Is Idaho Racist? These Hate Crime Statistics Will Shock You

We love life in Boise. It's a great place to live, a fantastic spot to raise a family, and dare we say one of the greatest cities in the world. It's great here.

Mostly.

If you're unfortunate enough, you will occasionally run into your run-of-the-mill racist, misogynist, or overall hater from time to time. Across the state of Idaho, it gets worse.

While we may not see hate crimes happening in front of us every day, they're still happening across the Gem State, and a lot more often than you might think.

In 2021, over 60 hate crimes were committed. The U.S. Department of Justice defines a hate crime as such:

Hate Crimes: At the federal level, a crime motivated by bias against race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability.

Over 65% of those crimes were committed against a person because of their race. 25% were due to someone's sexuality, and 9% had religion listed as the basis for the crime.

While it's not fun to think about, we still have Idahoans living in 2023 who don't someone else simply because they are different. Sad, isn't it?

So, what can we do? We can't all be Batman and go fight for justice to prevent hate crimes before they happen. It's the recommendation of this author that we simply try to be nicer to each other. If even that feels like a stretch, maybe let's at least attempt to be mean less often. We don't have to be outraged every time we read, see, or hear something we disagree with.

We're all going through tough times. The last thing we need is to be angry at someone else who isn't quite like us. Let's be nice to each other, ok?

While hate crimes are happening in Idaho, those aren't the only laws being broken. This one was easily preventable:

Speaking of crime, this update sent shivers down my spine: