Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Pattern Ghost]

http://www.chucklorre.com/index-bbt.php?p=542

[Pariah]

Appointing cronies and loyalists to Cabinet positions?

 

Way to bust the status quo, Mr. Trump.

 

:|

[Iuz the Evil]

Some Perspective:

 

http://reason.com/blog/2016/11/18/election-hate-crimes-hoaxes-hyperbole

 

Soar.

So author indicates that non-violent racially motivated crime increased, can't determine rate of violent racially motivated crime (although he didn't find evidence). Felt it was important to point out a small portion of such crimes are hoaxes. Laments some groups are afraid, denies cherry picking data.

 

I'm not super reassured by that. I mean, I guess it's better the hate crimes are maybe largely nonviolent? If I was one of those folks being targeted, I'm not loving the tone.

 

I do like the article is trying to provide facts, the conclusions it hints at aren't the ones I'd draw from the facts presented.

[Old Man]

Appointing cronies and loyalists to Cabinet positions?

 

Way to bust the status quo, Mr. Trump.

 

:|

 

Well, he is banning lobbyists from taking cabinet positions.  So the lobbyists in his cabinet have to temporarily retire their lobbyist credentials before they start work.  Baby steps.

[megaplayboy]

So author indicates that non-violent racially motivated crime increased, can't determine rate of violent racially motivated crime (although he didn't find evidence). Felt it was important to point out a small portion of such crimes are hoaxes. Laments some groups are afraid, denies cherry picking data.

 

I'm not super reassured by that. I mean, I guess it's better the hate crimes are maybe largely nonviolent? If I was one of those folks being targeted, I'm not loving the tone.

 

I do like the article is trying to provide facts, the conclusions it hints at aren't the ones I'd draw from the facts presented.

I'd like to think that we don't have to wait until there's a body count to be concerned about any rise in hate speech, harassment and intimidation.

[TheDarkness]

I'd like to think that we don't have to wait until there's a body count to be concerned about any rise in hate speech, harassment and intimidation.

Actually, a spike in hate crimes already began during the campaigns.

 

Using the FBI stats for victims of hate crimes from comparing 2014's numbers to 2015's:

 

30% increase in victims of racially motivated hate crimes, 22% increase in victims hate crimes involving religion, with, using the FBIs stats, a 67% increase in hate crimes specifically toward muslims.

 

12% rise due to 'anti-jewish bias'.

 

8% rise in hate crimes against blacks.

 

7.5% rise in hate crimes against whites.

 

33% reduction in anti-asian hate crimes.(So, be Asian as soon as possible.)

 

Assuming the stats for each group match the trend in the aggregate, as to the nature of these crimes:

 

2015 saw an 11% rise in the numbers of hate crimes against a person, while hate crimes against property stayed almost exactly the same.

 

15% rise in hate crimes taking the form of aggravated assault.

 

12% rise in hate crimes taking the form of simple assault.

 

6% rise in hate crimes taking the form of intimidation.

 

Double digit increases in quite a few categories. 67% increase for muslims..

 

To clarify, there was a 67% increase in the number of incidents of hate crimes based on anti-islamic sentiments, a 69% increase in the number of offenses in that category, and a 54% increase in the number of offenders in that category alone.

 

Considering that Brexit saw a rise in such crimes, it is highly unlikely that that will not be the case here, although we may have seen our rise already, and likely have been having elevated levels of such crimes post election.

 

To further clarify, you have to go back to just after 9/11 to find comparable stats on hate crimes against muslims, so, no, people who are saying there's no reason to believe there is an elevated level of them don't actually have a strong argument, since there was already an elevated level of them, starkly elevated, in fact, whose explanation tends to include, among them, anti-immigrant sentiments that existed before, but which were, for some reason, whipped into a frenzy during a time that coincided with the campaign. It is highly unlikely that campaign rhetoric is not a factor. I would add empowering white nationalists likely did not help, either, since that is a group closely tied historically to actually doing hate crimes.

[Iuz the Evil]

Actually, a spike in hate crimes already began during the campaigns.

