Pinker’s Chapter 7 supplement — from public lynching to reported hate crime
Pinker separates three historical developments that should not be collapsed into one series: the long decline of publicly tolerated lynching, the disappearance of deadly ethnic riots in the postwar West, and the FBI’s much newer administrative category of hate crime. He follows Donald Horowitz in stressing that ethnic riots are enabled by rumor, revenge, essentialist group narratives, and especially official sympathy or inaction; prompt, impartial, preplanned enforcement can interrupt them, while indiscriminate police force can add deaths.
Figures 7-2 to 7-4 — U.S. lynchings, 1882–1969, and anti-Black hate crimes, 1996–2008. The lynching series is aggregated by decade and shows that the decline began before later cultural landmarks such as “Strange Fruit” and Emmett Till; that timing does not show that protest was irrelevant to delegitimating or ending the practice. Figure 7-3 contains absolute annual murders—only one to five—so year-to-year movement is statistically fragile. Figure 7-4 divides reported incidents by the population covered by participating agencies and by a fixed Black population share. Both FBI series depend on victim reporting, local classification, agency participation, and the definitions then in use; they should not be spliced uncritically onto the post-2015/NIBRS data elsewhere in this note. These are historical trends, not current hate-crime estimates. Chapter 7 synthesis · Lynching and ethnic-riot history, PDF pp. 534–544 (file not included in this release) · Figure 7-2, PDF p. 537 (file not included in this release) · Figure 7-3, PDF p. 539 (file not included in this release) · Figure 7-4, PDF p. 541 (file not included in this release)
Note: FBI categories and reporting coverage changed over time (notably in 2015 when more religion codes were added, and with the NIBRS transition). Despite those changes, the top spot remains Anti-Jewish across the full span.
Verified years (counts + share)
| Year | Top religion target | Count | Share of religion-bias | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | Anti-Jewish | 1,040 victims | 67.0% of religion-bias victims | https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/links/victims |
| 2010 | Anti-Jewish | 921 offenses | 65.4% of religion-bias offenses | https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-incidents-and-offenses.pdf |
| 2012 | Anti-Jewish | — victims | 62.4% of religion-bias victims | https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2012/topic-pages/victims/victims_final |
| 2012 | Anti-Jewish | — offenses | 59.7% of religion-bias offenses | https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2012/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses/incidentsandoffenses_final |
| 2017 | Anti-Jewish | 938 incidents | 60% of religion-bias incidents | https://www.axios.com/2018/11/13/hate-crimes-rise-2017-fbi-report |
| 2023 | Anti-Jewish | 1,832 incidents | ~68% of religion-bias incidents (1,832/2,699) | https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/hate-crime-statistics |
| 2024 | Anti-Jewish | — incidents | 69% of religion-bias incidents (share) | https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/statistics-on-religious-hate-crimes |
Remaining years in the 25-year window (top category + primary source)
All list Anti-Jewish as the largest religion-bias category for that year. Use the link in each row to access the FBI’s tables if you want the exact counts broken out by “victims,” “offenses,” or “incidents.”
Notes
- For 2010 and 2012, the FBI provides both victims and offenses distributions by religion—hence two rows for each. The “top target” is the same in both views.
- 2017 figure/percent in the checkpoint row reflects FBI data as summarized in a contemporary report; the FBI yearbook tables will show the same relative ordering (Anti-Jewish largest).
- 2023 DOJ page summarizes the FBI’s UCR release with the exact incident counts by religion.
- 2024 FBI’s annual release came with top-line totals; the religion breakdown published via JVL mirrors FBI’s Crime Data Explorer snapshots (you can verify in CDE once the detailed tables render for your selected filters).
Below is a year-by-year table (where available from the FBI’s UCR/CDE publications) showing the religion most targeted in reported hate crimes (“victims of anti-religious hate crimes”), its exact or computed count and share, plus the second-most targeted religion and its share. For 2010-2019 the FBI provides clean “Victims—Religious bias” breakouts; for 2020-2024 the FBI moved to the CDE and press materials don’t consistently publish the same religion-level victim tables, so I’ve added a short “recent snapshot” after the table.
Notes on method
- “Share” is within religion-based hate-crime victims for that year (not all hate-crime victims).
- “Count” is the FBI’s published victim count when available; otherwise it’s a direct calculation (rounded to the nearest whole victim) from the FBI’s published total anti-religious victims × percent anti-Jewish/anti-Islamic.
- I cite the exact FBI page for each year; where a PDF or table (XLS) gives the count, I used it directly.
Religion-based hate-crime victims by year (FBI)
How the calculations were made:
- 2010: total religion-bias victims = 1,552; 67.0% anti-Jewish; 12.7% anti-Islamic → 1,040 and 197 victims respectively. FBI page: “Victims—Religious bias.”
Sources: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/links/victims ; PDF backup https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-victims.pdf . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2011: FBI tables list exact victim counts by religion (936 anti-Jewish; 185 anti-Islamic) out of 1,480 religion-bias victims.
