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New California Program Wants All Hate “Incidents” Reported to the State

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California now has a multilingual statewide hotline and website that encourages people to report all acts of “hate.”

While we already have a criminal justice system for hate crimes, this new program, CA vs Hate, wants to know about all hate “incidents.” What are those, you ask? The CA vs Hate website describes them this way:

A hate incident is a hostile expression or action that may be motivated by bias against another person’s actual or perceived identity.

Perpetrators may be motivated by different discriminatory biases, including, but not limited to; bias based on race, color, disability, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, or gender, including gender identity.

Interestingly, the California Senate Public Safety Committee analysis stated the following:

1)  Make sure that “hate incidents” are included alongside hate crimes wherever relevant

2)  Define hate incidents with language provided by the Anti-Defamation League:

A hate incident is an action or behavior motivated by hate but legally protected by the First Amendment right to freedom of expression.

Including: name-calling, insults, distributing hate material in public places, and displaying hate material on your own property.

Just a reminder that hate speech or a hate incident is very different from a hate crime:

In the United States, hate speech is protected by the First Amendment. Courts extend this protection on the grounds that the First Amendment requires the government to strictly protect robust debate on matters of public concern even when such debate devolves into distasteful, offensive, or hateful speech that causes others to feel grief, anger, or fear.

…the FBI has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity,” including skin color and national origin.

So what exactly does the CA vs Hate program do if the US already has a system to deal with hate crimes? Here’s the breakdown of the process:

Callers will be connected with a professional trained in culturally competent communication and trauma-informed practices.

Whether you report online or by phone, you will be contacted by a care coordinator who will follow up with you to ensure you are able to access resources and support, including legal, financial, mental health, and mediation services.

California vs Hate is not run by the police. Your report will not be shared with law enforcement without your consent. We will only connect you with law enforcement if you request it. Our team can share information about how to report to police or local prosecutors if needed.

California vs Hate will also identify civil legal options that don’t involve the criminal legal system, both through the Civil Rights Department and other agencies.

The law creating the hotline includes identity protections for incident victims, such as:

a) Advise callers and website visitors that their personally identifiable information will not be shared with local, state, or federal law enforcement, including immigration enforcement, without their express written permission; and,

b) Provide statistical data regarding hate crimes and related incidents reported to them to the Department of Justice (DOJ), in the form and at intervals prescribed by DOJ. This data shall not include any personally identifiable data regarding victims or reporting parties.

But there were no such protections that I could find for those accused of perpetrating a “hate incident,” nor could I find any sort of mechanism for dealing with false accusations. How will the data collected be used? The CA vs Hate website only says the following:

CA vs. Hate will use the information captured through the portal and network to improve services for people targeted for hate. The Civil Rights Department will also issue regular reports, sharing data about hate incidents and crimes across the state that will not identify individuals targeted for hate or people who report acts of hate. This data will help the Civil Rights Department, other government, and community leaders improve efforts to prevent and respond to hate.

One can only imagine how this data will find its way into the US’ burgeoning social credit system.

Here are some of the questions that CA vs Hate asks individuals reporting a hate incident to answer:

Governor Gavin Newsom says the reason behind the hotline is the rise in reported hate crimes – up 33 percent from 2020 to 2021. A deeper look at the data, however, shows that Newsom is guilty of cherry picking. From Public:

But convictions of hate crimes have been flat. In 2012 there were 107 hate crime convictions in California. In 2021, there were 109, according to the same data. It’s possible that hate crimes really did rise by 80%, and juries decided not to give prosecutors convictions. …But it’s also possible that convictions stayed the same because there was no increase in prosecutable hate crimes. And it may be that Californian prosecutors simply labeled more crimes as “hate” crimes because they were primed to do so by the media’s 700% – 1,000% increased focus on racism between 2011 and 2020.

Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency Secretary Lourdes Castro Ramírez said the following at the launch of the program on May 4:

With the launch of the CA vs Hate Resource Line and Network, we unequivocally state that there is no home or place for hate in California. We are doubling down on our commitment to combat hate by embracing the strength of our diversity and empowering Californians with resources and support to prevent and end hate in all forms.

While I certainly don’t condone hate, it’s hard to see exactly how setting up a hotline to report all types of aggression is supposed to cleanse everyone’s hearts. The program does, however, continue doling out boatloads of cash to the nonprofit industrial complex, which is of course incentivized to amplify the threat of hate.

