The FBI has released its latest hate crime statistics. As is typical of these hyper-partisan times, the observer sees in them what they are conditioned to. The 2017 report acknowledges upfront that more police departments are reporting these incidents to the FBI, but fails to make the distinction as to whether or not this is related to a true proliferation of criminal activity inspired by hatred, or is because law enforcement agencies are becoming more responsive to federal requests for data.
Historically, the FBI ranks its investigative priorities in order to properly allocate resources. It considers hate crimes as the highest investigative priority in its civil rights program, which is ranked fifth in overall priority behind stalwart and omnipresent threats such as terrorism and foreign intelligence gathering.
With the release of this year’s report, part of the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Reporting Program, there is an acknowledged 17 percent increase in hate crime incidents when compared to 2016 statistics.
On its face, this should trouble us all. Black and Jewish Americans are the most frequent targets. Can this be the repugnant underbelly of a nation that has long prided itself on its tolerance and inclusion, but at times has failed to live up to the lofty ideals of its charter?
Could this also make us a nation of hypocrites? Is President Trump, a president who has wrapped himself in a cloak of “nationalism,” in part to blame for a seeming increase in violence targeting minorities?
For the political Left, this one is a ground ball. Of course Trump is responsible. He is, after all, a “racist” masquerading as the chief executive. His performance after Charlottesville left much to be desired. If you simply can’t find it within yourself to publicly denounce a loony white supremacist such as David Duke, well, that makes it difficult to defend your heart.
But unfortunately, as much as many have appraised Trump’s election victory as a masterful exercise in cynical partisan division and fearmongering, the Left somehow finds a way to say “Hold my beer!” Identity politics and political opportunism weren’t employed for the first time in 2016, and many fear that where it comes to assessing crime, particularly hate crime statistics, one needs to tread carefully and scrutinize closely.
Hate crimes are not as easy to track as straight homicide or robbery statistics. They are comprised of “thought crimes.” Investigators must intuit motive. Sometimes this may be a fairly simple exercise, as the perpetrator desires to make their hateful intentions known. But in many instances, the motivations aren’t as clearly discernible as a case of white-on-black or Gentile-on-Jew criminality.
Compounding this problem is the fact that along with this apparent uptick in hate crimes is the veritable proliferation of exploitative and opportunistic employment of racial hoaxes to aid a social-justice-warrior political cause or advance the notion that things are really worse than actual crime statistics indicate.
Yes, as difficult as law enforcement’s job already is, there are miscreants and troglodytes among us who believe they are playing “chess” to the rest of the country’s “checkers.”
Sometimes these individuals are clearly mentally disturbed, as with the case of James Polite in New York City, an African-American Democratic activist and former City Hall intern whose previous work included efforts involving hate crime legislative issues. The case was underreported in the press because the notion that an impoverished, gay black man who had been aided by a Jewish couple would vandalize a Jewish synagogue by scrawling “Die Jew Rats” and “Hitler” on its exterior is too fanciful for the mind to imagine and of course, doesn’t fit the premise that hatred and bigotry only works one way.
Indeed, racial and anti-Semitic hoaxes complicate things for law enforcement. They redirect limited resources that are required to disassemble the chicanery, and they add fuel to the ever-widening political divide.
The FBI takes them quite seriously, however, especially the ones that include threats of violence. Hoax threats are a federal crime.
They often proliferate on college campuses. Fox News compiled a “greatest hits” of 10 embarrassingly ignominious and debunked collegiate racial hoaxes in 2017. The rogue’s gallery piece de resistance rivaled Al Sharpton’s Tawana Brawley hoax in brazen crassness. The incident occurred at the United States Air Force Academy of all places, and saw a black cadet report a racist message targeting him in the barracks. Turns out it was a complete hoax, and the perpetrator was determined to be the reporting cadet himself. This hoaxer not only damaged the Academy’s reputation, he also victimized the institution’s superintendent, Lieutenant General Jay Silveria, whose speech denouncing hatred went viral when he called out the supposed racism by demanding, “If you can’t treat someone with dignity and respect, then get out.”
Some have claimed that their purpose in the reprehensible business of faking racism and anti-Semitism is to “spark a broader conversation,” as in the instance of rural Minnesota college St. Olaf, whose campus experienced a black female undergraduate called the N-word on a threatening, and wholly fabricated, note left on a windshield. When the hoax was exposed, you know what the author, another St. Olaf student, claimed was her intention? She wanted “to draw attention to concerns about the campus climate.”
Isn’t that rich?
Now, let’s add the clownish defense of “desirous of sparking a broader conversation about my pet issue” to the annals of two-wrongs-don’t-ever-make-a-right chidings of those who pretend to mean well, but, alas, somehow lose their morals along the way to proselytizing to the rest of us.
To be clear: Fearmongering and the exploitation of contrived incidents have long been the domain of demagogues and activists on both sides of the political aisle. Many have astutely discerned that fear drives folks to the polls — and that ultimately results in election victories. Exhibit A would certainly include the Trumpian stump speeches warning of “the caravan,” that supposedly included a marauding band of gangbangers and other undesirables traveling north to the border, with an expected breach date of, wait for it, Election Day.
But let’s not pretend that the purposeful misreading and cynical exploitation of the FBI’s hate crime statistics don’t have political ramifications as well. Hate crimes are a credible threat to our nation’s citizenry, and we should make every effort to ferret out those who would perpetrate them and eradicate this scourge on our society. But let’s not pretend that much of this isn’t politics as usual, the calculated presentation of crime statistic vagaries to drive your base to the polls. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take the threat of violence inspired by hatred seriously.
But let’s just call the current hue and cry what it is: The Right has its caravan, and the Left now has its FBI hate crime statistics.
That leaves the rest of us to tune out the noise and figure out the difference between what’s real and what’s pretend.
James A. Gagliano (@JamesAGagliano) worked in the FBI for 25 years. He is a law enforcement analyst for CNN and an adjunct assistant professor in homeland security and criminal justice at St. John’s University.
