won’t. Keep in mind this is for 2019, the 2020 numbers won’t be released until next November.

What is a Hate Crime

The FBI defines a hate crime as

criminal offenses that were motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against the victim’s race/ethnicity/ancestry, gender, gender identity, religion, disability, or sexual orientation, and were committed against persons, property, or society.

Because this is somewhat subjective, they add that a crime will only be classified as a hate crime when an investigation reveals the actions were motivated, in whole or in part, by bias. In other words, if a klan leader commits a crime it isn’t necessarily a hate crime. Only if the specific action was motivated by that bias.

Often, critics will say there is no such thing as a hate crime, or that all crimes are hateful. There are certainly valid criticisms of the government prosecuting hate crimes differently, since it’s the action and not the motivation that the law should concern itself with. But there is such a thing as a hate crime as the FBI defines it. And there is a benefit to looking at hate crime data trends to see what’s going on in our society, and the FBI statistics are the the best metric we have.

If you’d like to learn how to find and analyze this data on your own, check out my video tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKzHAaDh8Xs&t=1s

Participation Table

As I pointed out last year, every hate crime analysis should include reference to the participation table, as that’s what shows the number of participating agencies and population covered. Remember, the FBI report is not some magical comprehensive measure of hate crimes, it simply reflects what local law enforcement agencies report to it, and not every locale reports data.

Last year, the number of reporting agencies fell from 16,039 to 15,588, and the population covered dropped slightly from 306.9 million to 305.3 million. This decrease is minor, just 0.5%, but all else being equal we’d expect hate crimes to drop by 0.5%. This was unusual, as typically the population covered increases each year.

Often media outlets will ignore the population covered when comparing prior years. For example, the “highest hate crimes in a decade” narrative ignores that in 2008 there were just 13,690 reporting agencies covering 269.4 million people. That’s almost more than a 13% increase in population, which should be factored in.

Total Hate Crimes

• 2019- 7,314 incidents
• 2018- 7,120 incidents

Analysis/Narratives:

• Hate crimes rose by 2.7% in 2019.
• Hate crimes were basically unchanged from 2018.
• Hate crimes are at the highest levels in a decade.
• Hate crimes are 6% lower than in 2008, even with a 13% increase in population.
• Hate crimes under Trump are up 19% since 2016. But this includes a 5% larger population, so really up 14%. Some would frame this as alarming, others as unimpressive or negligible, especially considering the rhetoric around the issue.

Victims

By Race/Ethnicity:

• Anti-White: 13% decline (762-666)
• Anti-Black: 1% decline (1,943-1,930)
• Anti-Hispanic: 9% increase (485-527)
• Anti-American Indian: 39% decline (194-119)
• Anti-Asian: 7% increase (148-158)
• Anti-Arab: 16% increase (82-95)

Analysis/Narratives:

• Overall, hate crimes based on race/ethnicity fell 2%.
• Anti-Black hate crimes fell, and have now fallen two consecutive years.
• Blacks are still the most targeted racial/ethnic group by far.
• Anti-Hispanic hate crimes rose, continuing a multi-year trend of significant rises.
• Anti-American Indian crimes plummeted, and have been more than cut in half since 2017.
• Anti-Asian crimes increased, continuing a multi-year trend and are up 40% since 2016.
• Anti-Arab crimes increased, but are still lower than in 2017.

By Religion:

• Anti-Jewish: 14% increase (835-953)
• Anti-Christian: 16% increase (162-188)
• Anti-Muslim: 6% decline (188-176)
• Anti-Sikh: 18% decline (60-49)

Analysis/Narratives:

• Overall, religious hate crimes rose 7%.
• Anti-Jewish crimes increased, reversing last year’s decline, but are about equal to 2017. Jews remain the most targeted religion by far.
• Anti-Christian crimes increased, and increased more than anti-Jewish (or anti-Muslim).
• Anti-Muslim crimes declined, continuing a multi-year trend. Since Trump’s term, anti-Muslim crimes have dropped nearly 43%, something which is virtually never reported.
• Anti-Sikh crimes partly reversed last year’s worrisome and shocking 200% spike.

By Sexual Orientation:

• Anti-gay: 3% increase (726-746)
• Anti-lesbian: 11% decline (129-115)
• Anti-LGBT: 4% decline (303-291)
• Anti-heterosexual: unchanged (17-17)

Analysis/Narratives:

• Hate crimes targeting sexual orientation were essentially unchanged (1,196-1,195).
• Anti-LGBT crimes are on the decline.

