Focusing on “Black on Asian” Violent Crime Statistics Distracts from the Real Issues We Face Together
By: Brittany May Du Bois
Tags: BlackLivesMatter, Stopasianhate, Solidarity, Blackasiansolidarity, Sociology

The purpose of this article is to encourage more critical thinking around the social media use of crime statistics, and to address issues at their root cause. This is specific to the 2018 and 2019 Bureau of Justice Statistics’ violent crime statistics and how they have been taken out of context to push anti-Black rhetoric that is harmful for both the Black and Asian communities. TL;DR — Don’t share numbers without knowing where they really come from and how they came to be. It can cause serious damage to multiple communities.

A former data analyst for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reminded me that those “Black on Asian violent crime” statistics that many people have inaptly misinterpreted and shared on their socials seem to be used to tout the idea that Black people are a danger to Asian people.

The results of the misguided circulation of these seemingly damning statistics? Not good, to say the least. They have only further pitted the Black and Asian community against each other, having a widespread negative effect on Black-Asian solidarity because they are used to make it look like Black people are attacking Asians at a much higher rate than reality. It redirects our focus from fighting together against racism to fighting each other, with Black people as the scapegoat (something that happens far too often). Asian hate is a serious issue that is not new, and Black people are not at the root of this. Scripting Black people as the singular evil face of this national historical issue that followed us into 2020 and beyond is, to put it simply, deceptive. And for those in control of the media, it is absolutely deceitful.

Public Facebook post by Asian Dawn critiquing the use of the 2018 violent crime statistics by “African-Americans on Twitter.” The irony is that Asian Dawn is also not fully grasping the meaning of the numbers either.

Contrary to the commonly misused statistics from 2018–2019, a much larger data set has shown that the vast majority or perpetrators of hate crimes against both Asian and Black people have been white people. But for right now, we’re focusing on the 2018 and 2019 reports.

The BJS publishes yearly Criminal Victimization reports based on the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The 2018 and 2019 reports include data on the race of both the victim and the offender, and people have been sharing it nonstop since last year.

Table from “Criminal Victimization, 2018” by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Note that the “Asian” category does not include Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaska Natives.

Now, this gets a little complicated, so bear with me. The 182,230 violent incidents committed against Asian persons in 2018 are the number of weighted cases. That same number is only about 50 to 60 unweighted cases (as told via email by a BJS representative). According to the NVCS, the numbers are “weighted to compensate for incomplete reporting.” Across the board, all races under report crime. Seeing that crime statistics rely heavily on crime that actually gets reported, it also should be noted that this is affected by whether or not an officer even considers the incident to be categorized as a crime, like a hate crime and/or a violent crime, in the first place.

One would use “weighted cases” like in the studies we’re talking about today in order to remedy the over- or under-representation of certain characteristics in a sample. This is pretty common for large surveys. To put it simply, when something is weighted in the mathematical sense, it just means it was calculated where some values contribute more than others (think of weighted vs unweighted GPA, where a “B” in a standard English class vs a “B” in an AP English class may have different “weight” despite being the same letter grade). All that is to say that there is not as grand of a number of reported violent incidents against Asians to begin with. The number should be interpreted as much lower when engaging in a conversation about what’s happening.

Any category with less than 10 sample cases is flagged for statistical reliability purposes. That means when you look at, say, table 14 of the 2018 report, the “Hispanic” offender, “other” race offender and “multiple offenders of various races” categories are ALL flagged as unreliable when it comes to Asian victims.

So now if we’re just looking at the “White,” “Black” and “Asian” offender categories when the victim is Asian, you’ll find that the percentages are very similar, and may have a lot to do with chance and proximity and socioeconomic factors if they are all so close in proportion.* Let’s also consider that, out of all the violent incidents recorded in this table, 3.6% are ones with an Asian victim. Violent crime is an issue within and across every race. Location, income and personal relations are significant contributing factors to violent crimes more so than race alone.

Table from “Criminal Victimization, 2019” by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Note that Asians were classified under the “Other” category, along with Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and persons of two or more races.

Looking forward to the 2019 report, you’ll see that the number of Asian victims by each offender race was in fact too low and not statistically reliable either! Asians were not included in the “Victim race/ethnicity” category at all.

