Data Set: https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#
Introduction
Definition
A hate crime is classified as such when even a portion of the motivation for the crime is motivated by the perpetrator’s hate for a particular classification of people. The biases included in the FBI hate crime data target individuals based on one’s race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, gender and gender, gender identity. Hate Crime — FBI
Data Collection
Just a note on data collection. The data was collected from 14,660 law enforcement agencies of 18,888 that submitted data. There could be differences in the handling of hate data between reporting agencies and those that don’t participate in the collection of data. It could be that agencies with even more hate want to hide this, and thus don’t report the cases, or may be unwilling to aggravate the criminal charges by labeling it a hate crime.
Data Collection and Generalizability
For the purposes of my analysis, I am analyzing trends within the law enforcement agencies that reported hate crimes. Significant differences in the willingness to classify a crime as hate motivated, or in the actual numbers of hate motivated crimes in the non-reporting law enforcement agencies could affect the generalizability of this analysis to those areas covered by the non-reporting law enforcement agencies.
U.S. Demographics
According to census.gov, 2020 U.S. Population More Racially, Ethnically Diverse Than in 2010 (census.gov), in 2020 the white alone, non-Hispanic population was 57.8% of the population. The Hispanic/ Latino population was the 2nd largest group at 18.7% and the black, African American alone, non-Hispanic population was 12.1%. According to the census article above, the biggest changes in racial demographics between 2010 and 2020 were in the multi-racial categories. The multi-racial population went from 9 million in 2010 to 33.8 million in 2020.
Bias Coding
Looking at the hate crime data, many of the hate crimes had multiple bias categories selected. I would interpret this as the individual held hate toward many groups. The frequency of anti-black bias in this data set was consistently higher than other biases. Of note is that while Latin Americans are a larger percentage of the population, fewer hate crimes referenced an anti-Hispanic or anti-Latino bias than reference an anti-black or anti-African American bias. In my original assessment, I made the point that the largest hate is about skin color, even more so than a particular cultural group (outside of African Americans). The anti-black/ African American is listed as Anti-Black or African American. I interpret this to mean some of the hate crimes coded with this bias may include non-African Americans, but who have darker skin coloring, and they are targeted because of their skin color. Some of the multi-racial individuals, not easily identifiable as a coming from a particular country or continent of origin, may fall within this category. Based on the most recent data, the anti-Jewish hate crime has risen to such an extent that it is potentially at a higher rate relative to proportion of the population than the anti-black hate crime. It depends on whether the anti-black hate crime category is representative of the 12.1% African American alone, non-Hispanic. It could be that this is not a direct map. For this reason, I would argue, these comparisons between groups cannot be made.
Also, there was an Anti-Arab bias, which could be conflated with Anti-Muslim. However, it could also impact Jewish people. I decided to just compare the two religions against each other. I note this because it could affect comparisons if the anti-Muslim biases were instead coded as Anti-Arab.
Bias Focus
I focused on the most prevalent biases, anti-black, anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim, anti-Latino, and anti-Asian. There were others, but they were less frequent and the stories I am telling affect these groups the most. For this reason, I left the other biases out from my analysis.
Note that I originally posted this in 2023 with data through 2022. It is now 2026 and I have data through the end of 2024. What is very striking since the last post has been the increase in anti-Jewish and Anti-Muslim hate crimes following the Oct 7, 2023 attack on Israel and their subsequent war with the Palestinians in Gaza, a predominantly Sunni Islam people.