The CA vs Hate hotline  is part of a broader $166.5 million investment in state anti-hate initiatives that was passed in 2021. Since then, California has been sending that funding to nonprofits across the state “to provide support to victims and survivors of hate incidents.” In addition to fielding incident reports in the newly-established hotline, it includes the following:

Program Service Providers shall provide supports and services which may include, but not be limited to: community engagement and education; community conflict resolution; in- language outreach; services to escort community members in public; community healing; collaboration; cross-racial building; community diversity training; and local or regional rapid response to hate incidents.

The 2021 federal COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act is also beginning to dole out money to respond to hate incidents. and could be coming to a city and/or state near you. From Vox:

In a bipartisan move and as a response to a surge in anti-Asian violence, the House passed the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act to bolster hate crime tracking by providing grants to regional law enforcement agencies to create reporting hotlines and train police officers on hate crime response, among other efforts.

Many celebrated the law but as Vox’s Li Zhou reported, it won’t prevent anti-Asian hate crimes since it mostly addresses what takes place after the crime has already occurred.

Yes, fortunately we don’t quite have precogs yet.

It looks like the federal grants are helping to bring a hate incident hotline to Illinois soon, and a recent federal grant to the California Civil Rights Department will also help the state expand its efforts to eradicate hate:

 This grant will support the development of sustainable infrastructure for engagement between [the California Civil Rights Department] and community-based organizations (CBOs) that have earned the trust of communities targeted for hate. This grant will help ensure that victims of hate are directed to local support services and, if they request, law enforcement. Projected activities include the creation of a new CBO Specialist position. The CBO Specialist will: (1) institutionalize regular input from CBOs to improve the services provided by CA vs. Hate and to hold CRD accountable to the needs of people targeted for hate; (2) improve service to CBOs that are serving individuals targeted for hate so those CBOs can help serve as a bridge between victims and CA vs. Hate; (3) collect hate incident and crime data directly from the CBOs; (4) develop a regional network of CBOs, and facilitate regular meetings to improve services; and (5) enhance collaboration and communication between CBOs to strengthen cross-community solidarity.

The California Civil Rights department also proposes to sub-grant more than 30 percent of the grant funds to California Black Media, “a culturally specific organization that will further advance these goals consistent with the federal, state, and local data… and will create opportunities that increase awareness and involvement in decisions and policy discussions that produce economic, social, and political impacts on underserved people.”

***

So when should we expect hate to be eradicated from the Golden State? Hard to tell.

One could make the argument that this new program will only help exacerbate the issue in the following ways:

  • The nonprofits are incentivized to oversell the preponderance of hate.
  • The reports on the quantity of hate incidents will no doubt be given ample media attention, which will help drive the narrative that hate is everywhere.
  • The “civil legal options” could lead to a strong backlash that will only stoke resentment and anger.

One big benefit of the program for the political class, however, is it keeps the identity politics train rolling along. It’s reminiscent of Hillary Clinton’s slogan “love trumps hate” for her failed 2016 campaign – one that wrote off a chunk of the electorate because their hearts were supposedly filled with hate. That allowed Clinton to justify not offering any economic policies that would benefit such “deplorables.”

Well now California Governor Gavin Newsom is going to do what not even Jesus himself could; he’s going to eradicate hate from the hearts of men. It might be a quixotic project, but it will also be a useful distraction from dealing with more concrete issues an elected official can actually control, such as the following in California:

This might shock politicians like Newsom, but falling living standards and plummeting life expectancy typically put people in a foul mood. Sometimes that anger is misdirected. Sometimes it’s exploited as people search for explanations for their despair. We have seen this time after time.

If the governor started fixing some of California’s economic inequality issues, he might find a little less hate in his state.

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24 comments

  1. timbers

    The list you show of law identifying who will not be given info of accused hate commiters looks very short. So it’s rational to assume the entire rest of the world could be informed of the accused “incident”. Like Twitter, FB, employers and future employers. Also what about hate incidents regarding Russia? Will Senators Congress Presidents news anchors reporters be elible to be reported as hate commiters when they say mean/false things about Russia/Putin?

    1. KD

      Also what about hate incidents regarding Russia?

      As a praxis, there is always who/whom with respect to “hate”. Ca is using a definition provided by the ADL which recently decided Azov Battalion were NOT “far right extremists,” but at same time, watch what happens if you try to run a comparable organization in Ca. If you listen to the news media, you understand there are a bunch of white men in Trump hats running around beating up Asian grandmas, but if you watch the videos, that isn’t what you see. If hate involved “stereotypes” and falsely perpetuating stereotypes about people in a way to drum up “hate”, then obviously stereotyping Trump supporters and blaming anti-Asian violence on them would appear to be hate. . . while we are at it, what is the function of all the hate hoaxes we read about on college campuses that turn out fabricated by activists, if not to generate racial or ethnic animus? But if you say that, you are not with the program. You can’t instrumentalize neutral anti-hate standards, and no politician is interested in something they can’t instrumentalize. Politicians are only interested in pretending that their standards are neutral in an attempt to legitimate them, because you couldn’t sell this stuff to the general public without fraud.

      Further, after this bill goes through, you can imagine what will happen to the critics of a certain nation-state that Amnesty International accuses of being an Apartheid state. “Hate” is pretty much a re-work of friend/enemy, hate being anything an enemy says critically about you (and the more it is true and accurate, the more hateful). We already have Marcuse to thank for “repressive tolerance,” this is just more “repressive tolerance.” In this day and age, tolerance is primarily measured by the degree of repression you are willing to impose on others in its name. If you disagree, that probably means at a minimum you are an “authoritarian.”

      All this lovely “hate speech” controls in Europe pretty much are about creating an ethno-sexual hierarchy of which identity groups are privileged, and which everyone gets to $#!+ on. Its not too much different from battles over street names in big urban areas. Frankly, its all brilliant, pit all the racial and ethnic groups and the sexual minorities in a zero sum conflict over who gets “most favored status” and you don’t have to do anything to ameliorate any of the declining conditions of political economy. Its redolent of the 1980’s corporate “self esteem” movement, where disgruntled workers were psychologized to distract from objective concerns of working conditions or legitimate grievances. It creates the perfect alignment of the interests of billionaire donors, PMC managers, and the “Left,” so stop being a bitter clinger and join the program or be left behind.

  2. Michael Fiorillo

    Let’s also remember that California, where the Ds have super-majorities in the legislature and control the executive, had a Medicare For All bill that was prevented from coming to a vote and seems to have since disappeared without a trace.

    But we can always fund a PMC jobs program to pretend to combat “hate.”

  3. The Rev Kev

    I could see this having a very detrimental effect in the workplace. I recently came across a video where women in the workplace were complaining that the men only treated them professionally and that was that. For the men, it became too risky to have a relationship of any sort of woman in the workplace as there were more cons than pros. So extend this out to all the different groups in a workplace based on sex, race, religion, etc. With this new program, you would take one look at it and decide to take precautionary measures. So at work you stay polite, retain a respectful distance with people, the only conversations would be work related, mentoring other people would be seen as potentially hazardous depending on the people involved and any joking and private stuff only takes place out of work hours when you are with your friends. Under this program, any other behaviour would see you risk your job and even your career as there are no shortage of people who would game these rules to advance themselves. For sociopaths, they would have a field day. And just when you thought that the workplace was not a good place to be, this garbage comes along.

    1. Expat2uruguay

      Every time somebody calls a woman a b*tch it will be a reportable hate incident? Madness

      1. The Rev Kev

        Not the same. People like Rudy Giuliani deserve everything that happens to them and that is true harassment and exploitation. But then there is the other sort where baseless charges are laid against people in order to advance an agenda, personal or otherwise. We have read cases like this in academia in NC Links. What put me in mind of all this was a movie that was on the telly late last night – Michael Crichton’s “Disclosure.” And as you must be aware, it is not always male vs female but can be male vs male as well. In the end, it is all about power plays and that is what is happening with California’s program.

    2. JustTheFacts

      Yes. That is what I decided to do: avoid discussing anything deep at work and definitely avoid mentoring. (Hence, no doubt their interest in ChatGPT which they think will let them learn things without help). I no longer have any idea what my colleagues think about the world, or if they even think about the world. Of course that means most of us sit in our little bubbles, listening to media/podcast people who see the world as we think it is, and do not learn from others who might know better.

