Several articles have been written in response to recently released FBI hate crimes report, but this piece from the BBC explains why the FBI statistics tell you more about the prevailing mindset in Mississippi than they tell you about hate crimes.
Wide differences in reporting by the states has provoked criticism.
Louisiana reported 22 hate crimes, Alabama one, and Mississippi none, while California reported 1,297 and New Jersey 759.
Heidi Beirich, from the Southern Poverty Law Centre in Montgomery, Alabama, told the Washington Post that many states are dismissive of hate crimes and have different ways of classifying what constitutes a hate crime.
“That’s one example of why hate crime statistics are basically a worthless number. It’s not the FBI’s fault,” she said.
Given that Mississippi doesn’t believe a single hate crime was committed within its borders last year, it is hardly surprising that the nooses hung by the “Jena 3” didn’t make the FBI hate list. Southern officials believe in Jesus, but they don’t believe in the Tooth Fairy, and few, it seems, believe in hate crimes.
I have always argued that the proper response to the noose incident in Jena was education, not prosecution; but the act should constitute a hate crime in anybody’s book. It isn’t that far a drive from Jena to Mississippi.
Cudos to the Southern Poverty Law Center for deflating the FBI Report.
Friends of Justice 
Civil rights leaders have criticized the FBI hate crime report for grossly underestimating the number of hate crimes. The much more comprehensive Justice Department study, also released this month, lists 190,000 hate crimes per year compared to just 7,722 hate crimes in the FBI report.
However, the Justice Department statistics show that whites and Hispanics are more likely to be victims of hate crimes than blacks: “Per capital rates of hate crime victimization varied little by race or ethnicity: about 0.9 per 1,000 whites, 0.7 percent blacks, and 0.9 percent Hispanics.” The Justice Department numbers alos reveal that whites (including Hispanics) make up only 43 percent of hate crime offenders, even though they make up nearly 80 percent of the population. It identifies 38.8 percent of hate crime offenders as black, even though blacks make up only about 12 to 13 percent of the population. By contrast, the FBI numbers identified 58.6 percent of hate crimes offenders as white and 20.6 percent of hate crime offenders as black.
Hate crime legislation is dishonest, secular legislation. It supposes that it can legislate morality, or it can judge, without God’s help, what is in the heart of man.
Supposing I go out and brutally beat some Guat just because. As long as I use no hate filled verbiage, the best I can be arrested for would be assault and battery, which IS sufficient. But, if I do that AND unleash a bunch of hate filled rhetoric, then just because of my words, my arrest can include “”hate crime””. Or, I can go to a Guat, place my hands behind my back and unleash a hate filled barrage of Guat bashing words, I can be arrested for a “”hate crime””.
Not that I would do any of this but am just illustrating how ludicrous and unGodly hate crime legislation is.
An interesting topic was written about is why have the preachers abandoned their role in teaching/preaching to their flocks about hate, but instead, have yielded to the government for that role. Why is this, Alan?
I’m not sure when it was that Southern preachers were inclined to preach against hate in the sense indicated by the phrase “hate crime”. The church, tragically, was and is part of the culture of hate. Did any preachers, black and white, denounce the noose hanging in Jena, for instance; or did they ignore the subject? The closest they came was a mass unity service at the football field a week or so after the beating of Justin Barker. But even then, no one was allowed to reference the events of the day. If one preacher lamented young Barker’s fate, another preacher might have mentioned other recent events. Pastors, with few exceptions, reflect the moral ethos around them. The exceptions are known as prophets.