FBI stats show race the top motivator for hate crimes in the U.S

November 29, 7:58 PMChicago Crime ExaminerDeborah O'Malley

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Graphic Courtesy FBI

The FBI has released the latest data on hate crimes in America and race continues to be the number one motivator.

Of the nearly 9700 hate crime victims in 2008, 51% were targeted because of their race.

The FBI stats show:

• 61% of the offenders were white
• 20.2% of offenders were black
• 11% were an unknown race      
• 72.6% were motivated by anti-black bias
• 17.3% were motivated by anti-white bias
• 5.5% were motivated by multi-race bias                                    

The  next highest victim category involved people who were targeted because of their religion. Those numbers break down to about 19.5% of all hate crimes. An overwhelming 65.7% of these hate crimes were anti-Jewish. 7.7% were anti-Islamic.

Sexual orientation was the motivation for 16.7% of hate crimes, while 11.5% dealt with issues of ethnicity or national origin and 1.0% involved disability.

There's been two case in the news locally regarding hate crimes. A suburban woman was recently charged with a hate crime for an incident in which she allegedly tried to pull the headscarf off of a Muslim woman. It has yet to be decided whether an attack on a Muslim man in Grundy County November 22 will also be prosecuted as a hate crime. Two men are charged with aggravated battery in that case.

For the complete 2008 FBI Hate Crime report go to: 2008 http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/hc2008/index.html