A new report from the U.S. Department of Education offers a detailed look at crime and safety at the nation’s schools and on college and university campuses.
The report found that 6.4 percent of all students ages 12 to 18 reported that they had been verbally abused with hateful words. Public school students were nearly twice as likely to be victims as students in private schools.
Some 7.4 percent of Black students reported hate speech compared to 6.1 percent of White students. The good news is that the level of hate-related speech has decreased significantly. In 2011, 10.7 percent of Black students reported verbal abuse at school. In 1999, 16.1 percent of Black students reported hate speech.
More than 23 percent of all students reported seeing hate-related graffiti at school. Blacks students were only slightly more likely than White students to see hate-related graffiti. Here too, the trend is down. In 2011, 28.1 percent of Black students reported seeing race-related graffiti at school. In 1999, the figure was 38 percent.
The full report, Indicators of School Crime and Safety: 2019, may be downloaded by clicking here.
