Reported Hate Crimes Research Articles

Hiding the Hate—Contextual Effects on Hate Crime Reports

This study examines the influence of local norm shifts driven by white supremacist ideology on hate crime reporting by US law enforcement agencies. Results show a substantial association, indicating a threefold increase in expected hate crimes reports in counties experiencing a spike in local hate group activity. Specifically, Republican vote share acts as a moderator, reducing reported hate crimes by 23% in counties with strong Republican support and right-wing hate group presence. Adjacent Republican counties also show a 13% reduction in expected reports, suggesting a spillover effect. Beyond local politics, a regional impact is evident; Northeastern counties with higher right-wing hate group presence show a 23% lower incidence rate. Using longitudinal data from the FBI UCR, SPLC, MIT Election Lab, and the US Census (2010–2020), through negative binomial regressions, this study highlights how right-wing hate groups can affect law enforcement’s enforcement of general civil rights depending on the local context.

Hate Crimes and Black College Student Enrollment

Abstract Reported hate crimes in the United States have increased rapidly in recent years, alongside an increase in general racial animus. Scholars have shown that the larger sociopolitical environment can directly impact the campus climate and experiences of all students, particularly students of color. However, little is known about how reports of hate crime incidents relate to college enrollment levels of students of color. This lack of evidence has especially troubling implications for Black people, the most frequent targets of reported hate crimes. This paper helps to fill in that gap by exploring the association between the number of reports of hate crimes within states and Black students’ college enrollment. We examine a comprehensive dataset of institutional enrollment and characteristics, reported hate crimes, and census data on state racial demographics from 2000 to 2017 using several techniques, including institution fixed effects. We find that a 1 standard deviation increase in reports of state-level hate crimes predicts a 17 to 22 percent increase in Black first-time student enrollment at historically Black colleges and universities. As the number of reported hate crimes is almost assuredly an undercount of the actual number of incidents, we explore the implications of what these results mean.

Hate Crime and Human Capital

This paper examines the impact of hate crimes committed by White offenders on the educational attainment of Black individuals across United States commuting zones between 1990 and 2017. Using data on reported hate crimes from the Federal Bureau of Investigation Uniform Crime Reporting Program and data on educational attainment from the decennial Census and American Community Survey, we show an increase in per-capita hate crime in a commuting zone has a statistically significant and economically meaningful negative impact on college completion for young Black individuals residing in that commuting zone. A 10% increase in per-capita hate crime committed by White offenders reduces the proportion of Black individuals aged 21 to 30 with four or more years of college between 0.12 and 0.23 percentage points, a 1% to 2% reduction relative to the sample mean. In contrast, hate crime committed by White offenders has no negative impact on educational attainment for White individuals. Our results are robust to adjusting for geographic heterogeneity in hate crime reporting, including systematic under-reporting of hate crimes in the Southern United States. The findings in this paper add to the growing body of evidence establishing a negative effect of racial violence on long-run economic growth.

The role of religious contexts on hate crimes, 2003–2017

AbstractObjectiveCombining insights from socio‐criminological theories of (hate) crimes and the moral communities perspective, this article examines how the religious makeup of a county—evangelical Protestant, mainline Protestant, and Catholic adherence rates—affects county‐level hate crime patterns.MethodsZero‐inflated negative binomial regressions were conducted on a unique county‐level data set that included reported hate crimes, religious adherence rates, and related correlates of hate crimes for three distinct temporal periods: 2003–2007, 2008–2012, and 2013–2017.ResultsResults demonstrate that a county's total adherence rate, mainline Protestant rate and, to a lesser degree, Catholic adherence rate are associated with fewer hate crimes. We find no evidence that the evangelical Protestant adherence rate is associated with the number of hate crimes.ConclusionThese results support the moral communities hypothesis, extend research on the religion–crime nexus, and highlight the distinction between religious and secular organizations in community‐level crime patterns, particularly hate crimes.