The 2019 tables have their limits in general, too — in the offender section, Asians were included in the “Other” category, marked by a “b” to signify it “Includes Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders, American Indians and Alaska Natives, and persons of two or more races.” That would be the classification of AAPI, though including anyone of mixed race (two or more races) indeed confuses the already low numbers by putting all of these groups together.

All this is just to say that whenever you witness anyone bringing up these infamous statistics to talk about “Black on Asian crime,” know that it exists, yes, but no more than what is to be expected by chance and proximity, and that those tables are not as helpful for their agenda as they think they are.

In the words of our former BJS data analyst and current member of the Black & Asian Alliance Network on Facebook, Nathan Bar-Fields, “There is no elevated danger from Black people.” The true danger is criminalizing a historically oppressed race with full disregard of the significant implications of generations of income inequality and where we live (amongst many other factors as well). The true danger is continuing to pit two massive and incredibly diverse groups against one another while the real threat laughs at us. The true danger is not realizing that we are much stronger together.

Another true danger is ignoring more than a decade of accumulated data. Remember that large contradictory data set I mentioned earlier? This may or may not be a surprise: according to a study that used 1992–2014 data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), 74.5% of hate crimes against Asians were perpetrated by white assailants. That 74.5% was calculated based on over a decade of data collection and analysis. That is a critical pattern to acknowledge. That same data has also concluded that hate crimes against Black people were committed by white assailants a striking 99% of the time. To top it all off, this data also found that 94.5% of all hate crimes were by white offenders. That remaining 5.5% then remain to all non-white offenders.

In addition, according to NPR, a research team led by Dr. Melissa May Borja from the University of Michigan found that “white people accounted for 90% of anti-Asian incidents in 2020, but only 5% of perpetrators were Black.” What we see on TV and across social media does not match up with this. It does not complement those 12 years of aforementioned data. It doesn’t even quite reflect the 2018/2019 data if you really think about it (we’d be seeing more instances with white assailants, and way more coverage of other very prevalent inter-racial crime that isn’t making the news).

And now, that aforementioned report (“ANTI-ASIAN RACISM IN 2020”) has been released, stating that “The information that we have, while limited and imperfect, does not support the common claim that Black hostility is driving the current epidemic of anti-Asian racism and violence.” Looking over the 184 incidents in which the race of the source was identified, 165 of the offenders were white. That would be precisely 89.6% of the anti-Asian incidents having a white offender. I will leave it at that, as this fresh report deserves its own analysis!

I know that the subject here is about violent crime statistics, but people have been conflating all violence with hate crime, and that is an issue in itself. For instance, the NIBRS referred to the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act’s definition, which defines hate crimes as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” Policies have changed since then, and NIBRS takes this into account with their time variables. We can argue about what mandates what a “crime” or “hate crime” is in the first place, but if we’re going to refer to data, we have to go based on that data’s definition of crime. There are many limits to the classification of what constitutes a crime in the first place, considering it’s only tracked if it’s something that results in an arrest. There’s so much harm we face that “crime” doesn’t even remotely cover, and that the police cannot help prevent. The verbal abuse, the harassment, bullying and discrimination. There is so much harm and hate to dismantle. However, we can’t just make our own definitions and attach the numbers to fit.

I also want to stress that I am not here to blame white individuals for these concerning results either. What I’m trying to say is why are we allowing social media and its followers to demonize Black people across all platforms, especially if these numbers tell us a more accurate story? Especially if these numbers point out that Black people are not a threat against Asian people?

The answer is that the system in which we live doesn’t want to see us get along. Because we are, in fact, unstoppable if we see one another as family, as allies, as fellow POC seeking liberation.

The Black & Asian Alliance Network logo.

Has there been an increase in attacks and other behaviors of hate against the AAPI community in the past year? Absolutely. It’s heart wrenching. Even outside the COVID situation, as the AAPI community grows in the United States, we expect to see a rise in total incidents as well, unfortunately.

Perhaps this is yet another sign that we should get to the root of the problem. The root of where crime or violence or racism or xenophobia comes from, grows from. The soil that allows it to thrive. The temperature, the attitudes, the origins of any harmful preconceived notions we have about a diverse group of people. Because the more we point fingers with no care for the persons to whom we’re directing our deflection, the more likely we are going to get our fingers bitten right off, and then we will all continue to suffer.

It is only hurting everyone if we do not stop and identify how the hell we ended up here. It starts with white and ends with supremacy.