In the Tennesseean today, a guy named Ryan Moore who doesn’t even live in Tennessee – but who claims to work at a Tennessee-based nonprofit – wrote a woe-is-me op-ed about how wearing his red hat gets him all kinds of “death threats and racist comments” from people he interacts with on social media.
While we don’t condone any kind of threats, we do take MAJOR issue with one claim he makes:
Ryan Says:
MAGA Hats Are the Symbol of Putting America First… White men are the most hated and discriminated against group of people in the USA now. If you don’t believe that, you simply aren’t paying attention or looking at it objectively.
Say what now? Since Ryan challenged us to “look at it objectively”, we did. And guess what? He’s completely wrong.
Racial/ethnicity/ancestry bias
Among single-bias hate crime incidents in 2017, there were 5,060 victims of race/ethnicity/ancestry motivated hate crime.
- 48.6 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Black or African American bias.
- 17.1 percent were victims of anti-White bias.
Big WHIFF there, Ryan. What about religion?
Religious bias
Of the 1,749 victims of anti-religious hate crimes:
- 58.1 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders’ anti-Jewish bias.
- 18.6 percent were victims of anti-Islamic (Muslim) bias.
- 4.3 percent were victims of anti-Catholic bias.
- 3.3 percent were victims of bias against groups of individuals of varying religions (anti-multiple religions, group).
- 2.3 percent were victims of anti-Protestant bias.
- 1.8 percent were victims of anti-Other Christian bias.
In other words: NOPE. “Objective” means “not influenced by personal feelings or opinions in considering and representing facts”.
Sorry Ryan. You may get your feelings hurt when you turn on your phone, but other races and religions have it far worse.
