Racially motivated crimes against the Asian and Asian-American communities have increased worldwide and especially in the USA during the covid pandemic, with some blaming Asians due to the virus’s origins in Wuhan, China. Former US President Trump too added fuel to fire by referring to the pandemic as the “China virus” or “Kung flu”. The hate crimes range from hate-motivated graffiti on private property to physical assault to even murder.
For my second blog, I will be examining an article published by the Los Angeles Times on September 18, 2021. Titled “Orange County hate crimes up 35% in 2020”, the article reports on a study conducted by the nonprofit, Orange County Human Relations Commission, regarding the increase in hate crimes and racial violence during the 2020-2021 fiscal year.
While the article is correct in identifying the significant increase in hate crimes in 2020, motivated by anti-Asian sentiments during the pandemic, as highlighted in the OCHRC report, it’s gotten the numbers all wrong.
The article correctly points out that hate crimes in Orange County have increased by “35%” which is “the largest annual jump in at least a decade”. However, it fails to clarify that this stat refers to the total number of hate crimes. The increase in hate crimes against just the Asian population is 40%.
Another place where the article falls short is in identifying the distinction between hate crimes and hate incidents as understood by the state law in California. Both hate crimes and hate incidents are “motivated by hate or bias toward a person’s actual or perceived disability, gender identity, nationality, race or ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation”.
However, while hate crimes are criminal offenses, behaviors classified as “hate incidents” are often protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of expression. If such behaviors escalate or pose a threat of violence, they are then treated as a “hate crime”, and the perpetrator can be prosecuted on these grounds. This distinction between hate crimes and hate incidents is necessary to draw conclusions from the statistics, as the report itself indicates.
In 2020, 112 hate crimes and 263 hate incidents were reported in Orange County. Hence, while the total increase in hate crimes is 35%, the total increase in hate incidents is 69%. Moreover, for the Asian population specifically, the increase in hate incidents is 1800%! By not reporting this astounding stat, the article is downplaying the significantly high threat against Asians following the pandemic.
Although the article has gotten the statistics wrong, even when it only required a simple copy-paste directly from the report, it’s successfully identified the news (increase in hate crimes and hate incidents), the cause (anti-Asian racial prejudice following the pandemic), and the problem even within these astounding numbers (hate attacks remain underreported).
Sources:
2020 Orange County Hate Crime Report. (2021). Orange County Human Relations Comission. https://www.occommunityservices.org/sites/occs/files/2021-09/Hate%20Crime%20Report%202020.pdf
Do, A., & Fry, H. (2021). O.C hate crimes up 35% in 2020. The Los Angeles Times. https://www.pressreader.com/usa/los-angeles-times/20210918/page/95/textview
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-56218684