 

Using the FBI stats for victims of hate crimes from comparing 2014's numbers to 2015's:

 

30% increase in victims of racially motivated hate crimes, 22% increase in victims hate crimes involving religion, with, using the FBIs stats, a 67% increase in hate crimes specifically toward muslims.

 

12% rise due to 'anti-jewish bias'.

 

8% rise in hate crimes against blacks.

 

7.5% rise in hate crimes against whites.

 

33% reduction in anti-asian hate crimes.(So, be Asian as soon as possible.)

 

Assuming the stats for each group match the trend in the aggregate, as to the nature of these crimes:

 

2015 saw an 11% rise in the numbers of hate crimes against a person, while hate crimes against property stayed almost exactly the same.

 

15% rise in hate crimes taking the form of aggravated assault.

 

12% rise in hate crimes taking the form of simple assault.

 

6% rise in hate crimes taking the form of intimidation.

 

Double digit increases in quite a few categories. 67% increase for muslims..

 

To clarify, there was a 67% increase in the number of incidents of hate crimes based on anti-islamic sentiments, a 69% increase in the number of offenses in that category, and a 54% increase in the number of offenders in that category alone.

 

Considering that Brexit saw a rise in such crimes, it is highly unlikely that that will not be the case here, although we may have seen our rise already, and likely have been having elevated levels of such crimes post election.

 

To further clarify, you have to go back to just after 9/11 to find comparable stats on hate crimes against muslims, so, no, people who are saying there's no reason to believe there is an elevated level of them don't actually have a strong argument, since there was already an elevated level of them, starkly elevated, in fact, whose explanation tends to include, among them, anti-immigrant sentiments that existed before, but which were, for some reason, whipped into a frenzy during a time that coincided with the campaign. It is highly unlikely that campaign rhetoric is not a factor. I would add empowering white nationalists likely did not help, either, since that is a group closely tied historically to actually doing hate crimes.

Can you link those stats? I have a staff meeting on this Monday, data would be extremely helpful but I'll need to source it. I could research it, but am fighting a migraine.

[Old Man]

Southern Poverty Law Center: Hate crime spike since election worse than post-9/11

 

Direct SPLC link: 701 Hate Incidents Since Election (as of 11/16)

[TheDarkness]

https://ucr.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2014/topic-pages/victims_final

 

That's the victim's page for 2014, each category has the link for the table it's from, which is organized the same as 2015's stats(just with different tables).

 

Here's 2015:

 

https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015/topic-pages/victims_final

 

Now, a highly relevant stat that I only looked up for anti-muslim hate crimes in 2015 from the tables, was any increase in the number of offenders. I did not do that for the other metrics, but it is an important measure for determining whether these behaviors are becoming more widespread, or if it is possibly just the usual suspects doing more of them. The stats suggest that there are more people doing such hate crimes, that those who do them are doing more of them, and that that increase is almost entirely in the realm of hate crimes against people, NOT property.

 

A lot of the data is broken down in the tables as the number of incidents, the number of offenses(as one incident could include multiple offenses), the number of victims, and the number of offenders.

 

Also, keep in mind, the numbers I put up I did originally in a facebook discussion, do not take those for being exact, they should be pretty close to the mark, but for a presentation, I would have done more exact measurements.

 

I would love to see what you come up with from the same data.

[Iuz the Evil]

I'm gonna run that to the Public Health Epidemiologist and see what they grind out in terms of prevalence/incidence/etc. Doing a lot of work on social determinants of health these days and implicit bias.

 

I'll let you know what comes out.

[TheDarkness]

I'm gonna run that to the Public Health Epidemiologist and see what they grind out in terms of prevalence/incidence/etc. Doing a lot of work on social determinants of health these days and implicit bias.

 

I'll let you know what comes out.

Cool, in the, 'good work' vs. 'I'm so glad we have this detestable crud to research' sense of the word.

 

Also, the links I sent you were for the victims page, there are links on there for state by state breakdowns of reportage, pages focused on the offenders, etc.