      This, and so many other developments, are about dehumanizing people and destroying the social fabric to make people easy to control and unable to resist. They should relate to the authorities, HR, the hate line, not each other. Not incidentally, fewer people than ever enjoy their jobs, which probably affects their productivity. And why should they when their employers expect total obedience across their lives: “Move where we want when we want you to”, “work when we want you to”, “put this vaccine into your body”, “Don’t say or do anything we will judge as controversial after the fact or we will fire you”, and “we can lay you off at any moment”. (Did anyone notice that Gerhard Schröder’s wife lost her job for daring to go to the Russian embassy for the Victory in Europe celebrations held there?) As Larry Fink, founder of Blackrock said “Behaviors need to change and we are making them change”. No wonder anti-depressant usage is increasing, and with it mass shootings. But hey, the solution is to encourage each other to denounce each other, just like with the Stasi.

  4. Rip Van Winkle

    Would like to know the trends for incidents reported, claims and payouts for Employment Practices Liability Insurance (EPLI) before March 2020 and since for office worker settings, i.e. ‘me too’.

    Elon and Sam Zell never mention when they rail against WFH. Can’t blame them for ‘talking their books’. I don’t need an office and at this rate my 15 year old car will outlast me.

  5. Carolinian

    So the Anti-Defamation League gets to decide what “hate” is for all Californians? No special pleading there.

    Here’s suggesting the war against hate is itself a form of hate but all scrubbed up and shiny for public consumption. All those people who truly hate Trump and his supporters can claim they hate them for hating. So it’s ok to hate as long as you hate the right people. Intellectually speaking it’s all nonsense but then wars against thought crimes always are.

  6. David in Friday Harbor

    I hate Gavin Newsom.

    Gavin is reportedly so severely dyslexic that he can barely read a full paragraph at a time, yet he is able to spend vast amounts of cash on political campaigns because his father Bill helped oil billionaire Gordon Getty break his father J Paul Getty’s will. So I guess that I hate Gavin due to his Learning Disability Status and his Social Class. Please report me.

    This “hate” registry was obviously designed to stoke division and grievance in a Clintonesque play at political exploitation. California is an economically failed state with growing numbers of marginalized citizens who lack the means to feed, house, and clothe themselves. The marginalized are righteously angry — and the greedy billionaire rentiers and looters responsible for California’s economic collapse wish to divert that anger away from themselves.

    The omission of Caste from this list tells me that the drafters are driven by their own biases and political agendas and not by a sincere concern for those negatively impacted by hate.

    1. flora

      I doubt many at NC listen to Victor Davis Hansen’s utube vids. He’s an old school conservative. Make very good observations (even if I often disagree with his conservative view).

      Here’s a ~12 minute utube vid of him explaining why he thinks California is destroying itself. I agree with much, disagree where I think he idealizes some things I don’t idealize. As he says, both GOP and Dem govs created the current CA situation.

      How California Destroyed its Middle Class (A Cautionary Tale) | Victor Davis Hanson

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r0m4UCPKHw

  7. B Flat

    Hate incident reporting is already in place in the UK, with predictably awful results. Police knocking at one’s door to question an online comment, for example. Not that anyone would have an incentive to smear a neighbor or co-worker, perish the thought!

    1. flora

      So,,, can I have Hillary arrested for calling me a deplorable? (I voted for Bernie.) That was pretty hateful, and my feelings were seriously hurt. / ;)

    2. flora

      Sounds well designed to pit neighbor against neighbor and harass one’s political opponents. Show trials next?

      1. B Flat

        We may get there eventually, but for now the sheer intimidation of a cop stopping by for chat to get one’s mind right seems to do the trick.

  9. flora

    Newsom making CA the pilot program for this DHS hideous, Stazi-like program?

    From Mike Benz.

    THREAD🧵: New docs obtained by @America1stLegal
    show DHS plan to produce videos training bystanders to take action against political speech by “Middle-Aged Pro Life Advocates” & “Old High School Friends” who are “Budding onspiracy Theorists.”

    https://twitter.com/MikeBenzCyber/status/1655786187410358276

    There’s a reason Texas and Florida and Montana etc are gaining residents and CA and NY are losing residents.

    (uh oh… I just heard a knock at my door. /;)

    1. flora

      adding: this sounds like W’s Atty Gen John Ashcroft’s 2002 attempt to turn neighborhood watch groups into fed tattletales in the name of combating terriers. That effort was roundly mocked and didn’t get very far.

  10. Skip Intro

    I wonder if they’re looking for slogans. Perhaps the commentariat can provide some suggestions. I’ll just get the ball rolling:

    Karen is Sharin’

    If you hear something, say something

    Sticks and Stones and Names can hurt

  12. MFB

    “I know there are people out there who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that”
    Tom Lehrer, of course, “National Brotherhood Week”

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