WASHINGTON — In response to the FBI’s release of its 2025 hate crime statistics, Len Kamdang, Director of the Criminal Justice Project and the Byrd Center to Stop Hate at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, issued the following statement:
“For the third year running, the overall number of hate crimes in this country has fallen — down from 11,862 in 2023 to 10,881 last year. Anti-Black hate crimes dropped too. That progress is real, and we welcome it. It is what happens when communities organize, when civil rights groups work to ensure accountability, and when we work to disrupt white supremacist networks. Hatred has no home in America.
“But progress is not the same as safety realized. Black Americans were the targets of nearly half of every race-based hate crime reported, and more than any other group in any category. In fact, anti-Black violence has anchored this country’s hate crime data every single year the FBI has collected it. The numbers move. The pattern does not.
“The history that put anti-Black violence at the top of this list is the same history that taught this country to fear the stranger, the newcomer, the person who prays differently.
“That is why the Byrd Center to Stop Hate exists. We are working with coalition partners to continue to hold white nationalist groups accountable in Court for their acts of violence and to disrupt their ability to organize. We do this work because a decline from a historic peak is not the finish line—it is a reminder that this work matters and that we can win. And so we investigate. We litigate. We demand accountability.”
