The Southern Poverty Law Center, along with the magazine DiversityInc, claims that hate crime statistics (they claim there are close to 190,000 hate crimes in America per year) show that there is a growing "white backlash" against minority gains in America.
But note how Byron York of NRO shows that there are, well, problems with their interpretation of the numbers. Fundamental--there are lies, damned lies, and then there are statistics, especially when it comes to ideologically charged issues such as this: "But what about that 190,000 number? Can that be true? Well, there is such a Justice Department study, "Hate Crimes Reported by Victims and Police." And it does say, based on victims' reports, that from July 2000 through December 2003 "an average of 191,000 hate crime incidents involving one or more victims occurred annually." What it does not do, however, is support the idea of a "surprisingly broad and deep white backlash against the gains of black America."For example, the study reported: "There were no significant differences in rates of hate crime vulnerability for racial or ethnic groups. Whites were victimized at a rate of 0.9 per 1,000, blacks at 0.7 per 1,000, members of other races at 1.4 per 1,000, Hispanics at 0.9 per 1,000, and non-Hispanics at 0.9 per 1,000. Moreover, the report says that "victims of violent hate crimes [ones in which victims actually saw the perpetrators] reported white and black offenders in close percentages."
Forty-four percent of the reported victimizations involved a white offender, while 39 percent involved a black offender. If the study is correct, hate crimes, at least those covered in the Justice Department report cited by the Times, are a bit more diverse than DiversityInc would have you believe."
