Racial Hatred Rife In NY, Only CA Has More Incidents: Study

New York City NY

19 March, 2021

10:55 AM

Description

NEW YORK CITY – There were more acts of racial discrimination in New York state than almost every other state in the nation in the past year, according to records kept by the Anti-Defamation League's Center for Extremism. The huge majority of cases targeted people of Chinese ethnicity. The ADL received 517 reports from New York between March 2020 and the end of February this year. Only California had more, with 1,691. Nationally, 42.2 percent of incidents involved people of Chinese ethnicity. Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese also ranked high. On Wednesday, the NYPD announced an increase in policing in the city's Asian communities, spurred by a shooting in Atlanta Tuesday which left eight dead - six of the victims were of Asian descent. Community leaders have said the attacks have been fueled by some political leaders using China as a scapegoat for the coronavirus pandemic. The ADL reported that most incidents happened at a place of business, followed by encounters on a public street and then online. Nationally, 68.1 percent of complaints involved name calling, with 11.1 percent resulting in physical attacks. One respondent from Brooklyn said: "A white man catcalled me, then aggressively followed me down the block, and got inches from my face and yelled "Ch*nk!"... after realizing I was Asian. "Lots of neighbors were standing outside their homes and no one intervened." The ADL also reported a record number of posters, flyers and graffiti promoting white supremacist propaganda. Nationwide, propaganda which was anti-Semitic, racist or anti-LGBTQ+ was recorded 5,125 times in 2020, according to the report – almost twice the number of incidents recorded in 2019. The highest number of incidents were reported in Texas, Washington, California, New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Virginia and Pennsylvania, according to the report. In New York, there were 308 incidents during 2020, including 16 in New York City. Three groups were responsible for a majority of the propaganda, the report said. In fact, about 92 percent of items were distributed by Texas-based Patriot Front, the New Jersey European Heritage Association, and the Nationalist Social Club, which was founded in Massachusetts. The remaining propaganda distributions — roughly 7 percent of the national total — were linked to a range of neo-Nazi groups including 14 First, Folks Front, National Alliance, and the now-defunct Moonkrieg division, in addition to white supremacist groups including the Hundred Handers and now-defunct American Identity Movement. Despite a nationwide increase, the number of incidents reported on college campuses decreased, falling from 630 incidents in 2019 to 303 in 2020. This was likely due to coronavirus closures and restrictions, the report said.