[TheDarkness]

Also, table 13 has state by state reportage of incidents and offenses by quarter, if you need timeline info beyond annual info.

[薔薇語]

Do you know that old saying: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics? 

The article I linked to didn't do as good a job at expressing the point as I had hoped. Here were the big take aways from it and a couple more:

1 - There had been a meme going around saying how the crime statistics that got released reflected rates of violence resulting from this election cycle and President Elect Trump. This piece of information is a misleading factoid (looks like a fact but isn't). The Crime statistics were from 2015. Donald Trump had hardly become more than a blip. The last half of 2015 has him starting to garner real attention but I hardly think one could draw a link from a year's worth of data in aggregate and the slow rise of President Elect Trump. 

2 - The change in numbers did go up but not by all that much. Of course any incident is tragic but relatively minor fluctuations are always to be expected. And seeing a one time change from 2014 to 2015 does not a trend make (more on this at the end). 

3 - Hysteria and Hyperbole do no one any good: pt 1. When one says "hate crime", if the listener is anything like me they picture images of gay men being drag by cars and beaten to death. Of course I know intellectually that the term "hate crime" encompasses far more than that extreme example that is burnt into my memory, but incidents of someone yelling an epitaph out a window while driving do not readily spring to mind. We should keep in mind the power of that phrase when we throw it out there. 

4 - Hysteria and Hyperbole do no one any good: pt2. Repeating stories one hears through the grape vine is a sketchy practice. Like any game of telephone, there is a lot of room for mistakes to be made and facts to be lost. I believe the linked article mentioned the black guy who spray painted his own house with what appeared to be an extreme and racist message. He did this in protest to a court case he lost and before the election to which it had no connection. But the grapevine morphed that into a rather terrible incident. Spreading these rumors on mass when they aren't true builds up unnecessary anxiety in people and might actually embolden some folks. 

5 - A return to statistics. One thing the article didn't do that it should have was to give us a longer picture of hate crimes in the US. It mentioned the incidents from last year but didn't think to discuss the 5 or 10 year pattern in the US. Compared to 2014, there was an increase of about 0.23 incidents per 100k people. A small increase but an increase none-the-less. But how does that compared with our 5 year average? Well, if you think it is above average, you are incorrect. We are still actually down compared to our 5 year average. The rate of HateCrime incidents in total (attacks on person or property) was at about 2.061/100k compared to a 5 year average of 2.12/100k. 2014 actually happened to be a blip in that it was the biggest deviator from the 5 year average. 2013 was down from 12 (although there is some wonkiness with with the 2012 data). 14 was down from 13. 15 saw an increase but is STILL down compared to 12. 

---

Ultimate take away: there are most certainly hate crimes occurring. But we don't actually have hard data to prove any significant increase for 2016 compared to 2015. We should be cautious in reporting news we are biased to believe and have too few facts on. Hysteria is our enemy. 

Soar. 

-My numbers come from the FBI UCS. I plopped the numbers into excel to get the population rates and averages. 

[csyphrett]

Trump settled his lawsuits for the Trump U for 25 mil

CES

[Iuz the Evil]

http://www.cnn.com/2016/11/10/us/post-election-hate-crimes-and-fears-trnd/index.html

[TheDarkness]

Do you know that old saying: There are lies, damned lies, and statistics? 

 

The article I linked to didn't do as good a job at expressing the point as I had hoped. Here were the big take aways from it and a couple more:

 

1 - There had been a meme going around saying how the crime statistics that got released reflected rates of violence resulting from this election cycle and President Elect Trump. This piece of information is a misleading factoid (looks like a fact but isn't). The Crime statistics were from 2015. Donald Trump had hardly become more than a blip. The last half of 2015 has him starting to garner real attention but I hardly think one could draw a link from a year's worth of data in aggregate and the slow rise of President Elect Trump. 

 

2 - The change in numbers did go up but not by all that much. Of course any incident is tragic but relatively minor fluctuations are always to be expected. And seeing a one time change from 2014 to 2015 does not a trend make (more on this at the end). 

