FBI Hate Crimes Report, 2020


The FBI has produced its analysis of hate crimes committed in 2020. The graphic above which illustrates the breakdown of crimes by category is from the report. I found this observation interesting:

  • Of the 6,780 known offenders, 55.1% were white, and 21.2% were Black or African American. Other races accounted for the remaining known offenders: 1.1% were Asian, 1% were American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.5% were Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and 5.4% were of a group of multiple races. The race was unknown for 15.7%.
  • Of the 6,169 known offenders for whom ethnicity was reported, 39.3% were Not Hispanic or Latino, 10.2% were Hispanic or Latino, and 2.4% were in a group of multiple ethnicities. Ethnicity was unknown for 48.1% of these offenders.
  • Of the 6,264 known offenders for whom ages were known, 89.1% were 18 years of age or older.

The point I’d like to call out is the very small number of anti-Asian hate crimes identified. As a percentage of the total it’s far beyond the percentage of Asians in the total population but the actual number is small enough that a few additional incidents can look like a larger change than it actually is.

They don’t seem to break down the biases by known offender category, either, which would be interesting.

4 comments… add one
  • Drew Link

    Were the statistics compiled by Jussie Smolett?

  • Grey Shambler Link

    If you could compile a chart by race of those people least likely to report or cry foul, Asians would top the list.

  • steve Link

    Age is most striking to me. We certainly saw in our high schools a lot of racially oriented verbal attacks after the 2016 election.

    Steve

  • I don’t think that “Asians” is a meaningful category combining as it does East Asians, South Asians, and West Asians. IMO it’s an attempt at shoehorning our present demographics with the black-white dichotomy of 60 years ago. Note that they distinguish between anti-Catholic bias and other categories of anti-Christian bias but don’t distinguish between anti-Sunni bias and anti-Shi’ite bias. When you aggregate hate crimes of anti-Christian bias you find it’s about the same order of magnitude as hate crimes of anti-Muslim bias. And yet you hear talk of Islamophobia but never of Christophobia.

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