US Hate Crime Trends – 1991 to 2024
According to U.S. Population 1950-2024 | MacroTrends, the US population in 2024 is 341,814,420. In 1991, the US population was 251,560,189. While the population has been increasing, the number of hate crimes with an anti-black bias was on a general downward trend between 1996 through approximately 2014, with a few increases, such as 2008, when the economic recession and the market crash. Around 2014, many of the anti-Black, anti-Latino and anti-Jewish hate crimes started to increase. This trend continued with a huge spike from 2019 into 2020, when Covid arrived. While hate against African Americans and blacks started to drop post Covid, hate crimes continued to rise against Latin Americans and Asian Americans. In October of 2023, Israel was attacked by Hamas and a war between the two ensued. This event appears to have resulted in a backlash against Jewish and Muslim Americans. You can see all of these trends in the plot below. I will show additional visualizations for each of these trends, particularly monthly plots of max, min and mean, a monthly plot by year (2021-2024) and a plot with yearly totals, allowing more visibility in terms of impacts of particular events which show a spike for a month or two and then drop back to normal or drop to a modified normal.
Note the increase in anti-Latin American hate crime started around 2016. The anti-Latin American hate has continued to rise for a decade since. It has dropped down since, but not to where it was before Covid.
Temporary vs. Long Term Triggers
In the plots below you will see that during economic recessions or a global pandemic, we can see hate crime increases persist for a longer period of time. In other cases, we can see temporary spikes resulting from a triggering event that sparks temporary outrage. For example, below you will plots showing the spikes in anti-black and anti-white biased hate crime after the police were found not guilty of the Rodney King beating. Another plot will show the anti-black biased hate crime after the George Floyd killing. We also see the spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack. Note that in each of these cases, there was a brief peak and then a sharp drop.
Political figures can create a longer-term environment of hate directed towards particular groups. Below is a plot showing the impacts of a political environment fomenting hate against Latin Americans and Asians.
Hate and the Economy
1991 Economic Crisis
Looking at the plot above, we can see an increase in anti-white and anti-black hate bias from February 1991 to March, which continued, generally trending through September. I was initially expecting to see a greater spike in hate crimes, both anti-black and anti-white, just after the beating of Rodney King by the police, which was caught on video. However, many of the event-triggered hate crimes last for a month or so. Here we see a prolonged increase in hate throughout the year. It is worth noting that there was also an economic recession going on, which is likely a contributing factor. There was likely something else going on here in addition to the economic recession as the recession began in 1990 through 1991, but the recovery was “jobless” and unemployment increased until June 1992.
2007-2008 Economic Crisis
Below you will find a 2007 monthly plot and a 2008 monthly plot. Although the market crashed in 2008, 2007 was the start of the economic crisis. Hate crime frequency appears to increase through 2007, with a larger peak in Oct 2007 against black people and Jewish people. The anti-black hate starts to drop back down after the market crash in 2008 (September 29th). Note that there does also appear to be some seasonality in most of the monthly plots, decreasing during winter months.
Precipitating Events
Sometimes hate crimes increase around specific events that seem to trigger anger and rage and thus hate crimes. Often this results in a short-term spike and then a return to the previous value, or maybe a new trending value, higher than before the triggering event.
October 7, 2023: Hamas Attack on Israel leading to Israel/ Gaza War
Anti-Jewish Hate Bias Monthly Variation (Max, Min, Mean) by Year
Anti-Jewish Hate Bias by Month (2021 -2024)
Anti-Muslim Hate Bias Monthly Variation (Max, Min, Mean) by Year
Anti-Muslim Hate Bias by Month (2021 -2024)
The Jewish population in the US is approximately 2.4% of this country. Islam (Muslim) is 1.34%, Islam in the United States – Wikipedia. The Muslim population is more than half of the Jewish population in the US, yet there were a sixth as many hate crimes against them as those against Jewish individuals in the US.
Jewish bias hate crimes increased from 102 in September 2023 to 336 in October 2023 and then up further to 394 in November 2023. This is a 286% increase in the two months before dropping back down from the peak. However, when you look at the annual numbers, you see that by year, 2024 had more anti-Jewish biased hate crime.
When looking at the Muslim bias hate crime there were 17 in September 2023 and then jumped to 66 in October of 2023. This is a 288% increase in one month. The anti-Muslim biased hate crime then dropped back down quickly to 42 and 31. In the data by year, you can see that the anti-Muslim biased hate crime starts to go down in 2024.