 

3 - Hysteria and Hyperbole do no one any good: pt 1. When one says "hate crime", if the listener is anything like me they picture images of gay men being drag by cars and beaten to death. Of course I know intellectually that the term "hate crime" encompasses far more than that extreme example that is burnt into my memory, but incidents of someone yelling an epitaph out a window while driving do not readily spring to mind. We should keep in mind the power of that phrase when we throw it out there. 

 

4 - Hysteria and Hyperbole do no one any good: pt2. Repeating stories one hears through the grape vine is a sketchy practice. Like any game of telephone, there is a lot of room for mistakes to be made and facts to be lost. I believe the linked article mentioned the black guy who spray painted his own house with what appeared to be an extreme and racist message. He did this in protest to a court case he lost and before the election to which it had no connection. But the grapevine morphed that into a rather terrible incident. Spreading these rumors on mass when they aren't true builds up unnecessary anxiety in people and might actually embolden some folks. 

 

5 - A return to statistics. One thing the article didn't do that it should have was to give us a longer picture of hate crimes in the US. It mentioned the incidents from last year but didn't think to discuss the 5 or 10 year pattern in the US. Compared to 2014, there was an increase of about 0.23 incidents per 100k people. A small increase but an increase none-the-less. But how does that compared with our 5 year average? Well, if you think it is above average, you are incorrect. We are still actually down compared to our 5 year average. The rate of HateCrime incidents in total (attacks on person or property) was at about 2.061/100k compared to a 5 year average of 2.12/100k. 2014 actually happened to be a blip in that it was the biggest deviator from the 5 year average. 2013 was down from 12 (although there is some wonkiness with with the 2012 data). 14 was down from 13. 15 saw an increase but is STILL down compared to 12. 

 

---

 

Ultimate take away: there are most certainly hate crimes occurring. But we don't actually have hard data to prove any significant increase for 2016 compared to 2015. We should be cautious in reporting news we are biased to believe and have too few facts on. Hysteria is our enemy. 

 

Soar. 

 

-My numbers come from the FBI UCS. I plopped the numbers into excel to get the population rates and averages. 

The problem with discounting statistics, and then using statistics, should be obvious.

 

1. Memes are not the source of the contention. And not all the crime statistics from where you gathered them are in aggregate by year, as I pointed out in the post directly before you posted. Further, June of 2015(end of the second quarter) was when Trump began his rhetoric about the wall. He was not just a blip for 2015. Nor are most sources solely crediting him, but it is rather difficult to explain a 67% rise in hate crimes against muslims during that period without his campaign rhetoric playing a part.

 

2. YOU are playing a statistical game here as bad as the meme you are criticizing. You are working with overall totals, and ignoring details. Hate crimes DID go up for a number of specific groups by a significant margin, which I already summed up earlier. You will find no expert who is going to say a 67% increase is insignificant. Nor 12%, nor 8%. Further, the closest comparable political event to the election, Brexit, DID see an increase in hate crimes motivated by those events, so it is not unreasonable to predict similar results.

 

3. Your entire point three focuses on the increase in intimidation hate crimes(and summing them up as someone yelling something from a car, which is very unlikely to be reported to police) and totally ignores the marked increase in both simple assault and aggravated assault. In effect, you begin by criticizing hyperbole, and then your entire point is hyperbole.

 

4. We're talking about crime statistics, but if we want to talk about fake news and hyperbole, we should include stories discounting even the possibility of increased hate crimes on muslims, blacks, LGBT folks and hispanics IN THE FACE OF ACTUAL STATISTICS THAT SHOW ACTUAL AND SIGNIFICANT INCREASES IN HATE CRIMES AGAINST THOSE EXACT GROUPS as perfect examples.

 

5. Given that the article was talking foremost about hate crimes against specific groups, and the statistics back the assertions, saying, 'no, don't worry, the aggregate hasn't changed that much, [it's just your groups that are being targeted a non-insignificant percentage more all of a sudden]' is actually not addressing the article at all. Statistically speaking, a 67% increase in hate crimes against a group, in this case muslims, is so far from what they, or any other reasonable American, should take as being insignificant, that one wonders why you would think that the aggregate should be the only relevant statistic.

