There's been some controversy over the lack of media coverage of an incident that occurred Halloween of last year. Three young white women were severely beaten by a mob of black teenagers after visiting a haunted house in Long Beach. The incident is being treated as a hate crime because the teenagers--nine of whom were found guilty by a juvenile court judge just last Friday--apparently taunted the women with racial epithets before the beating.

I also found interesting that just recently, a 71-year-old alleged Ku Klux Klansman was arrested for the 1964 kidnapping and murder of two black men. Media interest in the incident had declined after the murder of three civil rights workers that same year, and the case had gone cold for several decades.

I researched hate crime statistics for the 2007 World Almanac. According to the FBI, law-enforcement agencies from around the country reported 998 anti-white offenses in 2004. (That's about 11% of the 9,021 single-bias incidents reported to the FBI.) The same year, there were 3,281 reported anti-black offenses (about 36% of the total). Keep in mind though that not all law-enforcement agencies that report to the FBI include hate crime data. In 2004, only 16% included bias motivation as part of their reports.

Hate Crime Statistics (since 1995) (FBI)