Following one of the most divisive elections in US history, reports have indicated a surge in hate crimes around the country. From acts of antisemitic vandalism and religious discrimination in the workplace to the allegedly targeted shooting of two Indian immigrants and a plot to bomb a refugee community, evidence anecdotally suggests this alarming trend may continue throughout 2017.
That’s why Guardian US, along with other major American newsrooms, advocacy groups and academic institutions, is joining the Documenting Hate project. Led by the not-for-profit news organisation ProPublica, Documenting Hate will attempt to better record these instances and provide rigorous analysis, data-driven investigation, and deep reporting on the issue.
The federal government keeps a flawed and heavily time-lagged record of hate crimes in the US. Much like its monitoring of the number of people police kill every year, the FBI relies on information supplied voluntarily by the 18,000 police departments around the country, meaning thousands of departments report no data at all, while others may simply not be submitting a complete record.
Guardian US is asking readers to submit information, through the form below, if you have witnessed or been the victim of a suspected hate crime, defined by the FBI 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”.
We would also like to hear from you if you have experienced an incident driven by hatred and prejudice, which may not constitute a crime.
Reporters at Guardian US and other news organisations will work to verify submissions and will not share your name and contact information with anyone outside the project. The incidents will be added to a national database of hate crimes and targeted intimidation, which will inform our broader reporting of the issue.
