Robert Long in Atlanta must have been motivated by racial hatred because...well, just because — because he is white!  And a Christian!  Law enforcement, including the FBI, cannot find proof that it was a hate crime, but it must have been!

Well, let's look at some facts.

Blacks commit a far higher proportion of hate crimes against Asians than do whites.  According to the FBI, in 2019, there were 205 hate crimes against Asians, of which 46% were committed by whites and 15% by blacks (for some reason, the Department of Justice, the FBI's parent organization, says 52.5% were committed by whites and 23.9% by blacks in 2019).

In either case, using either the FBI or the DoJ statistics, since whites are 73% of the U.S. population and blacks 12.7%, whites are greatly underrepresented among the perpetrators of anti-Asian hate crimes (unless there is a vast number of black white supremacists that have so far escaped detection).

The FBI details the types of crimes that constitute hate crimes (see 5 and 6).  Note that that the three most common are "destruction/damage/vandalism, intimidation, and simple assault."  According to the DoJ, the breakdown in 2019 was as follows:

• Crimes against persons: 64.4%
• Crimes against property: 32.8%
• Crimes against society: 2.8%

In short, it is safe to say that the vast majority of the 205 hate crimes against Asians were not fatal.  Since there are 17.2 million Asian-Americans, that's around 1.2 hate crimes per 100,000.  I know, one is too many, but I would hardly call it an epidemic.

For comparison, 120 people were struck by lightning in 2019, 20 of them fatally, but 89% of fatalities are whites and 85% are males.  Disproportionate impact!  We must do all we can to increase the numbers of women and minorities getting struck by lightning!  Equity!  Equity!

I put this together using FBI and DoJ statistics available to the public.  Shouldn't journalists be capable of doing that?

Henry Percy is the nom de guerre of a writer in Arizona.  He may be reached at saler.50d[at]gmail.com.

Image: tookapic via Pixabay, Pixabay License.