 

Seriously, did you just try to discount a 67% rise in hate crimes against a specific group by not actually ever acknowledging the stat, while using the very tables that stat came from, in a conversation about that exact stat?

 

For hate crimes against muslims, as the article stated and as the data shows, 2015 was a spike not seen since after 9/11. It was also high for most other groups by a significant percentage.

[TheDarkness]

To actually examine the FBI statistics, 2015 had a 54% increase in the number of offenders committing hate crimes against muslims. Over the the five year span previously, 2014 plays a distant second to 2015 in the number of offenders in this category.

 

So more people doing such hate crimes against muslims by another highly significant amount.

 

Further, in the same five year span, 2014 AGAIN plays a distant second to 2015 in the number of offenses involved in the total number of incidents, with a 69% increase in 2015 over 2014.

 

So, more offenses per incident by another highly significant amount.

 

To be clear, 2015 is the first year hate crimes against Sikhs got a separate category from other muslims, so they are not included in this stat, though that category is a much smaller number.

[assault]

To be clear, 2015 is the first year hate crimes against Sikhs got a separate category from other muslims, so they are not included in this stat, though that category is a much smaller number.

 

Sikhs aren't Muslims, despite being targeted by Islamophobes.

[薔薇語]

To TheDarkness:

In response to my use of Meme: Perhaps there is some confusion here: I am not using meme to refer to "cute cat pic" or similar FaceBook / Twitter note. Rather that of a piece of 'knowledge'.

Aggregated data vs specific: When we are talking about numbers that are in the few thousands we can start to get some real clear trend lines of the overall social climate. But when we get to data of just 2-300, even small number changes have extreme percentage swings. To give a bit of a flippant example, from 2011 to 2012, we saw about a 60% increase in violence against disabled folks and over a 100% increase from 2010 to 2012. That is one catchy headline, but in raw numbers it was a shift of about 50 victims. While it is something to be concerned about for sure, when measured against the populations as a whole, it is a minor shift. Any number of factors outside of an increase in anti-Disable mindset could account for a raw number shift of 50 victims. That is why it can be troublesome to pull trends from small data sets. That is why, for example, national polls with less than 1000 people aren't considered reliable and 2200+ are more the gold standard. 

That said, lets look at what is considered to be some basic issues with President Elect Trump:

He started off his campaign being anti-immigrant and in particular anti-Mexican / Latino. 

Later on, especially with the terrorist attacks in Europe, a ramping up of Syrian activity, and the nightclub shooting in the US, he ramps up his anti-immigrant / Muslim rhetoric. 
He is constantly bashing on China and our relations with them. 

Given these things and your assertion that the increases in hate crimes can be attributed to him to some degree, lets look at data. 

Hispanic:
The 2010 to 2014 (5 year span) of data for Anti-Latino crimes shows an average yearly victims count of 523. 2015, despite Trump, saw a decrease of 25% overall. It stayed on par with 2014. 

Asian: 
The 2010 to 2014 (5 year span) of data for Anti-Asian crime shows an average yearly victims count of 177. 2015, despite Trump, saw a decrease of 23% overall. It was actually down quite a bit compared to the 2014 rate. 

Islamic (broken down even more):

The 2010 to 2014 (5 year span) of data for Anti-Islamic crime shows an average yearly victim count of 178. 2015 saw an increase of about 73% from the 5 year average. It seems to be ramping up a trend that was already in the data - 2010 was at 197 and went down to 2012's 155 before picking back up to 184 in 2014 (A /u/ shaped trend with us on the right side). 

It is of note that we had that micro trend (3 years) in increase prior to President Elect Trump. What could possibly explain that? Well, in 2012 we saw ISIS and their activities get major attention, the Syrian Conflict boil up, and continue on from there with Islamic Terrorist attacks in Europe and the US and eventually the Pulse Nightclub shooting. These are all major Islamic terrorists acts that seemed to coincide with the rise in anti-Islamic hate-crimes in the US. Do you think there could be a connection here? I do. 

