People have experienced harassment at school, at work, at home, on the street, in public transportation, in their cars, in grocery stores and other places of business, and in their houses of worship. They most often have received messages of hate and intolerance through graffiti and verbal harassment, although a small number also have reported violent physical interactions. Some incidents were directed at the Trump campaign or his supporters.

Of course, hate crimes and lower-level incidents of racial or ethnically charged harassment have long been common in the United States. But the targets of post-election hate incidents report that they are experiencing something quite new.

“I have experienced discrimination in my life, but never in such a public and unashamed manner,” an Asian-American woman reported after a man told her to “go home” as she left an Oakland train station. Likewise, a black resident whose apartment was vandalized with the phrase “911 nigger” reported that he had “never witnessed anything like this.” A Los Angeles woman, who encountered a man who told her he was “Gonna beat [her] pussy,” stated that she was in this neighborhood “all the time and never experienced this type of language before.” Not far away in Sunnyvale, California, a transgender person reported being targeted with homophobic slurs at a bar where “I’ve been a regular customer for 3 years — never had any issues.”

In his 60 Minutes interview that aired on November 13, President-elect Trump claimed that he was “surprised to hear” that some of his supporters had been using racial slurs and making threats against African Americans, Latinos, and gays. He shouldn’t have been. In his November 23 interview with The New York Times, Trump claimed he had no idea why white supremacists — the so-called “alt right” — had been “energized” by his campaign. Again, it’s no mystery. Both the harassment since the election and the energy on the radical right are the predictable results of the campaign that Trump waged for the presidency — a campaign marked by incendiary racial statements, the stoking of white racial resentment, and attacks on so-called “political correctness.”

At this point, it is not enough for Trump to look in the camera and say “Stop it!” to the harassers, as he did on 60 Minutes. Nor is it enough for him to simply “disavow” the white supremacists who see him as their champion, as he did at the Times. If he is to make good on the first promise he made as the president-elect — his pledge to “bind the wounds of division” in our country — he must repair the damage that his campaign has caused. Rather than feign ignorance, he must acknowledge that his own words have opened “wounds of division” in our country. Rather than simply saying “Stop it!” and disavowing the radical right, he must speak out forcefully and repeatedly against all forms of bigotry and reach out to the communities his words have injured. And rather than merely saying that he “wants to bring the country together,” his actions must consistently demonstrate he is doing everything in his power to do so. Until president-elect Trump does these things, the hate that his campaign has unleashed is likely to continue to flourish.

DATA COLLECTION

The 867 hate incidents described here come from two sources — submissions to the #ReportHate page on the SPLC website and media accounts. Incidents were limited to real-world events; the count does not include instances of online harassment. We have excluded incidents that authorities have determined to be hoaxes; however, it was not possible to confirm the veracity of all reports.

The incidents documented here almost certainly represent a small fraction of the actual number of election-related hate incidents that have occurred since November 8. The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that two-thirds of hate crimes go unreported to the police. The underreporting problem is surely more severe when it comes to hate incidents that may not rise to the level of criminal violations and that are being reported to a new, little-known repository established by a private organization.

SUMMARY OF THE DATA

Hate incidents have been reported from almost every state.

As the hate incident location chart reflects, schools — K-12 settings and colleges — have been the most common venues for hate incidents, a result that is not surprising, given how prevalent bullying is in our nation’s schools and the characteristics of young people. A Washington state teacher reported that at her school:

“Build a wall” was chanted in our cafeteria Wed [after the election] at lunch. “If you aren’t born here, pack your bags” was shouted in my own classroom. “Get out spic” was said in our halls.

A mother from Colorado offered this story:

My 12-year-old daughter is African American. A boy approached her and said, “Now that Trump is president, I’m going to shoot you and all the blacks I can find.”

Hate incidents have also been extremely common in two settings where strangers are likely to encounter one another — on the street and in retail establishments. A woman from Louisiana submitted the following report:

I was standing at a red light waiting to cross the street. A black truck with three white men pulled up to the red light. One of them yelled, “Fuck your black life!” The other two began to laugh. One began to chant “Trump!” as they drove away.

When an 18-year old service employee in Kalamazoo, Michigan, asked a man if he needed help, he replied, “I don’t need to ask you for shit. Donald Trump is president.” He then called her a “black bitch” and spat on her shoes. A cashier in Minnesota and a hostess in Illinois were both called “nigger” by their customers.

People also have been harassed in their homes. Many have reported receiving threatening messages on their front lawns, slipped under their front doors, left on their porches, and taped onto their windshields. A Sudanese-American family in Iowa City, Iowa, for example, found a note attached to their door that read, “You can all go home now. We don’t want niggers and terrorists here. #trump.” A lesbian couple in Austin, Texas, came home to find “DYKE,” “Trump,” and a swastika spray-painted onto their door. One residence in Pittsburg, California, draped a banner proclaiming to neighbors: “You can hang a nigger from a tree equal rights he’ll never see.”

The targets or motivation of the harassers are also illustrated. The figure includes reported hate incidents motivated by disdain for Trump.

The category “Trump-General” refers to incidents in which harassers invoked Trump’s name but did not make their motivations clear. The “other” category refers to hate incidents motivated by bias against Asian Americans, Native Americans, or those with disabilities. Some incidents were difficult to categorize because they appeared to be motivated by multiple forms of hatred or bias.

The number of reported incidents declined over the ten days following the election.

The following sections of this report describe some of the incidents by each group targeted.