Unreported hate crimes, not hoaxes, are the real cause for concern
The notion that the majority of hate crimes are hoaxes, as people are claiming, is absolutely ridiculous.
We know that hate crimes are severely underreported and that the Department of Justice Bureau of Statistics estimates that an average of 250,000 people are victimized by hate crimes every single year.
We also know that false reports are extremely rare and make up a tiny number compared with the many thousands of hate crimes that the federal government says go unreported.
The fact that false reports typically generate sensational headlines should not distract from the level of hate violence in the U.S. and we shouldn’t let the far right use these few examples to undermine the real issue — that the hate crimes reported by the FBI have shown a disturbing uptick in hate crimes being reported across the country, which is just the tip of the iceberg.
