In 2021, Los Angeles County hate crimes reached the highest level in 19 years.
That’s what the LA County Commission on Human Relations or LACCHR found in its annual hate crime report released Dec. 7. A few of the report’s significant findings include the following:
- Hate crimes have grown 105% since hitting an all-time low in 2013.
- Transgender victims experienced the highest rate of violence (93%), followed by homophobic (89%), racial (78%), and religious crimes (53%). Anti-transgender hate crimes rose 24% from 33 to 41.
- The 23% increase in hate crime was largely due to a 17% spike in racial crimes.
- As in past years, Blacks were grossly over-represented. Although Blacks constitute only 9% of county residents, they comprised 46% of racial crime victims. Anti-Black crimes jumped 30% from 169 to 219.
- Latino/as comprised 25% of racial victims and anti-Latino/a crimes rose 10% from 106 to 117.
In response, the LA County Board of Supervisors directed LACCHR to build a campaign to respond to acts of hate in the county, which resulted in the LA vs Hate initiative. Its three components include a community-driven marketing campaign to encourage residents and organizations to unite against and report acts of hate, a government hotline (via 211) for reporting all acts of hate — both incidents and crimes — and providing free assistance to all victims; and a network of community agencies that provide rapid response, support, healing, advocacy and hate prevention services.
Random Lengths News spoke to local community leaders and activists about the LACCHR report to get their thoughts on the report and on what more could be done, or what has not been considered — in addition to the LA vs Hate initiative — on the part of the county, city and others to address this rising issue.
NAACP president for San Pedro/Wilmington and psychology expert/life coach Dr. Cheyenne Bryant is calling for a lot more work to be done.
Dr. Bryant reacted to the report in an email by writing, “What this says is that segregation, poverty, and lack of resources are also at an all time high. It shows distrust within communities, law enforcement, and a failing plan at the hands of elected officials and community leaders to provide public safety.
Dr. Bryant contends that Los Angeles needs strong partnerships and in large numbers. She says this effort will take resources like mental health, healthcare, housing, much higher paying jobs, and education on how to avoid crime, and how to report crime if unavoidable.
She continued to say that individuals and communities need to be supported when they are victims of crime and not left to fend for themselves.
“This is where partnerships play a big role, because it takes more than one source to provide this level of care. The LA vs Hate campaign seems to provide much of the aforementioned. However, history continues to repeat itself such as having no effective plan of action and the lack of funding to carry the plan out.
Dr. Bryant asserted it isn’t that funding does not exist, it’s that funding isn’t being allocated to the despaired, marginalized, underrepresented communities. And that leaves those communities lacking resources, fending for themselves, and leading to crime being their last resort to level out the equity deficit.
“There is a difference between equality and equity. And, it is a human right to obtain both! Giving everyone the same amount will only create a bigger deficit. In order to level out the playing field within marginalized communities you have to provide resources that are uniquely tailored to their needs, not whatever crumbs are left over.”
Social justice activist Najee Ali reacted to the report by citing work that’s already being done. He said the City of Los Angeles under the leadership of executive director Capri Maddox, in the LA Civil + Human Rights and Equity Department, has done great work to help heal LA with initiatives that have come out of their office.
Only in its second year, the department’s latest initiative is “LA for All Healing Circles: Open Dialogues For A Better Los Angeles.” The Civil and Human Rights Equity Department describes the healing circles as open dialogues to foster stronger community bonds, support community-based organizations, and provide safe spaces for Angelenos to discuss the impacts of racial trauma, identity, systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic.
Ali has participated in the healing circles and says they are important because it brings residents together to discuss issues centered around race. Relevant themes and topics include mental health, addressing hate and growing togetherness.
“Right now, we’re focused on the city hall scandal where four prominent Latino leaders were engaged in racist and disparaging comments concerning their constituents,” said Ali. “The county needs to offer a similar program, or work with the city in conjunction, because until we participated in the healing circles there were no other city or county efforts to bring different communities together to discuss race. This effort is one of the tools that can help stop hate and descrimination.”
Ali noted they were honored to have a facilitator whose work is legendary in bringing people together, Avis Ridley-Thomas, wife of suspended city council member Mark Ridley-Thomas. Ali said Ridley-Thomas has been doing this work since the civil unrest of 1993 when she was instrumental in helping form The Days of Dialogue of which she is the executive director, as well as the Institute for Non-Violence.
“The African American population bore the brunt of the racist comments by Latino leaders,” Ali said. “This combined with the report indicates that African American populations have the most hate crimes. The report verifies that but our community hasn’t gotten the attention that the Jewish community or the AAPI community have received. But it’s our community that has been victimized the most by hate. So these healing circles came at a perfect time to help our community have a voice as well as be able to make a contribution to solutions.”
The award-winning journalist and political strategist, Jasmyne Cannick, reacted to the report by noting that its bullet points have not changed from last year, the year before or the year before that.
“Black people, the LGBTQ community and Jewish folk are always at the top of the list,” said Cannick.
Cannick’s chief complaint was the lack of intersectionality within the report. She noted these are only the numbers that were reported. Often, people do not report hate crimes.
“What’s lost when these reports come out is that intersection of black queer folks,” Cannick said. “I’m a Black lesbian but Black trans women, for example, are at the top of the list for hate crimes. That intersection is not talked about — it’s Black and queer but not black/queer [people]. We need to look more at the intersectionality of these situations because when you look at the number and you look at who the trans people are, the trans women in particular who are being attacked, you will find that the majority of them are Black. When you have Black and queer folks as your [numbers] one and two, in terms of the highest incidents of hate crimes, clearly there’s going to be some crossover.
“All the queer folks on the list are white. (LGBTQ hate crime victims listed in the report’s bullet points are not identified by race. In the report’s section“Gender Hate Crimes” the victims’ race was identified). The majority of them are people of color when you look at the hate crimes statistics against queer folks. It is not hate crimes against white folks. It is usually against someone black or Latino. That’s really important to me.”
She also said it starts with leadership.
“When you have leaders in the City of LA who are racist, that does not send a message to others not to be racist,” she said. “I’m speaking about the Nury Martinez, Kevin De Leon, Gil Cediilo scandal.”
It comes down to how we are raising our children, our young adults, what values we are instilling in them, Cannick said.
“Whatever our families look like, we need to be having those conversations with our kids and our young adults. I especially think we need to be having these conversations in our schools as well. A lot of this is learned behavior and these are young people who then turn into adults with the same mindset. We should be doing more to work with young people before they’re adults out here committing hate crimes.”
The executive director of the LGBTQ Center Long Beach, Carlos Torres, reacted to the report by expressing hope for the county’s LA vs Hate initiative, particularly when it comes to representation.
“There are a couple things at play here,” said Torres. “For many decades our community has been advocating for visibility and inclusion. That means when someone reports a hate crime particularly a transgender person, that we are not included by the gender that we were assigned at birth. It has taken a lot of years and advocacy to make sure that information is reflected accurately. Now we’re at a point where those data collection mechanisms and systems are in fact included in our information accurately.
“The second piece is that although violence has continued to increase against LGBTQ individuals, now we have a system like LA vs Hate that is specifically dedicated to account for our stories and our incidence as legitimate. While the numbers look high, it’s a combination of violence still being perpetrated against our community — particularly against people of color and transgender women of color more are targeted — but also now, we have programs and systems that do reflect that data accurately. In the past it was being under reported or misreported because we were categorized as male female, rather than transgender, or non binary or gender nonconforming. So, having those specific designations, I think, brings new attention to the issues.”
Torres highlighted that rather than using the traditional law enforcement mechanisms, LA vs Hate allows the community room to tell their stories in a manner that is not traumatizing or retraumatizing. Communities of color have had difficult relationships with law enforcement. Having the opportunity to make reports to a non-law-enforcement entity helps identify resources and ensures that individuals impacted by the violence are connected with the services that they need. Torres said this allows for resources for funding, for programming, for interventions to be designed specifically to serve the needs of the LGBTQ community.
“Why?’ he asked rhetorically. “Because our needs are unique and specific and in many cases cannot be provided by traditional service providers.”
He noted accurate reflection or representation of real numbers allow those who provide services to demand more resources, because the data point to that.
As Torres noted, people of color and transgender women of color more are targeted. When asked about the issue of the reported numbers not reflecting the intersection of black/queer folks, Torres said he agreed that the numbers are “probably underrepresented.”
“There’s still more work to do,” he said. “But representation matters and for black/queer individuals, we certainly need to do a better job. But it’s also making sure that they are aware that LA vs Hate exists, which is not a law enforcement body but can make sure that resources are provided and referrals and whatever else a person may need to ensure that the community gets everything that it needs to be healed.”
The Center Long Beach provides a variety of health, social, advocacy, legal and service programs to the LGBTQ community in the greater Long Beach area. The organization also specifically helps people deal with hate crimes through its legal program. Primarily, they ensure that the individual who has experienced a crime, hate or otherwise, knows what their rights are under existing law and that their rights are protected and preserved.
Torres added that The Center Long Beach is partnered with the LA vs Hate initiative.
“We’re happy to report that this effort is inclusive of all parts of the county, not just concentrated in LA proper,” Torres said. “It’s more than just the City of Los Angeles. It’s also making sure that people in our community in Long Beach have access to the same resources as those who live in the City of LA.”
Details: https://tinyurl.com/7bpvce9a