Trickle-down racism: Trump's effect on whites’ racist dehumanizing attitudes

Reported hate crimes against Black people surged following Trump's election. While only a relatively small fraction of Americans committed these abhorrent actions, we show that Trump's victory had broader effects on the attitudes of the larger white public. Specifically, Trump altered the extent to which white survey respondents describe Black people in dehumanizing ways. We report findings from a two-wave national survey in which white respondents rated Black people on a dehumanizing attitudes scale before and after the 2016 presidential election. Trump supporters rated Black people as less "evolved” in the post-election wave than they rated Black people in the pre-election wave. Conversely, Trump opponents rated Black people as more "evolved" in the post-election wave than in the pre-election wave. These findings suggest Trump's victory had a polarizing effect on whites' expression of dehumanizing views of Black people, with important implications for scholars' understanding of the sociopolitical factors that can affect dehumanizing attitudes and the normalization of racism in the U.S. today.

Exploring incivility and moral foundations toward Asians in English-speaking tweets in hate crime-reporting cities during the COVID-19 pandemic

PurposeThis study aims to explore the extent to which Twitter users engaged in uncivil and morally questionable expressions in their comments about specific Asian countries and citizens. The integrated threat theory (ITT) was used to formulate questions surrounding incivility and moral foundations within Twitter discourses related to the COVID-19 pandemic.Design/methodology/approachThe authors collected tweets and retweets posted by English-speaking Twitter users in the United States (US) across the following three phases: (1) initial discovery of COVID-19 in China, (2) high US mortality rate from COVID-19 and (3) the announcement that a vaccine would soon be available in the US.FindingsThe authors found a significant difference in uncivil tweets posted in cities with higher levels of reported hate crimes against Asians than cities with low levels. Lastly, English-speaking Twitter users tended to employ moral virtue words and moral vice words when discussing China and Chinese culture/populations.Research limitations/implicationsThe bags-of-words employed are limited in capturing nuanced and metaphorical terms. In addition, the analysis focused solely on Tweets composed in English and thus did not capture the thoughts and opinions of non-English speakers. Lastly, this study did not address all Asian countries. In this sense, the findings of this study might not be applicable to Tweets about other nations.Practical implicationsGiven that many Twitter users tend to use terms of moral virtue in support of Asians and Asian communities, the authors suggest that non-governmental organization administrators provide morally supportive social media campaigns that encourage users to engage in civil discourse.Social implicationsThese findings have theoretical implications as the frameworks of integrated threats and moral foundations were used to offer group-level explanations for online behavior. Additional research is needed to explore whether these frameworks can be used to explain negativity in other communication environments.Originality/valueThis study expands the findings of prior studies that identified the extent to which Twitter users express hate speech, focusing on general Twitter discourse across three specific periods of the pandemic: degrees of incivility and moral foundations, and comparison of incivility based on the prevalence of reported hate crimes.

The US biological sciences faculty gap in Asian representation

In the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has inflicted untold human suffering, remade the global economy, and highlighted numerous weaknesses in political, health, and social systems. In the US, Asian Americans and immigrants have faced increased xenophobia, as evident by exponential increases in reported hate crimes and the horrific massage parlor shootings in Atlanta. This tragic spate of violence has renewed conversation on America's long history of anti-Asian discrimination, from prior racist immigration policy like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, to the more recent model-minority myth of Asian attainment. Here, Meixiong and Golden discuss the impact of this history, including in the biomedical sciences.

Looking at Reported Hate Crimes

“It is important to understand what you CAN DO before you learn to measure how WELL you seem to have DONE it.”— John W. Tukey (1977, p. v)This investigation was instigated by the horrific events of...

“We’re Not Where We Should Be”: Enhancing Law Enforcement Responses to Hate Crime

In an era when reported hate crimes are increasing dramatically, it is troubling that there appears to be, at best, an uneven response to the problem from law enforcement in Canada. Our pilot study of policing hate crime in Ontario is the first attempt to understand whether and how law enforcement think about and act on hate crime. Interviews with officers in eight police forces across eastern and southern Ontario ( N = 38) uncovered three clusters of factors that appear to shape how they manage hate crime: environmental, organizational, and individual. What we offer in this paper is a series of related recommendations for enhancing police responses to hate crime along each of the three dimensions.

Evaluating associations between area-level Twitter-expressed negative racial sentiment, hate crimes, and residents' racial prejudice in the United States.

