Public safety
The Social Order
A wave of anti-Asian hate crimes has plagued the United States in the past few months. The media have highlighted it, celebrities have rallied against it, and Congress held hearings on it (in which I had the opportunity to participate).
When measuring the scale of the problem, commentators tend to use three pieces of evidence: individual stories of attacks on Asian-Americans; a California State University, San Bernardino analysis which showed a 149 percent increase in anti-Asian hate crimes in 2020 from 2019; and data on self-reported “hate incidents” collected by Stop AAPI Hate, an academic/activist organization.
These data sources do not offer much resolution. They confirm that 2020 was worse than 2019, and that many incidents have been reported. But they do not tell us when, during 2020, the incidents were happening.