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Opinion: Sharp increase in California hate crimes targeting Asian Americans is appalling

Attorney General Rob Bonta, right, discusses the rise in hate crimes in California in Sacramento on Tuesday.
Attorney General Rob Bonta, right, discusses the rise in hate crimes in California at a news conference in Sacramento on Tuesday. The number of such crimes in 2021 was the highest since after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
(Rich Pedroncelli / AP)

Reported hate crimes also increase against LGBTQ community, Latinos, Jewish people and black people

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In the United States, hate crimes have a sad history of spiking after certain events, then broadly declining. According to FBI data, the terror attacks orchestrated by al-Qaeda on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, led to a stunning increase of more than 1,500 percent in hate crimes against Muslims that year. Such bigotry still exists, but the spike was short-lived. This led to hopes a rash of hate crimes against Asian Americans that began in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic originated in China would also subside.

Unfortunately, a new California Department of Justice report shows that not to be the case. Reported hate crimes against Asian Americans soared 177.5 percent statewide from 2020 to 2021, going from 89 to 247, after a similar increase from 2019 to 2020. This helped yield an overall increase of 33 percent in statewide hate crimes in 2021, with 1,763 reported. Hate crimes targeting the LGBTQ community, mostly against gay men, were up 48 percent; those targeting Jewish people jumped 32 percent; and those against Latinos increased 30 percent. The largest share of hate crimes in 2021 targeted Black people. They were up 13 percent to 513.

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Authorities stress that hate crimes — defined by the FBI as offenses motivated at least in part by a bias against a person’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, disability, gender or gender identity — are even more common. But some victims do not report cases because they assume nothing will be done to those responsible or, sadly, because the crimes are so common as to seem a part of life.

They should not be an accepted part of life. Everyone — starting with law enforcement authorities — must push back hard at the idea offered by some experts that such crimes are inevitable in an increasingly polarized world. Hate crimes are corrosive and should not be seen as something to endure.

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