5 THINGS TO KNOW

About U.S. hate crimes

While the number of active hate groups in the U.S. has fallen in recent years, the hate crime rate remains steady and blacks remain the racial group most likely to experience racially motivated violence, according to statistics collected by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the FBI and other sources.

BLACKS ARE AT THE RECEIVING END

1 FBI hate crime data show more than 50 out of every one million blacks was the victim of a racially motivated hate crime in 2012, the highest among any racial group. This is almost certainly an undercount.

RATES HAVE STABILIZED

2 The Bureau of Justice Statistics provides the most comprehensive overall count of hate crime incidents. Its data, drawn from interviews with victims, shows the number has remained fairly constant over the past 10 years, hovering between 200,000 and 300,000 annually.

THE NUMBER OF ACTIVE HATE GROUPS HAS FALLEN

3 The Southern Poverty Law Center says the number of active hate groups — with “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics” — more than doubled from 457 in 1999 to 1.018 in 2011. Since then the number of active groups has declined to 784, probably thanks to an improving economy and law enforcement crackdowns.

MOST CONCENTRATED IN THE DEEP SOUTH, NORTHERN PALINS

4 Controlling for the population in each state, hate groups are concentrated most in the U.S.South and in the Montana/Idaho region.

HARDSHIP BREEDS HATRED

5 A 2002 review of hate crime literature by Princeton economist Alan Krueger looked at the economic determinants of hate crime. He concludes, “Rather than economic conditions, the hate crimes literature points to a breakdown in law enforcement and official sanctioning and encouragement of civil disobedience as significant causes of the occurrence of hate crimes.” But economists Matt Ryan and Peter Leeso found no relationship between the number of hate groups in a state and the number of hate crimes in that state. Instead, the primary determinants seem to be economic, “Our results suggest that unemployment and, to a lesser extent, poverty, are strongly associated with more hate crime, particularly crimes that are sexually, racially and religiously motivated,” they conclude.