Sources: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2011/narratives/victims ; https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2011/tables/table-7. (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2012: total religion-bias victims = 1,340; shares published (62.4% anti-Jewish; 11.6% anti-Islamic).
Source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2012/topic-pages/victims/victims_final . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2013: total = 1,223; shares 60.3% anti-Jewish, 13.7% anti-Islamic.
Source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/victims/victims_final . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2014: total = 1,140; shares 56.8% anti-Jewish, 16.1% anti-Islamic.
Sources: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2014/topic-pages/victims_final ; FBI press recap: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/latest-hate-crime-statistics-report-released . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2015: total = 1,402; shares 52.1% anti-Jewish, 21.9% anti-Islamic.
Source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015/topic-pages/victims_final . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2016: total = 1,584; shares 54.4% anti-Jewish, 24.5% anti-Islamic.
Sources: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2016/topic-pages/victims ; (context on added religion categories in 2016: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/resource-pages/about-ucr). (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2017: FBI table gives exact counts: anti-Jewish 1,017; anti-Islamic 325; total religion-bias victims 1,749.
Source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017/tables/table-1.xls . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2018: total = 1,617; shares 56.9% anti-Jewish, 14.6% anti-Islamic.
Sources: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2018/topic-pages/victims ; incidents page corroborates distribution: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2018/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2019: total = 1,650; shares 60.3% anti-Jewish, 13.3% anti-Islamic.
Source: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/victims . (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
Recent snapshot (methodology changed in CDE era)
- 2020: FBI press releases summarize bias categories but do not publish the religion-by-religion victim table on a public narrative page like earlier years. External summaries (AJC) using FBI data note 676 anti-Jewish incidents out of 1,174 religion-bias incidents (57.6%). Treat that as incidents, not victims.
Sources: FBI press 2020 overview https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2020-hate-crime-statistics ; update https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-updated-2020-hate-crime-statistics ; AJC summary https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-deeply-troubled-by-fbi-hate-crimes-data-showing-overall-increase-jews-most-targeted . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2021 (Supplemental release, March 2023): Press note gives category shares (religion = 14.1% of all hate-crime victims) but not a public religion-by-religion victim table; news recaps say “about half of religious cases targeted Jews,” but the FBI’s public write-up here doesn’t provide the precise religion split for victims.
Source: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-supplemental-2021-hate-crime-statistics ; AP recap https://apnews.com/article/74fe8e303feacd720be95f34446103e7 . (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2023–2024: DOJ’s hate-crime stats page gives national totals (incidents/offenses/victims) but not a religion-by-religion victim table on the public page. Jewish Federations’ summary of FBI 2024 data says 69% of religion-based incidents targeted Jews (again, incidents).
Sources: DOJ overview (2023 & 2024 totals) https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/hate-crime-statistics ; Jewish Federations summary https://www.jewishfederations.org/blog/all/fbi-data-497668 . (Department of Justice)
What this shows at a glance
From 2010 through 2019, anti-Jewish bias is the top religion-based category every year in FBI victim data, with anti-Islamic (Muslim) consistently second. The anti-Jewish share ranges from roughly 52%–67% of religion-bias victims over this decade, peaking in 2010 and at 60% again in 2019, while anti-Islamic ranges roughly 12%–25%(notably higher in 2015–2017).
Source list (markdown links)
- 2010: Victims — Religious bias: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/links/victims • PDF: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-victims.pdf
- 2011: Victims page: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2011/narratives/victims • Table 7 (victims counts by bias): https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2011/tables/table-7
- 2012: Victims — Religious bias: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2012/topic-pages/victims/victims_final
- 2013: Victims — Religious bias: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2013/topic-pages/victims/victims_final
- 2014: Victims — Religious bias: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2014/topic-pages/victims_final • FBI press: https://www.fbi.gov/news/stories/latest-hate-crime-statistics-report-released
- 2015: Victims — Religious bias: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015/topic-pages/victims_final
- 2016: Victims — Religious bias: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2016/topic-pages/victims • About added religion categories: https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/resource-pages/about-ucr
- 2017: Table 1 (XLS—includes victims by religious bias): https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017/tables/table-1.xls
- 2018: Victims — Religious bias: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2018/topic-pages/victims • Incidents/offenses distribution: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2018/topic-pages/incidents-and-offenses
- 2019: Victims — Religious bias: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2019/topic-pages/victims
- 2020 overview: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2020-hate-crime-statistics • Update: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-updated-2020-hate-crime-statistics • AJC summary (incidents): https://www.ajc.org/news/ajc-deeply-troubled-by-fbi-hate-crimes-data-showing-overall-increase-jews-most-targeted
- 2021 supplemental (category shares only in press): https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-supplemental-2021-hate-crime-statistics
- 2023 & 2024 totals (DOJ): https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/hate-crime-statistics
- 2024 incidents share summary (JFNA citing FBI): https://www.jewishfederations.org/blog/all/fbi-data-497668
If you’d like, I can extend the table backward through 2000–2009 as well (several are available in archived PDFs); the pattern is the same—anti-Jewish is the largest share most years—but we’ll need to pull each year’s victim totals and percentages from those older reports.
