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On average, bias-motivated incidents in 37 major US cities increased nearly 39%, with the 10 largest metropolitan areas reporting a record 54.5% increase, according to an analysis of national police data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
Brian Levin, executive director of the center, said the upward trend in hate crimes extended into the first quarter of 2022 with bias incidents increasing by an average of 30% in 15 major cities and is likely to continue.
“Historically, in midterm election years, hate crimes almost always peak, or nearly peak, much later in the year, often in September and October, and the first quarter is usually significantly lower than the rest of the year,” Levin said. “This suggests a turbulent year-end of 2022 may be ahead.”
The university’s data, shared with la VOAoffer a look at hate incidents in 2021 and come months before the FBI releases its annual report on hate crimes.
While big cities account for a disproportionate number of hate crime incidents in the United States, they can be a predictor of the overall national trend, Levin said.
The FBI’s annual count is based on voluntary data submissions by more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies. The bureau said the 2021 data is scheduled to be released in the fall, a typical delay of several months.
Last October, the FBI reported that hate crimes rose to 8,263 incidents in 2020, the highest level in more than two decades.
The overall rise in hate crimes in 2021 came as anti-Asian incidents surged 224% to a record 369 incidents in 20 of the largest US cities, while anti-Jewish and anti-gay incidents saw increases of more than 50% up to 373 incidents, according to the data.
Attacks on Asians and other types of incidents have been on the rise since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, fueled in part, community activists and experts say, by rhetoric blaming China for the deadly virus.
The Stop AAPI Hate coalition, created during the pandemic to track bias incidents, received nearly 11,000 anti-Asian hate reports from March 2020 to December 2021.
More than 60% of incidents were reported by women, including women using public transportation, according to Cynthia Choi, co-executive director of Chinese for Affirmative Action, one of the founding partners of the Coalition Against Hate.
Asian women reported being verbally harassed, coughed on and spat on, physically assaulted, and denied entry to urban transit trains.
“What I see through the report is horrible things being said that are racist and sexist that I can’t even repeat to you now,” Choi said in an interview. “And of course there is always the fear that that kind of verbal harassment, that kind of profiling and racial targeting will turn into violence.”
The FBI defines hate crimes as crimes motivated by the perpetrator’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.
While most of the incidents tracked by Stop AAPI Hate did not rise to the level of hate crimes, violence against Asian Americans continued to rise.
In Atlanta, a 21-year-old man shot and killed eight people, including six women of Asian descent, at massage parlors in March 2021. Although the suspect, Robert Aaron Long, said he was motivated by sex addiction, he did not for racism, prosecutors see alleged anti-Asian animus.
In San Francisco, home to one of the largest Asian communities in the United States, several Asian Americans were violently attacked last year, including an 84-year-old man who died in January after being pushed to the ground.
The violence has rocked the Asian-American community. A Pew survey released this week found that more than a third of Asian Americans fear they may be threatened or attacked and have made changes to their daily routine because of that concern.
Hate crimes against Jews
The surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes came as renewed violence between Israel and Hamas in May 2021 sparked a wave of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.
Last month, the Anti-Defamation League reported that it had counted 2,717 anti-Semitic incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in 2021, the highest number since it began tracking such cases in 1979.
New York City, the city with the largest American Jewish population in the US, was particularly hard hit. Police data shows that hate crimes against Jews increased by 71% to 207 incidents in 2021.
Of the 88 attacks on Jewish victims reported to the ADL last year, more than half took place in New York, said Scott Richman, the ADL’s regional director for New York and New Jersey.
Visibly identifiable Jews, such as members of New York’s Hasidic community, were frequent targets.
In November, three teenagers were accused of attacking a 12-year-old Orthodox Jewish boy who was walking home with his 3-year-old brother. The New York Postciting authorities, reported that one of the girls slapped the girl before fleeing the scene.
“That was very disturbing,” Richman said.
Similar attacks on Orthodox Jews in New York have continued in recent weeks. Last week, a 32-year-old Hasidic man was punched in the face and head by a stranger while he was walking down a street in the Crown Heights section of the city.
“The Nazis should have killed you Jews,” the bomber allegedly said before taking off.
Richman said the incidents have terrified the community.
“People don’t know if they can walk the streets, what’s going to happen,” Richman said.
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