By Edward Henderson | California Black Media
Kevin Kish, Director of the Civil Rights Department (CRD), is a civil rights attorney dedicated to advancing justice for disadvantaged communities. He leads efforts to protect Californians from discrimination, hate violence, and human trafficking. (Courtesy Photo)
In May of 2023, California launched an anti-hate hotline and resource network, California vs Hate, to address a sharp rise in reported hate crimes targeting racial and ethnic minority populations. While data has shown reported incidents nearly doubled since 2019, rural areas of California continue to be underreported.
Kevin Kish, Director of the California Civil Rights Department, recently spoke at an Ethnic Media Services webinar offering his observations and highlighting the importance of spreading the word about California vs. Hate’s resources.
“That lack of reporting out of rural areas is not a good thing. And that lack of reporting out of rural areas of our state is also reflected in the Attorney General’s hate crime report,” Kish said.
“Many of these counties are reporting zero or very few hate crimes. We know that when people are afraid, when they feel isolated, it is unlikely for them to turn to government, at least not without a trusted intermediary, a trusted person or organization who helps them do that,” he added.
The issue is particularly concerning for Black Californians as increasing numbers of Black individuals and families have moved from coastal cities and suburbs to exurbs rural areas over the last 40 years in counties and inland areas, including Riverside, San Bernardino, and Kern counties in Southern California and Solano County, San Joaquin and Kings counties in Northern California.
In fact, some rural cities now have higher percentages of Blacks per capital than urban areas. For example, Rio Vista, a rural area in Solano County has a Black population of over 10% and Weed, a town in Siskiyou County, has a Black population of around 8%.
Some barriers to reporting, Kish shared, were language limitations, mistrust of local government and lack of knowledge of what qualifies as a hate crime.
“California versus hate was designed to overcome these barriers specifically. It is designed to help everyone who experiences hate, no matter who they are, no matter where they are in our state, and no matter whether what they experienced was in fact a crime.”
In the hotline’s first year of existence, it received over 1,000 reports. The most commonly cited form of hate was based on race and ethnicity. 560 of those reports were confirmed incidents and race and ethnicity made up 35% of the reports. Of those, anti-Black bias was the most common, followed by anti-Latino and anti-Asian bias.
After race and ethnicity, the most common frequently cited basis was gender identity and sexual orientation.
Marlene Thomas, Executive Director of the Imperial Valley Social Justice Committee, also spoke at the webinar to shed light on what it is like to offer services in a rural county of California that experiences incidents of hate yet experiences low numbers of reporting.
“We had a Stop the Hate conference and the chief of police and the sheriff who were there and presented. They went through the whole reporting process that you have to, to do, but they had only two complaints. And I feel, and I know that they had to have more than that, but they didn’t. But why? The reason is lack of awareness of what the people can really do. And then believe it or not, as small as rural communities are, we are not getting information. And we have to increase public awareness to that fact.”
Thomas shared that the most common incidents of hate in her county are directed towards the trans community.
The hotline operates as a tool to connect people who experience hate with culturally competent resources in the communities where they live to the resources they need. If the reported incident requires police assistance, the hotline can provide this. Grassroots organizations across the states have also partnered with the hotline offering legal services, counseling, financial assistance and more.
If you, or someone you know, has been the target of hate or witnessed an act of hate, you can call the hotline at 833-866-4283. It is open Monday to Friday from 9 a. m. to 6 p. m. You can also leave a message, or you can report online at any time by visiting CaliforniaVsHate.org. You can report in 15 different written languages and operators can talk to you in over 200 languages.
