LETTER: The numbers behind Las Vegas hate crimes

I read the Monday article headlined “Reports of hate crimes way up.” Reporter Sabrina Schnur and the editors of the Review-Journal may have a blind spot in their world view.

Hate crimes go multiple ways. Whites commit hate crimes against Blacks, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. But Blacks also commit hate crimes against whites, Hispanics, Asians and Native Americans. Hispanics commit hate crimes against Blacks, whites, Asians and Native Americans. And — you guessed it — Asians commit hate crimes against Blacks, whites, Hispanics and Native Americans. I see no mention of any hate crimes committed by people other than whites in the article.

The article states that in Clark County there were 34 hate crime cases based on race in 2020, with 21 of those victims being Black. This means there were 13 victims of racial hate crimes that were not Black. I presume these fell into one of the categories above, but there is no mention of them.

The article goes on to report that, nationally in 2019, 48 percent of all 4,930 hate crime victims were Black. If those numbers are accurate, there were 2,564 victims of racial hate crimes that were not Black. But, again, those people are completely ignored in the article.

Finally, to put this in perspective, the FBI reports there were roughly 1.2 million violent crimes committed in 2019. That means the 4,930 hate crimes make up less than one half of 1 percent of all crimes reported that year. This hardly fits the narrative that America is systemically racist.

I’d suggest articles like this are fanning the flames of racism rather than help extinguish them.