CREDIT: Adam Peck/ThinkProgress
Hate incidents have skyrocketed since Election Day.
On November 8, 2016, Donald Trump was elected president. Within hours, the United States was awash in an unprecedented wave of hateful incidents, many of them perpetrated by people claiming to be Trump supporters.
Various forms of hatred surged during Trump’s campaign — especially Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, and general support for white supremacy. But his election appears to have emboldened vitriol of all kinds, triggering a rash of harrowing — and sometimes violent — incidents that has left many Americans afraid. Just one week out from Election Day, the Southern Poverty Law Center counted more than 300 reports of hate incidents, with more pouring in every day. One week later, their tally breached 700.
Hoping to help assess the scale and scope of what Trump’s election has unleashed, ThinkProgress is mapping this explosion of hate (click on states or categories to see detailed accounts, and scroll down below the map for our explanation and methodology).
Note: incidents where Trump’s name, policies, campaign, or election are mentioned are designated by a “Trump hair” symbol.
To keep the project manageable, our bar for inclusion is intentionally high. We are not tracking more general instances of hate or racism that contribute to an overall culture of fear, such as general online harassment and graffiti with no clear target or intent. Instead, our map focuses on moments of more targeted harassment and hatred — such as verbal abuse, physical assault, threats, vitriol-filled protests, vandalism, and attacks on houses of worship — committed against specific marginalized groups of people. We expect our categories to change over time, as perpetrators shift their tactics and targets.
Our list will not be perfect. The very nature of hate incidents often makes it impossible to independently verify every account or detail. But each instance we include here has been investigated either by our team of researchers or by an external resource such as a news article, a police report, or an original source. We will work to correct instances proven to be false.
Our list is distinct from tallies of hate crimes, which is a specific legal designation whose use varies by state. However, when police officials use that term to describe an event, we will include it in our description.
Finally, if you know of a hate incident we missed, please submit it to our hate tracking form. Try to include as much evidence as possible in your submission, but if you believe you or someone you know was the victim of a crime, we ask that you notify authorities first.