BackgroundThe objective of the current study is to investigate whether an area-level measure of racial sentiment derived from Twitter data is associated with state-level hate crimes and existing measures of racial prejudice at the individual-level.MethodsWe collected 30,977,757 tweets from June 2015–July 2018 containing at least one keyword pertaining to specific groups (Asians, Arabs, Blacks, Latinos, Whites). We characterized sentiment of each tweet (negative vs all other) and averaged at the state-level. These racial sentiment measures were merged with other measures based on: hate crime data from the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program; implicit and explicit racial bias indicators from Project Implicit; and racial attitudes questions from General Social Survey (GSS).ResultsLiving in a state with 10% higher negative sentiment in tweets referencing Blacks was associated with 0.57 times the odds of endorsing a GSS question that Black-White disparities in jobs, income, and housing were due to discrimination (95% CI: 0.40, 0.83); 1.64 times the odds of endorsing the belief that disparities were due to lack to will (95% CI: 0.95, 2.84); higher explicit racial bias (β: 0.11; 95% CI: 0.04, 0.18); and higher implicit racial bias (β: 0.09; 95% CI: 0.04, 0.14). Twitter-expressed racial sentiment was not statistically-significantly associated with incidence of state-level hate crimes against Blacks (IRR: 0.99; 95% CI: 0.52, 1.90), but this analysis was likely underpowered due to rarity of reported hate crimes.ConclusionLeveraging timely data sources for measuring area-level racial sentiment can provide new opportunities for investigating the impact of racial bias on society and health.

The feminist politics of Meghan Markle: Brexit, femininity and the nation in crisis

This article examines the relationship between femininity, popular feminism and the monarchy in the United Kingdom in a time of national and political crisis. Since her entry into the royal family as Prince Harry’s fiancée in November 2017, Meghan Markle has been the subject of much hyped and often problematic media coverage. Celebrated as a feminist, Markle is seen as rejuvenating the British monarchy by injecting some much-needed diversity and progressive politics. Based on the analysis of UK broadsheet and tabloid coverage between 2016 and 2018, this article argues that her embodiment of royal femininity is part of a UK image revamp after a Brexit referendum campaign in 2016 steeped in imperial nostalgia, the aftermath of which saw a rise in reported hate crimes and loss of international reputation. However, her articulations of progressive racialised and feminised politics are equally considered a threat to the cohesion of the royal family, and by extension the nation. As such, Markle’s mediated royal femininity is overburdened with meaning from both ends of the political spectrum, and highlights the gendered dimensions of dominant Brexit discourses. This article emphasises popular media and culture as a terrain in which the ideological work of Brexit (and its resistance) is done.

Understanding Public Attitudes to Hate: Developing and Testing a U.K. Version of the Hate Crime Beliefs Scale

Against the backdrop of an increase in reported hate crimes, we present the development of a U.K.-focussed instrument designed to evaluate the nature of public beliefs about hate crime, legislation, offenders and victims. In Study 1, 438 participants completed an Anglicized version of the Hate Crime Beliefs Scale (HCBS). Factor analyses revealed three subfactors: Denial (high scores represent a denial of hate crime severity and need for legislation), Compassion (high score reflect compassion toward victims and affected communities) and Sentencing (higher scores reflect more punitive attitudes). In Study 2 (N = 134) we show that scores on Denial are positively associated with those on Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Social Dominance Orientation (SDO), ideologies known to be associated with prejudice. Compassion was negatively associated with these ideologies. Mediation analyses showed that Big Five personality traits Openness to Experience and Conscientiousness predicted Denial and Compassion via RWA, whereas Agreeableness and Openness predicted scores via SDO, consistent with a dual-process motivation model of hate crime beliefs. Results are discussed in terms of the nature of hate crime beliefs and the importance of understanding public attitudes which may support undesirable social norms and influence jury decision making in trials of hate related offenses.

Valuing All Identities Beyond the Schoolhouse Gate: The Case for Inclusivity as a Civic Virtue in K-12

