More than 10,000 people reported to law enforcement last year that they were the victim of a hate crime because of their race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, religion or disability — a number that has been on the rise in recent years, according to FBI’s annual hate crime statistics report.

The category of hate crime incidents where a victim was targeted because of their race, ethnicity or ancestry had the highest increase between 2019 and 2020, with 4,939 incidents in 2020 compared to 3,954 the previous year.

According to the FBI report, 62% of victims were targeted because of their race or ethnicity, up from 58% in 2019. About 20% were victimized because of sexual-orientation bias in 2020, and 13% because of religious bias, the FBI said.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYCO