Reports of hate crimes in California surged by over 17 percent in 2017, “the third straight year of double-digit increases,” according to the Sacramento Bee. Among the increases, data from the state’s attorney general’s office shows, have been crimes involving “anti-Latino bias,” which surged 52 percent.
“More than half of the hate crimes reported in California last year involved racial bias,” the Los Angeles Times reports, “and about 27% involved animus toward black people, the report shows. Hate crimes targeting victims based on race, sexual orientation and religion all increased sharply.” Experts are pretty sure where this is coming from, pointing to factors like “President Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric toward minorities and the resurgence of hate groups in the state.”
“I think people, particularly with bigots, they are now more emboldened and we are seeing this across a spectrum of data points,” said Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “If you look at bigoted social media posts, if you look at the number of white nationalist rallies across the nation and in California,” like Berkeley, the site of at least one recent white supremacist rally.
As Levin referenced, racists have been emboldened, with several viral examples from the state. Think “BBQ Becky,” the white woman in Oakland who called the police on black people trying to enjoy a meal, or Larry Lappin in Petaluma, the white man who harassed a Latino family enjoying Spanish-language music on the Fourth of July. “This is my country!” Lappin screamed at this family of U.S. citizens, who have family members who have served.
“Anti-Muslim, anti-Islamic and anti-Jewish hate crimes rose by 21 percent last year, to 207, up from 171 reported in 2016.” According to the Council on American-Islamic Relations California last year, hate incidents to the group “went up almost 50 percent between 2015 and 2016.”
“Our society is experiencing a rising climate of incivility, the emboldening of bigots and widening divisions,” said Joanna Mendelson of the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. “These numbers offer not only a gauge of those who choose to act on their hatred, but how much work there is still for us all to do in order to become a more inclusive society.”
As Daily Kos’s Kelly Macias wrote last year, “targets of increased hate crimes following Trump’s election have unsurprisingly been people of color, immigrants, Muslims, queer people and religious minorities—the very same groups he targeted on the campaign trail. What’s worse, it doesn’t look like the ‘Trump effect’ will be subsiding anytime soon.”
