Civil rights leaders are saying they haven’t seen the hostility this thick in decades, but no one will know for sure just how bad it gets until November when the hate crime statistics come around.

One thing is historically certain, there’s a thin line between politics and hate. Following the political framework is usually a good predictor for bias related incidents.

In the past 16 years she’s been doing community work, Danielle Nava said that correlation has stayed true to form.

“When you look at politics, you’ll really start to see where hate crimes tend to spike. Post 9-11 Muslims, anyone perceived to be Middle Eastern, the hate crimes went up. When it was don’t ask don’t tell in the 1990s, gay and lesbian hate crime spiked,” said Nava, director of Programs for the California Conference for Equality and Justice.

Overall for Long Beach, calls have remained relatively low, averaging one or two calls each month, and usually involve physical violence. Anti-gay hate crime has increased, but African Americans still suffer the highest level of attacks.

One concern is that hate crime is still very under-reported, she said.

Currently, her program is recruiting volunteer assistant team members who can act as mediators when hate crime happens. Nava said that so far, African Americans are strongly represented at the table of volunteers. Volunteers must be residents of Long Beach and have a desire to help, she said.

“When you respond to a hate crime victim, you’re not just doing victim response for the person it happened to, but you also have to have a community response,” she said. “A hate crime sends a message to the victim that is representative of the group that is attacked. There’s a lot of layers.”

Looking at data from 2008, Los Angeles County showed hate crimes against Blacks were highest, followed by gay male, then Mexican, Jewish, and Latino. Numbers for specifically Long Beach were not readily available, but Long Beach is the second largest city in the county.

Countywide, there were 280 hate crimes against Blacks, followed by 109 gay male, 83 Mexican, and 78 Jewish. Muslims represented one percent of hate crimes.

Nationally, Blacks usually represent half of all hate crime victims. Hate crime perpetrators tend to be white males between 15 and 24 years old.

But locally, the Black and Brown rift continues to be the driving force behind the hate. Almost 80 percent of hate crime between those two groups, Blacks and Latinos, are gang related, Nava said.

In 2008, the report shows that African Americans were targeted mostly by Latinos at 69 percent, followed by whites at 26 percent. Latinos were targeted most often by Blacks at 61 percent, and by whites at 24 percent. The number of Black on Latino crime increased by 13 percent. And the number of Latino on Black crimes decreased by 10 percent.

“They’re the two largest victims of those communities,” she said. “This is a collapsing of data and really looks at what’s happening in L.A. County, the tension which tends to be mostly gang related.”

Volunteers can expect to go through 17 hours of training, and get a background understanding of victimology. They will be able distinguish the difference between a hate crime and a bias-related incident, and will also acquire conflict resolution skills.

Deadline for applications to join the team is July 30.

“From 2007 to 2008, hate crime decreased, so it will be interesting to see where we’ve come from 2008 to 2009, whether those numbers significantly changed,” she said.

For information on volunteering, call 562.435.8184 or email dnava@cacej.org