The number of hate crimes across the United States in 2021 reached the highest level since the federal government started tracking the statistics more than three decades ago, The Washington Post reported.
In 2021, state and local governments reported 10,840 bias-motivated crimes, a nearly 25% from 2020 and considerably more than the previous high of 9,730 last tallied in 2001.
Meanwhile, a Federal Bureau of Investigation report released Monday shows that crimes against Blacks increased from 2,871 in 2020 to 3,277 in 2021. While Black people were targeted the most, they experienced the smallest increase in crimes committed against them — slightly more than 14%.
On the other hand, crimes against some other groups — particularly people of Asian descent — rose exponentially, almost 300% from 249 in 2020 to 746 in 2021, the most recorded in one year, according to The Post.
Crimes against gay men rose from 673 to 948 or almost 41%; for white people, the increase from 869 to 1,107 was slightly more than 27%. The number of Jewish people targeted rose from 683 to 817 or about 19.6%.
Brian Levin, a hate crime data tracker and director of California State University at San Bernardino’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, called it a “horrifying record” compared with 2001. He noted that his center has since gathered information from nearly 30 major U.S. cities that indicate a continued increase in hate crimes in 2022.
“What this establishes, along with our research, is that we have hit an inflection point now, in this decade, in regards to hate crimes that we haven’t seen since modern data collection began,” said Levin, The Post reported. “The significance of this…
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