Increasing social and political polarization in our society continues to exact a heavy toll marked by, among other social ills, a rise in uncivility, an increase in reported hate crimes, and a more pronounced overall climate of intolerance—for viewpoints, causes, and identities alike. Intolerance, either a cause or a consequence of our fraying networks of social engagement, is rampant, hindering our ability to live up to our de facto national motto, “E Pluribus Unum,” or “Out of Many, One” and prompting calls for how best to build a cohesive civil society. Within the public school—an institution conceived primarily for the purpose of inculcating civic virtues thought necessary to foster solidarity in a pluralistic society—the intolerance has contributed to increased bias-based bullying, particularly toward transgender and gender diverse students. The devastating impacts of intolerance and exclusion on transgender and gender-diverse students include disproportionate rates of psychological distress, physical ailments, increased risk of homelessness, and other negative outcomes. As schools ponder how best to meet their needs and create safe and supportive learning environments, some parents have attempted to assert exclusive authority in this domain, challenging practices such as the adoption of gender-complex and LGBTQ-inclusive curricula as well as gender-affirming policies and practices. Parents allege that attempts by schools to accommodate transgender and gender diverse students infringe on their parental rights and the privacy rights of their cisgender children. While some schools have yielded to parental objections, others have resisted. This Article presents a compelling approach for schools both to address the challenges posed by objecting parents and to carry out their original mission of inculcating an appreciation for democratic norms—namely, civility, tolerance, and equality— through the adoption of gender complex and LGBTQ-inclusive curricula. Relying on both long-standing limitations on parents’ ability to exercise curricular control and research on the benefits of inclusive and comprehensive curricula, this Article makes the case that the educational purposes served by gender complex and LGBTQ-inclusive curricula more than justify any alleged burden on parents’ free exercise of religion as protected by the First Amendment or any alleged infringement upon parents’ substantive due process rights as protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. It posits that although both parents and the state share responsibility for shaping our youngest citizens, parental interests should be subordinate to the interests of the state in promoting proteophilic competence—an appreciation for diversity—through public education. This critical educational mission holds the promise of reaching beyond the scope of gender to include the inculcation of civic virtues essential to the health of an increasingly demographically diverse nation: Respect for “other-ness” and the development of skills needed for effective democratic self-governance.

Hate, Conflict, and Public Space: Stand Your Ground Laws and Potential Immunity for Hate Crimes

Statistics reveal that hate crimes in the United States have increased for the past two years in a row. From 2014 to 2016, the number of reported hate crimes has increased from 5,479 in 2014, to 5,850 in 2015, to 6,121 in 2016. These numbers do not include crimes that were not shared with the FBI by local law enforcement, or crimes that were not reported to the police at all. Early indicators reveal that the number of hate crimes in 2017 is expected to further continue this upward trend. The current social and political climate has raised much concern regarding the reported increase in hate crimes, and the safety of persons who may be the targets of bias-motivated crime. One concern that has not received much attention in the scholarly literature or otherwise is the intersection of hate crimes and Stand Your Ground laws. Stand Your Ground laws remove the “duty to retreat” requirement in claims of self-defense, and permit a person to use any force necessary to protect oneself when in a public place that the person has a right to occupy. Empirical research on Stand Your Ground laws indicates that these laws contributed to an increase in homicide rates in states that offer Stand Your Ground as a legal defense, and that these laws have an implicit racial bias that affects the outcome of Stand Your Ground criminal cases. As written, these laws offer much subjectivity to the person employing the Stand Your Ground defense. This study examines the use of Stand Your Ground laws as a legal defense and suggests that, given the current social and political climate, these laws need to be modified to ensure that violence against others because of bias or prejudice cannot be translated into fear for one’s safety, and therefore, a justifiable defense for hate crimes.

Homeland Violence and Diaspora Insecurity: An Analysis of Israel and American Jewry

AbstractJews and Jewish institutions have suffered the majority of reported religion-motivated hate crimes in the United States for nearly two decades. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in 2014 the 609 reported anti-Semitic incidents made up 59% of all religious bias hate crimes alone. Rates of reported anti-Semitic hate crimes vary considerably over the course of a year. Yet, little scholarly attention has been given to what factors cause reported anti-Semitic hate crimes to fluctuate so substantially in the United States. This paper hypothesizes that violent Israeli military engagements are critical in explaining weekly surges of reported anti-Semitic hate crimes. Utilizing FBI hate crime data from 2001 to 2014 and fixed effects negative binomial regression models, consistent findings underscore that violent Israeli military engagements significantly increase the likelihood of a state reporting anti-Semitic hate crime. Most dramatically, their occurrence increases the likelihood of reported hate crime intimidating individuals or characterized as violent by nearly 35%. This paper underscores that homeland perpetrated violence can directly impact the security of diaspora communities.

