New FBI Data: Minorities More Likely to Commit Hate Crimes than White People

New FBI hate crime statistics released on Monday indicate that minorities are more likely to commit hate crimes than White Americans. The data in question is sourced from more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies across the country.

The hate crime statistics broke down the demographic data of 6,406 hate crime offenders. 52% of the offenders were counted as white. It’s longstanding federal practice to usually count Hispanics in the category of White in demographic surveys, as the former is counted as an ethnicity as opposed to a racial category.

Queries of the United States’ precise racial and ethnic demography are hard to accurately survey, but the most recent US Census data indicates that non-Hispanic whites account for 60% of the national population.

The data indicates that White Americans are considerably underrepresented in the hate crime offender population.

A breakdown of motivations in recorded hate crimes reveals that race and ethnicity are the defining motive in 57% of cases. Religion and sexual orientation are the other two most common motives for hate-motivated offenses.

Black Americans were highly over-represented in the demographic profile of hate crime perpetrators, with 24% of offenders being counted as black.

Black Americans are considerably more likely to be made the victims of hate crimes than other demographic groups. Blacks were the victims 27% of the time (2,000 victims) in accounts of over 6,000 documented crimes, being represented almost double the national demographic of 14% in the broader American populations.

Jews were also disproportionately targeted in hate crimes targeting a religious group, accounting for 60% of the victims in these incidents.

The FBI accounted for 775 White victims of hate crimes, and 693 Latinos. (Hispanic affiliation was queried for demographic data of victims.)

An additional 14% of hate crime offenders were described as of being of the “unknown” racial demographic.