I'm not sure what world people live in who claim there is little racism today, all we would need is an economic disaster and they will come out of the walls. Actually they aren't too far away at any time. Having lived now in a big city and corporate America as long as I have it has lessened but it is still very evident especially among the uneducated. Maybe that is why people online feel it is no more. The piece below makes clear progress is slow coming.
'The Year in Hate Active U.S. Hate Groups Rise to 888 in 2007'
By David Holthouse and Mark Potok
"The latest annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) found that the number of hate groups operating in America rose to 888 last year, up 5% from 844 groups in 2006. That capped an increase of 48% since 2000 — a hike from 602 groups attributable to the exploitation by hate groups of the continuing debate about immigration. And it comes on top of some 300 other anti-immigration groups, about half listed by SPLC as "nativist extremist," formed in the last three years.
At the same time, FBI statistics suggested that there was a 35% rise in hate crimes against Latinos between 2003 and 2006. Experts believe that such crimes are typically carried out by people who think they are attacking immigrants."
http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=886
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/hcrvp.pdf
I have a problem with articles like these. The claim that the rate of hate crimes and rate of growth in hate groups increased is very misleading and causes people to reach incorrect conclusions. The one article claiming a growth in the number of hate groups -correctly points out there are more groups. But you have to get way into the article to discover that the primary reason for this is that several large groups splintered during this time period, resulting in smaller groups, sometimes MANY smaller groups. Same people involved, just different group name they operate under. In fact, there hasn't been a substantial growth even in the number of people who have joined such groups, much less any growth in the percent of all people who would join such groups. So it is misleading to present this as some kind of significant growth.
Secondly, whether ANY specific crime actually grew or not cannot be determined alone just by the number of those kinds of crimes without ANY context to the percentage it represents of ALL crime as well as in relation to the percent of population growth during that same time period.
If 48% of all people in a specific population end up getting married each year -and the population is 100,000 people -then you would expect 48,000 people to get married that year. If the population grows by 3% next year to 103,000 -and you find that 49,940 people have married -then in reality NOTHING has changed about the rate of marriage. It would be extremely misleading for any news media to report there has been a growth in the rate of marriage. If the population increases by 3% and the marriage rate dropped 1%, then you are still going to see 1,400 more marriages than the year before -even though the rate has DROPPED. This is how we are deceived by the way in which hate crimes are reported.
Hate crimes are nearly always reported by counting the number of hate crimes that occurred, comparing them to the number that occurred the year before -and if there are more, it is reported to be an increase in the RATE of hate crimes. But if taken totally out of context to any increase in population AND as a percent of ALL crimes, it is misleading people to believe something that just isn't true about hate crimes and Americans in general.
These articles aren't reporting that a greater percentage of all people now commit hate crimes than used to commit them. It isn't even reporting that hate crimes represent a higher percentage of ALL crimes that are committed -because neither of those is true at all and in fact, a slightly lower percent of all people commit hate crimes or join hate groups. But if either of those were true, THAT would represent a growth in hate crime and that would TRULY be alarming. But there has been no such increase. The percentage of all people who commit hate crimes has dropped slightly, and hate crimes still represent a relatively unchanged and small fraction of all crimes committed. But because our population grew at a higher rate than the drop in the percent of all people who commit hate crimes -that means there will still be an increase in the number of those crimes.
So how to portray the US as this seething hotbed of hatred, injustice and bigotry that is only getting worse and worse? With headlines trying to lead you to believe that a higher percentage of all Americans now commit hate crimes, and that a higher percentage of all Americans join hate groups etc. In reality, the increase in the NUMBER of hate crimes is entirely consistent with an increase in population and a slightly lower rate of hate crimes. Just like my example of marriage in a population -where the rate of marriage dropped 1% yet due to population increase, the actual number of marriages increased. That increase in the number of marriages in that population -was due entirely to population growth in no way represented a growth in the rate of marriage.
Now compare that to the very REAL rise in the rate of hate crimes in specific places elsewhere in the world -and some very alarming trends can be seen that don't exist here. Anti-semitism is a very real part of European history in a way it has never been a part of our own history. It is so deeply entrenched in Europe that it has never been eradicated and just subsides after violence, only to once again flare up and eventually lead to geat violence against Jews. And the percent of Europeans who admit to anti-semitic bigotry today -has risen so much and so fast in the past 6 years in Europe that anti-semitism hasn't been this high in Europe since 1939. Now THAT is an alarming growth.
