“In major cases, almost all of them have been hoaxes,” Reilly says. “The number of hate crime hoaxes actually exceeds the number of convictions. The majority of these high-profile incidents never happened.”
It’s also a false narrative that white cops are targeting African American men, Reilly says.
In 2015, he says, of the 1,200 Americans killed by police, just 258 were black, and only 17 of those were unarmed and shot by white officers. And yet, his research indicates just 10 percent of the media coverage of police violence focused on the non-black victims.
“White guys shot by police under identical circumstances never become national stories,” Reilly says.
The distorted coverage has helped give rise to social movements such as Black Lives Matter that are based more on perception than reality.
“It’s worth noting that that interracial crime is not a huge threat in America,” says Reilly, who is African American. “Eighty-five percent of whites are killed by other whites. Ninety-four percent of blacks are killed by other blacks.”
Americans may be politically divided. But they aren’t taking their disagreements to the streets. Nor have they created a dangerous environment for certain groups of their fellow citizens.
“Portraying America as a hate-filled country is wildly inaccurate,” Reilly says.
