Despite Myths, Whites, Too, Are Often Hate Crime Victims

A little-noticed Department of Justice study found that rates of hate crime victimization vary little among racial groups. The 2005 study, based on data from the National Crime Victimization Survey and widely thought to be more accurate than other analyses, found that whites and Latinos were each victimized at the rate of 0.9 per 1,000 persons, while African Americans were slightly less victimized at a rate of 0.7 per 1,000.

The study did not directly examine the perpetrator rates of various racial groups, but the victimization data made clear that hate crimes are carried out by individuals of all races.

 In November, following a four-month investigation, police in Denver arrested 35 black men and teens and charged them with 26 racially motivated beatings and robberies in the city’s downtown area. Their alleged victims were all white or Latino males. Most of the suspects told police they were associated with the Rollin’ 60s Crips or the Black Disciples gang. The Rollin’ 60s Crips is the largest black criminal street gang in Los Angeles, police say. The Black Disciples was formed almost 40 years ago on the South Side of Chicago and is “one of the most violent of four African-American gangs” there, according to the FBI. Both also operate in Denver.

Another white-hating group called the National Black Foot Soldier Network recently heaped praise on Maurice Clemmons, the black man accused of murdering four white Lakewood, Wash., police officers as they sat in a coffee shop in November. The network — which says on its website that “all white people are terrorists” — called the killings a “protest against the racist regime of Lakewood police terrorists.” It also praised Lovelle Mixon, a black man who killed four police officers, three white and one Asian-American, in Oakland, Calif., last year.

Not all targets of black hate are white. Last November, a bombastic black Harlem preacher said he was visited by federal agents after he spoke in a YouTube video about the desirability of President Obama dying. James David Manning — a felon who holds a doctoral degree from his very own unaccredited theological seminary — is one of the shrillest voices contending that Obama wasn’t born in the United States and demanded in his video that Obama be tried for treason. “Put him in jail for the rest of his life,” Manning told his listeners, “or hang him.”