White Supremecists Slay 49 in NZ Mosques

[Dill]

(03-20-2019, 11:38 AM)Matt_Crimson Wrote: Okay so this is definitely where I say we disagree. I have an issue with what you said for a couple of reasons.

1) The FBI and SPLC have said there has been a rise in the number of reported hate crimes, but we don't know how many of these "hate crimes" are actually related to white supremacy.

2) There is no information given that tells us about how many of these reported "hate crimes" actually even took place. In fact, I can counter argue that the number of reported hate crimes can't be trusted as concrete evidence that hate crimes are actually "rising" because there has been a large number of hoaxes being reported.

Yow that’s a long post!   The reasoning is generally pretty good. I will respond by taking up where we don’t agree—

First, regarding the evaluation of statistics—I don’t think the FBI and SPLC go by newspaper reports in counting reported hate crimes, and so far as I know, they don’t include fakes.  So if  black man sprays hate graffiti on his own car, that is eventually reported as a crime (of false reporting), but not as a hate crime.

You are correct also that all hate crimes are not white supremacist in nature.  But most reputable databases disaggregate such crimes in ways that offer clues as to perp and motivation.

The FBI’s states are compiled from cooperating law enforcement agencies. In 2017 (I think the last year for which we have complete stats) out of 4,832 “single-bias” hate crimes based upon race, only 17.5 stemmed from anti-white bias. The rest are against African-American (48.8 percent) and other racial/ethnic groups.  Of the 1,679 reported hate crimes based upon religious motivation, 58.1 percent were anti-Jewish and 18.7 anti-Muslim. https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses.   

Yet, there is reason for concern about these FBI stats, not because of false positives, but because of under- or mis-reporting. Oddly, the woman killed when a Neo-Nazi plowed a car into a crowd of protestors at Charlottesville is NOT reported as a hate crime—though an instance of white supremacist violence. Svrivas Kuchibota was killed in Olathe, Kansas, on Feb. 22,2017, by a guy who was convicted of a hate crime—though the incident still doesn’t make it into the FBI database https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/14/opinions/fbi-hate-crimes-data-whats-missing-berry-wiggins/index.html 

The federal data, as aggregated by the Arab American Institute and also the Anti-Defamation League, reveal that nearly 100 jurisdictions representing at least 100,000 people reported zero hate crimes in 2017. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, which has reported as many as 73 incidents annually in recent years and represents over 1.6 million people, is one example. Statewide, just five incidents were reported in Nevada in 2017.

But the problem of questionable or underreported data is not limited to any one state. Hawaii does not even participate in the national hate crime statistics program, and aside from Nevada, an additional 11 participating states had fewer than 10 agencies report hate crime incidents in 2017. Many of these states, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Mississippi, have dark histories of racial and ethnic violence but have not enacted sufficient legislation to address hate crime.

So I think we can trust the FBI stats as certainly indicative of trending crime, but very incomplete. 

Another issue raised by stats is definitional. Is Adam Purinton, the guy who shouted "Get out of my country" before he killed Kuchibota, a "white supremacist"?  He might not be in the sense that he belongs to an active group of white supremacists, or that he wants all non-whites out of the country. Quite possible he is ok with "American" non-whites and thinks he is not racist at all (but very tired of political correctness!). Yet I would include people like him in any statistical compilation of right wing violence/terrorism. 

I’ll say more about your other points in a separate post.