ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The horrific beating of a mentally disabled white man in Chicago by four black assailants broadcast on social media is highlighting anti-white hate crimes at a time of increased racial strife in the United States.

But federal statistics and experts say anti-white incidents remain a smaller percentage of overall hate crimes. Anti-black hate crimes are still the largest number of cases.

According to the 2015 FBI hate crime statistics, the latest available, there were 613 anti-white-related crimes out of 5,850 total cases.

That’s around 10.5 percent of all reported hate crimes, and within the yearly average, federal numbers show.

By comparison, the FBI reports there were 1,745 anti-black hate crimes or about 30 percent of all reported incidents.

Jews were the most targeted religious group that year and were victims of 11 percent of all hate crimes.

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It’s not clear how many anti-Jewish hate crime victims also may have been attacked because of their race.

That data also suggested that blacks and Jews remain disproportionally targets of hate crimes compared to their population as opposed to whites. African-Americans are only 13 percent of the U.S. population, while non-Hispanic whites are 61 percent.

The FBI defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” Filing reports for the federal count is voluntary, but guidelines call for reports to be submitted even if they list zero hate crimes.

Even then, experts say the FBI data on hate crimes isn’t a full picture because anti-black cases are skewed lower by the lack of reporting participation by some Southern law enforcement agencies.

In Chicago, two men and two women – all black – are facing hate crime charges in connection with the brutal beating of a mentally disabled white man that was streamed on Facebook Live.

The video shows the victim is tied up and the suspects are making racial slurs and references to his mental capacity, Chicago Police Cmdr. Kevin Duffin said.


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