However, from this last bit of data, people are trying to link President Elect Trump with that increase. But given his comments about Mexicans and Latin Americans, one would expect that if we can attribute an increase in Anti-Muslim activity, we should also find some increase in anti-latino crime but there was no significant increase only the decrease we have seen lead into 2014. But of course the contention is then that the degree to which President Elect Trump discussed Islam / Muslims and his rhetoric around it was not actually comparable. Okay, lets bite on that and say that they weren't and thus we shouldn't expect Trump's anti-Latino language (which was omni present) to actually affect hate crime rates. But here we come to the end of what we can actually extrapolate from the data available. We have some evidence to suggest that Donald Trump's comments don't have effect (Latino and Asian experience) and some evidence that they do (rise in Anti-Islamic) but that evidence is shady because it can also be explained by unrelated events (terrorist attacks) and belong to an overall trend (albeit an increase in that pre-existing trend). Also, given the timeline of President Elect Trump's campaign, if his comments had any impact on the last half of the year, that impact had to be extreme because he had such little time. His Muslim Ban, for example, didn't come about until late November to December of 2015. 

So, allow me to sum up the above:

The data is very small (300 victims this year). That makes pulling out actual trends from random fluctuations very hard under pristine conditions. 
The data can't show increase in 2 of the three groups that President Elect Trump focused on. 1 group I would expect to not show any trend (Asians) but the other group (Latinos) I would expect to show a trend if any trend could be attributed to Trump on the third (Muslim). Even accepting that they are not comparable for some reason, we have compounding factors (the existence of a trend prior to Trump and various foreign and domestic attacks) that muddy the data. In order to tease out what effects derived from Trump and not in response to other events would require very targeted data (explicit time point data pre and post attack and pre-post campaign event) with a very strong set of controls to ensure we are pulling out only Trump Related data. And given the extremely small data set, I highly doubt such numbers could be teased out. 
 

Now, going back to the other issue of the rise in crime in general, we can look at the actual victims that occurred. 

We saw an increase in victims of 73% over the previous 5 year average. What comprised that increase? While there are a variety of crimes available to look at, most of them don't occur in particularly large numbers (murder and rape are super rare, for example). So let's look at the 4 big categories: Aggravated Assault, Simple Assault, Intimidation, vandalism. The 5 year average for each of those is:

Agg. Ass: 16.4

Sim. Ass: 41

Intimidat: 59.8

vandal: 48.8

The 2015 victims count and percent change was: 

 

Agg Ass: 27 - 65%

Sim. Ass: 41 - 56%

Intimidat: 120 - 100%

Vandal: 76 - 55%

While all major types of HC increased, Intimation was by far the largest increase. It alone accounts for about 50% of the increase in 2015 compared to the 5 year trend.

I hope the above provided some context for what we have actually seen happen. Ultimately my paragraph about "Aggregated data vs specific" is the main point. It is hard to pull out meaningful trends from small data samples. Muslims have seen an increase (something I have never denied) but linking that to the rise of Donald Trump is sketchy at best. 

The major point of the Previous post was that while we are seeing increases, it should be kept in perspective. We will always see normal fluctuations in HC. Overall HC are quite uncommon (6 year average of 2.44 per 100k people - Less than our murder rate alone in the US: 3.9). These are things we should be trying to fix but hyping them up and adding hysteria to it all does not serve the communities affect (adding to their anxiety) nor us as a whole because we lose perspective and guidance on how to solve this. Nor does scapegoating it all serve anyone. 

Soar. 

Edit: In the original version of this, I stated "incidents" and not "victims". This was a mistake. I had been using Incident data in the previous post but used the victim data in this one and forgot to adjust my language accordingly. Side note: Victim data out paces incident data rather obviously. A single incident can account for multiple victims (like the Pulse night club, for example - one incident several victims). To give further context - in 2014 there were 154 incidents against Muslims. That was 184 victims (30 more victims than incidents). In 2015, there were 257 incidents against 307 victims.

[Iuz the Evil]

The conclusions one draws from data are subject to interpreter bias, obviously. Crimes of that nature are increasing, as are political speech excoriating those groups (including, but not limited to that of Trump). Chicken or egg, is one possible question. Would these candidates have found such popularity without this trend in such a closely contested election? Did these trends influence them?

 

Also, looking at behavior, you've got concerns expressed strongly around this subject by folks who have historically been victimized. Subsequent behavior includes appointing Sessions (!), the Breitbart white nationalism folks being linked to his inner circle, and so forth. It's the opposite of reassuring, and I can see no actual evidence supporting the other side of the ledger.

 

So I'm going to go with the actual prevalence/incidence scientists and say "not a good trend" and look to them to test these hypotheses. But in the meantime it is definitely not a good look.

 

None of that is hysteria. It's observation based on data and events. Others may of course, come to different conclusions. I do anticipate enough will share my concerns that this becomes a national discussion, but could be wrong.

[薔薇語]

"Not a good trend" is certainly a point even I think is easily pulled from the data. And that is not a hysterical claim. More the nation that the muslim population is under some great seige today that seems to be making its rounds on social media is. Its the nature of humans to find danger and amp that up - hence why most everyone thinks we live in an ever more dangerous world when in reality this is by far the safest time to have ever lived in history or pre-history. Again, there has been an increase and that should give us pause but we are still far from 911 levels and a Muslim in the US is still far more likely to be the victim of a normal murder (a moderately rare crime) than any type of hate crime (personal attack or attack on property or intimidation).

 

Soar.

[Old Man]

On the contrary, the SDLC has specifically said that the rate of hate incidents today is significantly greater than after 9/11, which was the last time they looked into it.

[薔薇語]

The SPLC is wrong if that is what they are saying in regards to the FBI data. We had 307 victims last year compared to nearly 600 in 2001. And that 2001 shot up from 36 the previous year. We did not hit anything near the rash of anti muslim crime we experinced in the aftermath of 911 in the whole of last year. And it is of note that 2002 saw a quick decline into what became the new normal (around 200 a year).

 

 

Soar.

[薔薇語]

Looking back, I Imagine the contention is in regards to the post election rate. It is here that I think it is important to recognize humans are really bad at processing data. If they are in an environment that is telling them they should expect an increase it doesn't matter what is actually happening, they're going to perceive an increase. That doesn't mean there isn't actually an increase but rather that the perception might be outweighing the actual evidence. The link you showed above didn't cite any actual individual evidence for hate crimes. They rested their case on two main points:１- that the number of phone calls they are getting has increased and 2 - that this feels like an increase over what it was 15 years ago.


It is important to note that getting a phone call is not synonymous with the commission of a hate crime. Considering that we've had known examples of misinterpretation, and outright lies, it is best to approach random phone calls with some caution. Of course this doesn't mean that every phone call is not a true case of a hate crime but that it is not a one-for-one ratio. Also I would imagine that there might be multiple phone calls for the same incident.

It is also important to recognize that this is hate crime in general that they are looking at. The linked article doesn't talk about Anti-Muslim crime exclusively when it talks about the number of phone calls they are getting. They've received about two hundred phone calls reporting incidences of hate crimes since the election. If we assume that every single phone call is accurate and does not repeat any incidents, we find ourselves at a rate of about 7000+ for the whole year. That is in line with year-to-year averages in hate crime in the US. Edit: This calculation is off. I got the date wrong on the report. Over a five day period in the US, there should be about 85ish hate crime incidents / 90ish victims. So assuming ever single call reflect a separate, accurate, and true crime there has been a doubling in the 4 day window. Whether this is accurate or reflects a new standard is yet to be seen. 

Soar.

[Old Man]

The SPLC is wrong if that is what they are saying in regards to the FBI data.

 

The SPLC is referring to their own data, not the FBI's.