By Gender

• Anti-male: 23% decline (22-17)
• Anti-female: 108% increase (25-52)
• Anti-transgender: 6% increase (142-151)

Analysis/Narratives

• Anti-transgender crimes continue to increase, although the growth slowed considerably from last year, which is a positive considering the rapidly rising number of transgender people.
• Trans remains the most targeted gender, but at just 151 total crimes, isn’t a lot. To put it in perspective, there’s more anti-Christian crimes than anti-trans (and there’s not a lot of anti-Christian crimes).
• Anti-female crimes spiked dramatically. Given the low numbers this could be an anomaly, but worth keeping an eye on in the future.

Offenders by Race/Ethnicity

• White: 2% increase (3,511-3,564)
• Black: 14% decline (1,605-1,385)
• Hispanic: 22% increase (412-504)
• Asian: 40% decline (95-57)

Analysis/Narratives:

• Black offenders declined 14%, but this was after last year’s large increase of 32%.
• Whites commit more hate crimes than all other races combined.
• Blacks commit disproportionately more hate crimes than any other race.
• Under Trump, every race/ethnicity has committed more hate crimes. Hispanics have had the highest increase, doubling the amount of offenders since 2016. Blacks have had the smallest increase.
• The large decline in Asian offenders was offset by last year’s huge 107% increase. Which now appears to be an anomaly not a trend.

Offense Type

• Crimes Against Persons- 1% decline (5,566-5,512)
• Murder- 113% increase (24-51)
• Rape- 36% increase (22-30)
• Assault- 9% increase (2,921-3,181)
• Intimidation- 14% decline (2,560-2,206)
• Crimes Against Property- 6% increase (2,641-2,811)
• Crimes Against Society- 18% decline (289-236)

Analysis/Narratives:

• Hate crimes against persons actually declined slightly. This narrative was ignored by the media.
• Violent hate crimes, especially murders, increased. The media jumped on this narrative. It is concerning, although 22 of the murders (nearly half) were from one event, the El Paso mass shooting. Hate crime murders and rapes are ripe for statistical misuse given their low numbers, but assaults also increased moderately, suggesting a broader trend of more violence.
• Rapes and murders make up 1.5% of crimes against persons and just 0.1% of all hate crimes.
• There was just one transgender murder hate crime, and 3 trans rapes. This is surprisingly low and a positive headline, and gets little coverage.
• Hate crimes in every crimes against person and property categories are up since 2016, with the exception of burglaries.

Other Notable Findings

• Anti-transgender hate crimes continue to be disproportionately committed by blacks. Blacks committed 60 vs 52 for whites, despite being a much smaller population. The same is true of anti-gay crimes.
• Most of white hate crimes are against blacks. Most black hate crimes are against whites. Most Hispanic hate crimes are against blacks.
• Out of the 15,588 agencies reporting, just 2,172 reported a hate crime. That means 13,416 (86%) agencies reported zero hate crimes. This included 71 cities with populations over 100,000.
• Alabama reported zero hate crimes.
• Contrary to popular perception, much of the South continues to have low reported hate crimes. Alabama (0), Arkansas (9), Mississippi (14), Louisiana (26), West Virginia (31), even Georgia (102) and Florida (111) all have relatively low numbers. For perspective, Washington, D.C. alone had 222.
• The most hate crimes are reported in California (1,015) and New York (611). Other states which have a disproportionate amount of hate crimes include Massachusetts (388), Ohio (391), Michigan (434), New Jersey (472) and Washington (542). Washington continues to have a very high amount of crimes relative to their population.

Overall, hate crimes are up moderately during Trump’s term, but the numbers aren’t alarming. Put in context, there were more hate crimes in 2008, and significantly more hate crimes in 2000, despite a far smaller population. So historically, numbers are still quite low, we’re not living in an unprecedented era of hate crimes (based on the FBI numbers).

While 7,314 incidents is a large number, there were 16,425 murders in 2019, 821,182 aggravated assaults and 1.1 million burglaries. Clearly, hate crimes make up just a small fraction of crime in the US. It will be interesting to see the 2020 numbers next year, as this year saw unprecedented protests and unrest, but also lockdowns and stay-at-home measures that potentially kept many crimes down.