Underreported Under Threat: Addressing Hate Crimes Targeting Arab Americans

The Arab American Institute Foundation (AAIF) requests funding as a community-based organization for the proposed project title "Underreported, Under Threat: Addressing Hate Crime Targeting Arab Americans." We seek funding of $400,000 to implement the attached proposal. AAIF is based in the District of Columbia, but as a community-based organization our networks encompass leaders in all fifty states. The work of the proposed project will take place in the following 12 states with the highest concentrations of Arab Americans: California, Michigan, New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Maryland.

Through our own research and community discussions, AAIF has identified three main barriers to accurate reporting of hate crimes, both anti-Arab and those against other communities: community distrust of law enforcement, a lack of consistent reporting by state and local law enforcement, and remaining discrepancies between state and federal data.

AAIF proposes the following project implementation in order to (1) support community-based efforts from within the Arab American community to address and prepare for hate crimes, speech, and incidents while increasing victim reporting, (2) support and enhance relationships between law enforcement and stakeholder communities to promote increased reporting, raise up culturally competent responses to hate incidents, and ease distrust from stakeholder communities, and (3) empower community-led engagement on prevention and response efforts across communities targeted by hate.

To reach these objectives, we aim to leverage our existing networks of community leaders, our strong partnerships with stakeholder organizations, and our relationships government officials to to convene state-based working groups. Second, we will produce informational resources facilitating reporting from Arab American and other stakeholder communities, as well as resources for training law enforcement to identify anti-Arab hate and compassionately work with victims of hate. And finally, we will build on our existing research on hate crime data reporting, both as it pertains to the Arab American community and as an examination of the system as a whole.