The FBI released its 2008 Hate Crime Statistics report yesterday. Overall Hate crimes were up 2%. That’s bad and it gets worse. In the wake of President Obama’s election, hate crimes against blacks rose 8%.

Hate incidents related to the election occurred in all parts of the country. An interracial couple in Apolacan Township, Pa., who supported Obama, found the remains of a burnt cross in their garden. In Madison County, Idaho, elementary school children allegedly chanted “assassinate Obama” on a school bus. In Mount Desert Island, Maine, black effigies were reportedly hung from nooses.

Many of the election-related hate crimes were violent. For example, there were five reported attacks by white supremacists on blacks and Latinos in California’s San Jacinto Valley that police described as a reaction to the election. And on Staten Island, two 18-year-olds were among a group of men who yelled “Obama” as they assaulted a black teenager with a baseball bat just hours after Obama clinched the presidency.

Source: Anti-Black Hate Crimes Rise, Data Remains Flawed, Southern Poverty Law Center-Hate Watch

Like sexual assault and domestic violence, it is likely that hate crimes are underreported.

One of the most widely publicized incidents involved the burning of a black church, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, just a few hours after Obama’s win was confirmed. At the time of the burning, federal investigators called the act a probable hate crime.

But like so many hate crimes each year, the church burning never made it into the FBI’s statistics. Even though the DOJ released a statement about arrests in the Springfield case and condemned the acts as motivated by “racism,” the city of Springfield reported no hate crimes in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Unfortunately, it is not surprising that a hate crime would fail to make it into the FBI’s data. The DOJ itself has found that the hate crimes statistics drastically underreport the number of such crimes each year.

Source: Anti-Black Hate Crimes Rise, Data Remains Flawed, Southern Poverty Law Center-Hate Watch

It’s estimated, in a report by the Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, that the actual number of hate crimes is 20 to 30 times higher than what is reported. That would mean that the real incidents of hate crime in America actually total about 190,000. That’s a staggering number.

Do you think that number is correct?

Hat Tip @QueerJohnPA on Twitter

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