Leadership Conference on Civil Rights supports illegal immigration, misleads about hate crimes (SPLC, MALDEF, ADL, NCLR, NHMC...)

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights has released a new report called "Confronting the New Faces of Hate: Hate Crimes in America 2009" [1]. It's the latest salvo in the attempt by several far-left groups to support massive illegal immigration and to silence their critics. They name-check several of those groups, but their exact involvement in the report isn't clear; the mentions might just be boilerplate.

For just one example of how the LCCR is attempting to mislead, see the attached picture. The ominous-looking graph on the top (from the LCCR) shows anti-Hispanic hate crimes from 2003 to 2007. The graph on the bottom (created by me) uses the same data set, but shows earlier years. Note that 2001 was higher than 2007. And, note also that neither chart are adjusted for population. If that were done, the bottom chart would show that such crimes have actually declined as a percentage of the Hispanic population from 1995. About their misleading chart, they say:

The increasing number of shrill anti-Immigration reform commentaries from high profile national media personalities, including CNN's Lou Dobbs and Talk Show Network's The Savage Nation host Michael Savage, correlates closely with the increase in hate crimes against Hispanics.

The LCCR isn't just confused about correlation not equaling causation, they also don't explain what was happening in 2001; Dobbs had just returned to CNN and was hosting Moneyline. He didn't start his anti-illegal immigration show until 2003.

Another of their targets is FAIR, and they trot out an SPLC report and the usual smears, prefacing their SPLC excerpt with:

The Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) have become increasingly concerned about the virulent anti-immigrant and anti-Latino rhetoric employed by a handful of groups and coalitions that have tried to position themselves as legitimate, mainstream advocates against illegal immigration in America.

Whether those groups were involved in this report or are just mentioned in a misbegotten attempt to give the report credibility isn't known. Later, they also quote Alex Nogales of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

[1] civilrights.org/publications/hatecrimes/escalating-violence.html

Fri, 06/19/2009 - 06:09 · · Importance: 4