Hate crimes against Asian and Black people rise sharply in the U.S., FBI says

Overall in the United States, hate crimes rose by 6%, according to the FBI.

The agency considers criminal incidents to be hate crimes if they are “motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland in a statement Monday noted that the data do “not account for the many hate crimes that go unreported.”

“These hate crimes and other bias-related incidents instill fear across entire communities and undermine the principles upon which our democracy stands,” Garland said.

“All people in this country should be able to live without fear of being attacked or harassed because of where they are from, what they look like, whom they love or how they worship.”

President Joe Biden in April signed the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act, which was passed specifically to address the rise in anti-Asian American crimes seen during the Covid pandemic.

The law directed the Justice Department to expedite review of hate crimes related to the pandemic and to promote awareness of anti-Asian crimes. The law was signed a month after six women of Asian descent were killed along with two other people in shootings at two spas in the Atlanta area.

After anti-Black incidents, the biggest targets of hate crimes were Whites, with 773 reported incidents, and Jewish people, who were involved in 676 incidents, according to the data released Monday.

Incidents involving victims who were gay men were the fourth most common reported type of hate crime.

The data are based on incident reports submitted by more than 15,000 law-enforcement agencies nationwide.

There were 7,759 criminal incidents reported, and 10,532 related offenses that were considered hate crimes last year, the FBI said.

The majority of hate crimes, more than 53%, involved intimidation of victims, while nearly 46% were either simple or aggravated assaults.

A total of 22 murders were reported as hate crimes.

Article source: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/30/fbi-says-hate-crimes-against-asian-and-black-people-rise-in-the-us.html