This is an example of an entry where I got things really wrong. Jeff's point below was about murder, but could be read as pertaining to assault. In those specific statistics, he's right about gays being the target of more assault than Jews. Since I looked only at overall hate crime rates, I'm in error.

In a recent debate, Jeff Sharlet offered the following opinion regarding hate crimes:

When American Christians complain of being persecuted, they're being whiners. What, The Simpsons makes fun of you? Cry me a river. And pour some of your own blood into it while you're at it, or else give up the persecution complex. Becuase you are LOW down that totem pole. I'M low down that totem pole, too -- for the most part, Jews don't get killed in America, but queers do. "Christian persecution." That's a plain ol' self-pitying notion.

I agree entirely (and don't recall suggesting otherwise) that at least so far in this nation's history, "Christian persecution" hasn't been a major issue. But I decided to take a few minutes to check up on his statements regarding the dangers of being Jewish versus being gay.

The latest stats I was able to locate are from the FBI's 2005 Hate Crimes Statistics report, which reveals:

Hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,314 offenses reported by law enforcement. A breakdown of the bias motivation of religious-bias offenses showed... 68.5 percent were anti-Jewish... 11.1 percent were anti-Islamic...

... law enforcement agencies reported 1,171 hate crime offenses based on sexual- orientation bias. 60.9 percent were anti-male homosexual... 19.5 percent were anti-homosexual... 15.4 percent were anti-female homosexual...

That works out to be 900 offenses against Jews, versus 1,211 offenses against gays (713 of which were explicitly against gay males). Given that Jews represent (according to the CIA World Factbook) 1% of the population, whereas gays represent about 4% of the population (I've used the conservative estimate based on the 2000 census from here), this means that you're about three times as likely to be attacked for Jewish as for being gay. (Or about 7.5 times worse, if you accept the often-made claim that gays are 10% of the population.)

So it would seem Jeff's just plain wrong about that: as far as we can tell, antisemitism is a much larger problem than anti-gay hatred. I guess it doesn't surprise me that most us ordinary people are unaware of this, but it amazes me to see a religion reporter -- with an apparent focus on anti-gay crimes -- so misled about the basic demographic picture he's concerned about.

So it appears what we're looking at is actually an indicator of how effective certain groups have been at creating a perception which is, frankly, wrong.

In fact, anti-semitism is a huge problem compared to most of the "hate crimes" which attract major media attention. For example, we've heard about about the alleged outbreak of anti-Muslim violence in the US -- but given that both comprise about 1% of the population, Jews are over 6 times as likely as Muslims to be victims of a religiously-biased crime.

And versus blacks? The report notes 3,189 crimes motivated by anti-black prejudice -- a bigger number overall. But again, given that blacks are 13% of the population (versus 1% for Jews), this implies a Jew is about 3.6 times more likely to be attacked for being Jewish than a black person is for being black.

So let's face it: anti-semitism is apparently, by far, the most widespread, pernicious form of bigotry we need to confront here in the US. (And it's getting worse, still, in Europe.)