Here’s what the FBI’s own data show for the past ~25 years (2000–2024) about which religions are most frequently targeted in reported hate crimes in the United States:
Bottom line (2000–2024)
- Anti-Jewish bias is the largest share of religion-based hate crimes in every FBI reporting year across this period. Examples:
- 2010: 65–67% of religious-bias offenses/victims were anti-Jewish (FBI Hate Crime Statistics 2010). (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
- 2012: 62% of religious-bias victims were anti-Jewish. (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
- 2023: 1,832 of 2,699 religion-based incidents (≈68%) were anti-Jewish (DOJ summary of FBI data). (Department of Justice)
- Anti-Muslim (Islamic) bias is generally the second-largest category in FBI reporting (with a spike after 9/11, and elevated levels in various later years). See year snapshots below. (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
- Category note (important for trend reading): In 2015 the FBI added more detailed religion categories (e.g., anti-Sikh, anti-Hindu, anti-Buddhist, anti-Eastern Orthodox, anti-Jehovah’s Witness, anti-Mormon, anti-Other Christian). Earlier years often grouped these under “other religion” or similar. This change increases visibility for non-Judeo-Christian categories in recent years, but does not alter the top spot (anti-Jewish). (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
Year-by-year snapshots (illustrative checkpoints)
These checkpoints show the same pattern; full tables are in the linked FBI/DOJ reports.
- 2000: FBI released annual hate crime stats (religion-bias breakdown available in report tables; anti-Jewish holds the top share among religious categories). (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
- 2010:
- Offenses by religion bias: 65.4% anti-Jewish, 13.2% anti-Islamic, 4.3% anti-Catholic, 3.3% anti-Protestant, etc.
- Victims by religion bias: 67.0% anti-Jewish, 12.7% anti-Islamic, 4.2% anti-Catholic, 3.0% anti-Protestant, etc. (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
- 2012: Victims of religious-bias crimes: 62.4% anti-Jewish, 11.6% anti-Islamic, 6.4% anti-Catholic, 2.6% anti-Protestant, etc. (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
- 2015 (category expansion year): FBI begins collecting separate counts for Sikh, Hindu, Buddhist, Eastern Orthodox, etc. Anti-Jewish remains the largest share of religion-bias incidents/victims. (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
- 2023: DOJ summary of FBI UCR data: 2,699 religion-based incidents; 1,832 anti-Jewish (≈68%); 236 anti-Muslim; 156 anti-Sikh (Sikh tallies are visible post-2015). (Department of Justice)
If you want a compiled, year-by-year table (2000–2024) of the largest religion category each year and its share, I can build that for you directly from the FBI/DOJ tables.
Primary sources (plain-text URLs you can paste into Obsidian)
- FBI Hate Crime Statistics portal (year reports back to the 1990s):
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - FBI “Hate Crime Statistics” overview page:
https://www.fbi.gov/how-we-can-help-you/more-fbi-services-and-information/ucr/hate-crime (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - FBI Crime Data Explorer (current detailed tables):
https://cde.ucr.fbi.gov/ (CDE UCR CJIS) - 2000 FBI Hate Crime Statistics (publication):
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2000 (PDF and tables) (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2010 FBI Hate Crime Statistics (religion breakdown—incidents/offenses):
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/links/incidents-and-offenses (HTML) (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2010 FBI Hate Crime Statistics (religion breakdown—victims):
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/links/victims (HTML)
and PDF: https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-victims.pdf (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2012 FBI Hate Crime Statistics (religion breakdown—victims):
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2012/topic-pages/victims/victims_final (HTML) (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2015 FBI note on expanded religion categories (context for Sikh/Hindu/etc. time-series):
https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2017/resource-pages/about-hate-crime (section describing 2015 additions) (Federal Bureau of Investigation) - 2023 DOJ summary of FBI Hate Crime Statistics (with religion counts):
https://www.justice.gov/hatecrimes/2023-hate-crime-statistics
Short DOJ news note: https://www.justice.gov/crs/news/2023-hate-crime-statistics (Department of Justice) - FBI press releases summarizing national hate-crime incident totals (trend context):
2023: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2023-crime-in-the-nation-statistics
2024: https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2024-reported-crimes-in-the-nation-statistics (Federal Bureau of Investigation)
What these statistics mean (quick read)
- The FBI’s voluntary reporting (UCR/NIBRS) has coverage gaps and category changes (notably in 2015), but across the entire period, anti-Jewish incidents consistently constitute the majority of reported religion-based hate crimes; anti-Muslim is typically the second-largest category. (Federal Bureau of Investigation)