SPLC: 34 Hate Incidents Reported In Minnesota After The Election
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – In the first 10 days after Donald Trump won the presidency, there were 34 reports of harassment and intimidation in Minnesota, according to a new report from a civil rights advocacy group.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), an Alabama-based legal advocacy nonprofit, released an election aftermath report Tuesday highlighting hate incidents across the country. The group says there were 867 hate incidents reported in the U.S. in the 10 days after the Nov. 8 election.
The group says the incidents documented in its report were either from media accounts or submissions to its #ReportHate page. All reports were of real-world harassment, not online harassment. Incidents were not counted if they were proved to be fake by authorities.
According to SPLC data, most of the hate incidents were reported in the days immediately after the election. For instance, there were 202 incidents reported Nov. 9, but within a week, the number of reports dropped to around 30 a day.
Most of the incidents happened in schools or universities and appear to have involved intimidating or racist language, either written or spoken. The SPLC says a "small number" of reports involved physical violence, and many of the incidents would not rise to the level of a hate crime.
Related: Maple Grove School Investigating Racist, Pro-Trump Graffiti
Of states in the Upper Midwest, Minnesota had the second-highest number of hate incidents, with 34. Michigan had the most, with 40. Illinois had 25, Iowa had 14, Wisconsin had 13, and the Dakotas had none.
Minnesota was specifically mentioned in the SPLC report in three instances. In one, a cashier was called a racial epithet. In another, a middle school-aged boy yelled "Grab her by the p****" – a reference to Trump – to a man walking with a female colleague. In the third incident, a girl at a Coon Rapids school reportedly had her hijab pulled off, although school administrators told WCCO the incident was not bias-motivated.
According to SPLC data, most of the hate incidents reported after the election appeared to be motivated by anti-immigrant sentiment. The other groups most targeted were blacks, members of the LGBT community and Jews.
Donald Trump supporters also reported harassment and intimidation in the wake of the election. The SPLC data shows 23 reports of anti-Trump hate incidents, some involving physical violence.
The SPLC says that incidents documented in its report are likely a "small fraction" of the actual number of election-related hate incidents that have happened since the election.
