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Wednesday, March 05, 2014

South has more than half of hate groups, center says

Groups that promote hate speech are alive and well in the U.S., especially in the South, with more than half of the 939 known active hate groups located in 11 Southern states, says the Southern Poverty Law Center. The total number of active groups is currently down from an all-time high of 1,018 in 2011 but is still double the 457 groups in 1999, Reid Wilson reports for The Washington Post.

"The eight types of hate groups the center has identified include white nationalists, black separatists, neo-confederates, Christian identity, skinheads, Ku Klux Klans and neo-Nazis, along with a handful of miscellaneous groups," Wilson writes. The Southern Poverty Law Center says hate group activity includes "criminal acts, marches, rallies, speeches, meetings, leafleting or publishing."

While the South has the biggest clusters of groups, the megastate of California leads all states with 77, followed by Florida with 58 and Texas with 57. Georgia has 50, followed by New Jersey, 44; New York, 42; Pennsylvania, 41; Tennessee, 37; North Carolina, 33; Indiana and Virginia, 26; Arkansas, 24; Missouri and Illinois, 23; Mississippi and Alabama, 22; and South Carolina, Arizona and Louisiana, 20. Lightly populated rural states also have the fewest known groups, led by Hawaii with none, Alaska and North Dakota, 1; Maine, Wyoming and South Dakota, 2; Rhode Island, 3; Vermont and Delaware, 4; Kansas, Iowa and Connecticut, 5; and Utah and New Mexico, 6. (Southern Law Poverty Center Map: Hate groups in the U.S. For a interactive map of state-by-state statistics click here)

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