The Definition of Hate

Way down yonder near the heart of Dixie, Tallahassee FL

Description

A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias,” the FBI says. “For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a ‘criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.’ Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.” Yet, the reported surge in “hate crimes” is purposefully including numerous minor incidents where one cannot deduce motive. It is unknown whether someone was targeted because of bias or if the incident was simply an everyday act of rudeness or callousness, which happens everyday to numerous people, especially in liberal cities, regardless of their racial, ethnic or religious backgrounds. When a white person is treated with rudeness, disdain, name-calling, spitting, etcetera, it is never catalogued, even if it is due to “bias” against people with Indo-European ancestry. This non-existent dataset means that the reported incidents never have fuller contextualization in a nation of 330 million residents. The group Stop AAPI Hate, an organization that attempts to expose bigoted behavior against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, is illustrative of the extremely tenuous claims and shoddy data coding that is being reported to purportedly substantiate that “hate crimes” are escalating at a rapid pace. A recent CBS News report on the stabbing of an Asian American man in New York, reminiscent of the way news organizations uncritically repeat data from the hard-left activist Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), shows the problematic nature of much ‘hate crimes’ reporting. “The stabbing comes amid a stark rise in attacks against Asian Americans, both in New York and across the country, fueled in part by misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic,” the report baselessly claims. “According to advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate, more than 3,000 hate incidents have occurred since the beginning of the pandemic.” If one looks at Stop AAPI’s latest report, one finds a host of “incidents” that reveal that the blaring headlines about a surge in “hate crimes” is including all manner of events that do not constitute egregious crimes such as murder, vandalism, or assault. As described by the group, the latest report “covers the 3,795 incidents received by the Stop AAPI Hate reporting center from March 19, 2020 to February 28, 2021”: Verbal harassment (68.1%) and shunning (20.5%) (i.e., the deliberate avoidance of Asian Americans) make up the two largest proportions of the total incidents reported. Physical assault (11.1%) comprises the third largest category of the total incidents. Civil rights violations — e.g., workplace discrimination, refusal of service, and being barred from transportation — account for 8.5% of the total incidents. Online harassment makes up 6.8% of the total incidents. Only 11% of the “hate incidents” reported by Stop AAPI constitute even physical assault, and the rest are subjective claims that are reliant on self-reporting. That means that at present, since the beginning of the pandemic, only about 417 incidents are “physical assault” crimes that would be processed by police or in criminal court. The civil rights violations, based again on self-reporting, constitute roughly 300 incidents. A brief look at some of the descriptions of the incidents really drives home the types of claims one can find in the database: My sister was shopping and wearing a mask. When she would look at certain merchandise, an employee would follow her and clean where she had touched. My mom noticed that she did not do this to any of the other customers, all white, only my sister. (Phoenix, AZ) I called a [rideshare] to go to the doctor (I was undergoing IVF – nothing COVID related). I was wearing a mask. When the driver saw me, he sped away and canceled the ride. (New York, NY) A white man got in my face and coughed on me twice and told me to go back to my country. (Portland, OR) Students from Colorado State University created a fake restaurant called “Ching Chong House” featuring dishes like “Mouse tail salad” and “Crispy Burnt Pug- Delicious Deep-fried dog body” and many more racist and offensive comments. (Fort Collins, CO) If we delve into the numbers further, we also find that the vast majority of the incidents being reported by Stop AAPI are in deep blue states, such as New York and California. These are the top “Hate States”: