Hate crimes in the US jumped 11.6% in 2021, majority against Blacks

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: News websites
14 Mar 13:46

This new data marks the first time the FBI has confidently and publicly reported hate crimes since it began using a new data collection system.

Supporters of the Asian American community at a rally in New York City in 2021. (AFP)

A new report released by the FBI on Monday shows that over 10,000 cases of hate crimes were reported during 2021, amounting to an 11.6% overall increase and a 31% increase from the year before.

In 2021, 64.5% of victims were targeted on account of their race or ethnicity, as the report noted that African Americans constituted the largest number of victims.

According to a separate analysis, anti-Black crimes were followed by those against white people, Jews and then Asians. The FBI also registered 152 hate crimes against Muslims.

This new data marks the first time the FBI has confidently and publicly reported hate crimes since it began using a new data collection system.

In a press release, the FBI said, "Of the 8,327 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in the updated 2021 dataset, 43.2 percent were intimidation, 35.5 percent were simple assault, and 20.1 percent were aggravated assault,”

The FBI said that in order to identify statistically significant trends, they usually track he 130 most populous cities across 16 states. But for this report, only 96 cities provided relevant data.