Hate crime definition: “A crime, typically one involving violence, that is motivated by prejudice on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, or other grounds.” The legal system applies this standard to stiffen penalties for various offenses. In other words, if an assault charge in Illinois carried a 2 to 5 year sentence but was committed based on the hate crime perimeters, it might add an additional two years to the convicted person’s sentence. Of course, penalties for all crimes are based on each state’s statues.
Because of the Jussie Smollett’s situation, the phrase hate crime has been thrown around a lot. Since Trump took office, Democrats have been claiming hate crimes are up substantially and it’s a direct result of his alleged hatred of people based on gender, race, and sexual orientation. Of course, there weren’t allegations throughout his life that he was racist or homophobic, only when he ran for election and way more so when he won the election.
The fact is, Trump has been great when it comes to helping women in business. He’s had women in key roles for years. His campaign manager was the first female to help win a presidential election. There’s no evidence he’s ever not hired someone because of their sexual orientation or fired them because of their sexual orientation; a little something Democrats don’t want people to know. The thing is, Trump’s greed has kept him from negatively impacting any of these protected groups. If someone could make him money, he hired them. It’s how he’s rolled for decades.
I do know in watching interviews of him back in the 70’s, that he was sexists, he had that Hugh Hefner Playboy vibe, but it was the times. Just my opinion, but I think judging people from their past behavior based on today’s political correctness baseline, isn’t fair. I know I believed things when I was a young adult from the Midwest, that I no longer believe now. It’s human nature. Anyhow, Trump has never been liked by everyone, but he didn’t become an “evil person,” until he won the presidency. If he were evil, I’m sure that all the people who are demonizing him now, wouldn’t have gone out to dinner with him or attended events with him, or asked him for money. This includes Pelosi and Schumer.
Back to hate crimes in general. I’ve heard countless times, especially over the last few weeks, that hate crimes in the U.S. are skyrocketing. The statistics that liberal political pundits are sharing make it sound like things are out of control. But are they? First, if you try to research hate crime statistics through Googling, you’re going to notice that it’s virtually impossible for a couple of reasons. One, the data hasn’t been statistically viable meaning hate crimes weren’t tracked by law enforcement agencies for years and not all police stations around the country have been turning in data. The FBI doesn’t run law enforcement across the country, so they’ve kindly asked for it and more and more places are complying.
With the above in mind, I want you to think about something that really bothers me (and it’s not just about this issue), and that is there are organizations who act like they have viable statistics and it’s these organizations that liberals are using to make the claims that they are about hate crimes being systemic across the country and on the rise significantly. One of those places is The Center for the Study of Hate located at California State University. They don’t have enough people to possibly chase down the very data that the FBI is trying to get their hands on.
I investigated it and found they only sourced information from ten cities across the entire United States yet are touting their report as national statistics on hate crimes and since it fits the liberal narrative, Democrats are using it. They’re spouting off on places line CNN and MSNBC that we have an epidemic of violence against minority groups. How many people do you think know that accurate data on hate crimes isn’t available?
So, although not perfect, there’s only one place to go for hate crime data and that’s the FBI, but even their data is tricky unless you pay attention. First let me give you some numbers directly from them. There were 8,493 victims of hate crimes in 2017 (2018 numbers aren’t in yet). The distribution of these crimes was 59.6% of victims were targeted because of their race, 20.6% percent were targeted because of their religion, 15.8% percent were victimized because of their sexual orientation, and 1.9% were victimized because of their disability. There were a few people that were in other categories (a small percent), that rounded out the 100% but almost every crime is listed above.
The next question is, what were the crimes? Were they assaulted? We’re they robbed? Were they murdered? Here you go: Of the 5,084 hate crime offenses classified as “Crimes Against Persons,” in 2017, 44.9% were for intimidation, 34.3% were for simple assault, and 19.5% were for aggravated assault. A simple assault is carried out by a threat of bodily harm coupled with an apparent, present ability to cause the harm while an aggravated assault means actual contact. There were 23 rapes and 15 murders in 2017.
There were 3,115 hate crime offenses classified as “Crimes Against Property.” The majority of these (74.6%), were acts of destruction/damage/vandalism. Robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and other offenses accounted for the remaining 25.4%.
It would be impossible to read through the above statistics just one time to get a clear indication of the story, but this is my read on it. I’ve never been a victim of a crime so I’m sure any type crime isn’t pleasant but if you reference the data from the FBI, there’s just not a lot of serious hate crimes being committed. If we look at all crimes involved that were classified as hate, it only represents around .08% of crimes in our country. There’s absolutely no real data that supports hate crimes are systemic. Keep in mind, I’m referencing the best database out there, the FBI’s.
Now usually Democrats and these liberal political pundits in general, are staying away from FBI data unless they can take a little piece of information and spin it. I’m not doing this, that’s why I gave you the actual data. But let me give you an example of one of their sneaky tactics. Some will say that according to FBI data that hate crime is up substantially, without saying what substantially means. For a Democrat, if an issue matches their narrative, they could think that 4% means substantially.
But their biggest trick is to say hate crime is skyrocketing without mentioning that more law enforcement offices are giving the FBI data. Of course, the numbers would be up with more reporting but that doesn’t mean hate crime is up. It is what it is, and we don’t know the actual numbers. But of the data that has been collected, we know that most hate crimes are non-violent and statistically speaking, there just aren’t that many. It’s easy as comparing it in your world. How often do you hear news stories about hate crimes in your area? If you’ve had any, do you feel like it’s getting worse? My guess is no.
The bottom line is that hate crimes do exist but they’re a fraction of a fraction of a percent, of crime in our country. Of course, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t pay attention to it, it’s just that with limited time in our lives to address problems, we should fish where the fish are so to speak. There are way more important issues we could tackle than this issue.
I can’t say everyone who is claiming there’s a hate crime epidemic is intentionally lying, they could simply be accepting the reports where they get them because they fit their narrative, but regardless, they’re hurting our country by not performing due diligence. This is one of the reasons why the phrase "fake news," was coined. Due diligence was an ethical standard in the industry but in many cases it's no longer being applied.
Now everyone wants to be the first to get a good story out. Not only to demonstrate their relevance in a very crowded media, but also to spin the story in a way that matches the ideology of their reader/viewer base. In other words, outlets like The New York Times will definitely have a spin that fits their liberal base and Breitbart will have a conservative spin for their conservative base. Same story, yet people around the country are having it interpreted for them differently and if they don't use common sense and logic, they can often miss the true story. Both sides think they know the truth, but do they? Are we fighting over issues that have been hyped by media outlets because that's how they make their money?
It sure is the case when it comes to hate crimes. Many Democrats know the truth about the FBI statistics and they don’t care; they’re willing to divide our country for political gain. Don’t you find this scary? I hope that if the issue comes up that you’ll educate others to the false narrative being spun. We’ve got to fight the good fight. We’ve got to step up and use whatever means we have at our disposal to protect our country from those who want to shape it for one real sole purpose and that is to gain and keep themselves in power.