Campus Racial Incidents, Hate Crimes, and White Male and Female Students’ Racial Attitudes

ABSTRACTDespite popular claims that the United States has reached a “post-racial” era—one in which race no longer matters for determining one’s life chances—college students continue to have strong views toward whether or not racial discrimination is still a major problem in this country. Utilizing multilevel modeling on data merged from the Cooperative Institutional Research Program’s (CIRP) 2005 Freshman Survey (TFS) and 2009 College Senior Survey (CSS), as well as the Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System (IPEDS) and the Office of Postsecondary Education Campus Safety and Security database, this study examined individual and institutional predictors of white male and female college students’ senior-year views on whether racial discrimination is still a major problem in the United States, with a particular focus on campus racially biased incidents and hate crimes. Results show that having a reported hate crime on campus did not have a significant association with white students’ senior-year views, while a higher level of news coverage of campus racially biased incidents significantly predicted white women’s senior-year views on racial discrimination. Implications of the findings with respect to higher education research, policy, and practice are discussed.

Social Disorganization Theory: The Role of Diversity in New Jersey’s Hate Crimes Based on Race and Ethnicity

The purpose of this correlational panel study was to test Shaw and McKay’s theory of social disorganization by examining the relationship between demographic diversity and hate crime rates. The study focused on the relationship between the level of diversity, residential mobility, unemployment, family disruption, proximity to urban areas, and population density in all 21 New Jersey counties and hate crime rates. The existing data of Federal Bureau of Investigations’ hate crime rates and the U.S. Census Bureau’s demographic diversity were operationalized as the percentage of Whites over all other races, and social disorganization from the 21 counties of New Jersey between the years 2007 through 2011, for a total sample size of 105 cases of reported hate crimes. Results of the multiple linear regression analysis indicate that ethnic diversity did not significantly predict hate crimes; residential mobility and population density had positive effects on hate crime rates. Concentrated disadvantage, characterized by the number of reported unemployment rates, had a negative effect on hate crime rates. The results of the study supported social disorganization theory in reference to residential mobility and population density.

‘I Will Not Be Thrown Out of the Country Because I’m an Immigrant’: Eastern European Migrants’ Responses to Hate Crime in a Semi-Rural Context in the Wake of Brexit

This article examines Eastern European migrants’ experiences of and responses to hate crime. Following the UK European Union Membership Referendum (‘Brexit’ vote), there was an increase in reported hate crimes against immigrants. The study focuses on the experiences of migrants in Lincolnshire, a region of England which has a significant migrant population, and which had one of the highest ‘leave’ votes. The focus on white migrants in this semi-rural setting offers an original perspective in the field of hate crime studies. We draw on semi-structured interviews and observations to identify temporal, spatial, and relational factors in responses to hate crime. We uncover the insecure occupation of a ‘third space’ constituted by material, discursive, and emotional practices. This positioning was destabilised post referendum; but there was also evidence of the operation of agency within processes of ‘othering’, suggesting a transition from victim identity to emergent political subject.

The Effect of President Trump's Election on Hate Crimes

This Essay empirically evaluates the relationship between Donald Trump’s rise to power and the recent increase in reported hate crimes. A number of critics predicted that President Trump’s divisive rhetoric during the presidential campaign and his subsequent election would embolden hate crime perpetrators, thereby contributing to more hate crimes. Media commentators have dubbed this the Trump Effect. We find compelling evidence to support the Trump Effect hypothesis. Using time series analysis, we show that Donald Trump’s election in November of 2016 was associated with a statistically significant surge in reported hate crimes across the United States, even when controlling for alternative explanations. Further, by using panel regression techniques, we show that counties that voted for President Trump by the widest margins in the presidential election also experienced the largest increases in reported hate crimes. Using the data from this study, we offer a novel theory that builds on the existing literature on the causes of hate crimes. We hypothesize that it was not just Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric throughout the political campaign that caused hate crimes to increase. Rather, we argue that it was Trump’s subsequent election as President of the United States that validated this rhetoric in the eyes of perpetrators and fueled the hate crime surge.

FBI releases report on increased hate crimes

Hate crimes increased in 2015, according to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The report, 2015 Hate Crime Statistics, found a 6.8 percent increase in hate crimes in the United States in 2015. The 5,859 hate crime incidents reported in 2015 show an increase from 5,479 hate crimes reported in 2014. The demographic that faced the greatest increase in reported hate crimes was Muslims, who saw a 67 percent increase in reported hate crimes from 2014 to 2015. According to Mark Potok from the Southern Poverty Law Center, this is the highest number of hate crimes directed toward Muslims in America since 2001 with the al‐Qaida attacks on New York.