The initial peaks were slightly higher against Muslims, but through the next year, anti-Jewish biased hate crimes continued to grow, while the anti-Muslim biased hate crimes started to drop. The anti-Muslim backlash was quicker in that the jump was 288% in one month compared to 286% in two months. However, the anti-Jewish backlash was more prolonged than the anti-Muslim spike.
With that stated, the base levels of anti-Jewish biased hate crimes were already higher relative to US population than the anti-Muslim biased hate crimes. The anti-Muslim biased hate crimes were 17% of the anti-Jewish biased hate crimes in September 2023, yet they are more than 1/2 of the number of Jewish US population.
Yearly Data
Covid
Looking below, you can see the increase in anti-Asian hate in March 2021, which remains high through June. People’s anger at masks, remote education was at a boiling point and Trump had directed people’s hate toward Asian people with his anti-China rhetoric.
April 29, 1992 – Police found not guilty of beating Rodney King
You will see a clear increase in hate immediately following the not guilty verdict in the case against the police who beat Rodney King. The verdict was handed down on April 29, 1992. We see that May showed a marked increase in anti-white bias hate. This was unprecedented to see the anti-white bias surpass the anti-black bias, which also spiked.
May 25, 2020 – George Floyd killed by police officer Derek Chauvin
After George Floyd’s death, instead of African American outrage, we see rage against African Americans in June 2020. There was a slightly less pronounced peak in anti-white hate. From April until June anti-black hate increased from 137 to 723, or an increase of 586, a 420% increase. Anti-white crime increased from 39 to 187 in the same time period. This is an increase of 148, or a 379% increase. This is in contrast to post Rodney King, where the anti-white hate crimes surpassed the anti-black hate crimes, not just in a percentage increase, but in actual numbers.
September 11, 2001 – Terror Attacks
See data below for anti-Islamic/Muslim hate in the month September after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. It does stand out that the anti-Muslim hate bias exceeded the anti-black hate bias in September 2001. This is quite remarkable in that Muslims are a much smaller portion of the population and the crimes increased to approximately 300 times as many hate crimes. While many thought that anti-Islamic/Muslim hate stayed high for years after the attacks. However, the numbers stayed high for a couple of months, but then dropped, although not to the pre-9/11 levels.
Comparing 1992 to 2024: min, max, mean
The plot below shows the minimum, maximum and mean monthly hate crimes numbers. We can see that the largest number of hate crimes in one month during 2020 was 723, much larger than peak of approximately 250 in 1992. See the Anti-Black hate crimes below.
Looking at the minimum, maximum and mean monthly values for each year, we can see above that the anti-black bias was much stronger in 2020 than in 1992. We see below the opposite, that the strongest anti-white bias was after the Rodney King verdict in 1992. See the Anti-White bias hate crimes below.
Possible Interpretations
Non-Reporting Law Enforcement Agencies
Also worth noting, some of the non-reporting law enforcement agencies could fall in the lower reporting districts. We don’t know if there are actual differences in the numbers of hate crimes, or if it is a difference of labeling. What we can say is that according to the data New Jersey is reporting the most hate motivated crimes in the US.
Justice and Hate
As I considered the rate of hate crimes per 100k across by state plot in conjunction with the 2020 hate crime spike in anti-black hate motivated crimes after the murder of George Floyd, a theory came to mind. I wonder if one is more likely to perpetrate a hate-based crime when they feel their anger and resentments are not supported by the general public or those within their community. After the police were found not guilty of the Rodney King beating, there was more anti-white hate than anti-black hate. This was reversed after George Floyd’s death, when there was more anti-black hate.
Part of the Anti-White hate after the Rodney King beating was likely a response to the lack of Justice for the African American or black community. The response came after the police officers were acquitted.
As for the lower Anti-White crime post George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movement may have been a factor. There was much greater public support for the African American community than after Rodney King. Derek Chauvin also is serving time for this crime. Justice was not denied this time around.
It could also be that as public support for Black Lives Matter increases; there could be an increased willingness to aggravate the charges against white people by labeling the crime as hate motivated.