Spurred by reports of an increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, the civil rights nonprofit Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAAJ) has launched the first-ever online tracker to document hate incidents that target the community.
The website, standagainsthatred.org, was created in the wake of a Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations report, which discovered that crimes against the area’s Asian American community tripled between 2014 and 2015. The site allows users nationwide to anonymously report hate incidents, and the stories are then vetted by AAAJ staff.
AAAJ seeks to remedy the lack of national data on hate crimes against the Asian American Community, as statistics are scant due to underreporting and the filing of many racially motivated crimes as generic offenses. Experts worry that the low frequency of reporting may be enabling such crimes to continue.
AAAJ will share their data with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which created a separate category for Asian American hate crimes last December.
