Ethnic Hate Crimes Triple In Tennessee, But That’s About All We Know

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s new hate crime report showed that hate crimes overall rose 17 percent from 2012 to 2013.

Hate crimes are on the rise in Tennessee, according to a new report from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. In particular, the number of so-called ethnically-motivated offenses tripled from the previous year.

Crimes brought on by ethnicity bias was the most noticeable jump. Now that’s different from racist crimes, which actually went down. Generally speaking, race is inferred by how someone looks, and ethnicity points to someone’s culture, or where someone is from.

There’s not a lot we can say about the numbers except that a category called “other” caused the drastic increase in ethnically motivated offenses. The TBI says these are cases in which an officer determined ethnic bias was a factor — but the exact nature is still being investigated.

Still, TBI spokesman Josh Devine says the numbers should give Tennesseans pause.

“And we also hope that this really sparks a lot of good, honest conversation in communities to say, ‘Look, this is still an issue in a lot of communities in the state of Tennessee.’”

Devine says he couldn’t speculate about what might be driving the statistics.

Overall, there were around 350 victims of hate crimes in the state. That includes crimes motivated by religious bias and sexual prejudice. More statistics on the report can be found here.