Every year the FBI publishes statistics on hate crimes against different racial/ethnic, sexual orientation, religious, and disability groups, including us. (As an aside, you know the FBI is peak woke [in the original, un-ironic sense] when they actually refer to us by the term requested by the Church [“Church of Jesus Christ”].)
So how do we shake out? Over the past 5 years there have been 77 incidents of anti-Latter-day Saint bias-driven criminality according to the FBI.
- 41 of them have been destruction of property. In terms of location it also notes that 41 of them happened at churches, so these 41 may have been vandalisms of meetinghouses. I don’t know if destruction of religious buildings is considered a per se hate crime, or whether there has to be evidence of animus against that religion. In other words, if somebody is drunk and driving around shooting at random buildings, in theory they could damage Church property without having any problem with us, and I suspect that would not be considered a hate crime.
For the other categories, we have
- Simple Assault (10)
- Burglary/Breaking & Entering (9)
- Intimidation (8)
- Arson (7)
- Theft From Building (2)
- Theft From Motor Vehicle (2)
- Weapon Law Violations (2)
- Drug Equipment Violations (1)
- Drug/Narcotic Violations (1)
- Identity Theft (1)
I’ll have to admit I’m a little curious about the backstory behind the anti-Mormon “theft from a motor vehicle” or “drug equipment violation” hate crimes.
In terms of offender characteristics, 22 were white, 11 were Black, 10 were unknown, 3 were Pacific Islanders, and one was Asian. Given that about 15% of the US is Black and Latter-day Saints don’t tend to live in Black areas, there appears to be a disproportionate number of African Americans involved. However, 1) these are very small numbers, so randomness and all that, even though I ran a quick binomial probability test and it is statistically significant, and 2) I suspect much if not all of this is an artifact from the presence of Church buildings in inner-city areas. Having lived almost all of my professional life in Black-majority areas, anecdotally I just don’t see an issue there. (This isn’t being patronizing; anti-semitism, for example, is an issue in some sectors of the Black community, I just don’t get the sense that anti-Mormonism is).
Speaking of race, how do we stack up compared to other categories? Obviously anti-Mormon is a drop in the hate crime bucket. During the same five years there were 13,880 recorded cases of anti-Black hate crimes. This is by far the largest, with all of the other major categories (anti-gay, anti-Hispanic, etc.) in the several thousands.
So perhaps the more apropos point of comparison would be other religions.
- Anti-atheist: 65
- Anti-Buddhist: 94
- Anti-Catholic: 362
- Anti-Eastern Orthodox: 243
- Anti-Hindu: 83
- Anti-Muslim: 758
- Anti-Jehovah’s Witnesses: 45
- Anti-Jewish: 4,977
- Anti-Other Christian: 297
- Anti-Protestant: 175
- Anti-Sikh: 619
So, while a lot of people say they wouldn’t vote for a Mormon and such, in terms of physical attacks and the like we get it about as bad as the atheists and Buddhists (in the aggregate, not on a per capita basis), but we’re not in the same ballpark as a lot of other groups, with anti-semitism “leading” the pack of hate crimes by far.
Comments
7 responses to “Hate Crimes Against Latter-day Saints”
Interesting post. We are very unpopular but I don’t think people feel threatened by us in general, maybe that’s why we’re seemingly not much of a target for hate crimes. There aren’t widespread conspiracy theories about us controlling everything like there is for Jewish people. I wonder if that will change now that the church’s wealth is becoming better known.
My building was one of the Burglary building last year. There was a combo lockbox on the outside of the building to hold a spare key. The burglar smashed that off of the brick wall and used the key to get into the building. Then they broke a bunch of locks inside the building, but to my understanding didn’t steal anything. It was likely someone looking for cash, but since the building doesn’t hold any cash, they came up empty.
E: That’s true, I think most people just think we’re weird or they have a sort of soft bigotry, but it’s been a while since we’ve had any kind of pogrom.
jader3rd: That’s an example of what I’m wondering about. If it’s a standard smash-and-grab, with no evidence of malice towards Latter-day Saints in particular, does that count? Given the wide variety of crimes that are counted as “hate crimes,” I suspect the definition can be kind of loose, but I don’t know.
A couple of years ago someone gained entry to our building and smoked a couple of cigarettes in the chapel, stubbed them out on the piano case, and left the butts in the strings. I came in early Saturday morning to practice (I was the ward organist at the time), and I noticed the smell as soon as I walked into the chapel. I scouted around the rest of the building but I didn’t see or smell anything else amiss. It seemed like someone was making some sort of statement, but whether it rose to the level of “hate crime”? I dunno.
It is interesting that anti-Jewish hate crimes outnumber all other religious hate crimes by almost 3-to-1, but it makes sense. When someone draws a swastika on a wall, that’s an anti-Jewish hate crime. There are no quick-and-easy graffiti equivalents touching the experience of other religions.
Make that almost 2-to-1.
Sadly, I think there is a great deal of antisemitism which goes ignored, especially in the politics of the moment. A couple of years ago our local synagogue was shot at with a high-powered rifle. I saw the bullet holes when visiting a Jewish friend at the synagogue. There was a daycare and elementary school inside. It never made the local news.