Number One: Long Island, New York
Together, Nassau and Suffolk counties on New York's Long Island top our list as the most hateful place to live in the United States in 2008. Not that Long Island is new to racist hating—decades ago it purged blacks from many of its towns as documented in James Loewen's book Sundown Towns—but in 2008 it seemed to revive its ugly past with a vengeance, this time largely targeting Latinos. A Latino day-laborer was purposely run over in Farmingville in late March, and a Latino man was assaulted because of his race and perceived immigration status in January at a fitness club in New Hyde Park. These are just two examples of the race-based hate crimes that happened on Long Island in 2008; most agree that the vast majority of hate crimes and racial harassment are not reported to local police. Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy served as the voice of racism on Long Island; he spoke repeatedly and critically about Latino immigrants on Long Island. Reminiscent of the roundup of German Jews in the early years of the Nazi regime, as far back as 2004 Steve Levy proposed to have Suffolk Police officers deputized in order to detain undocumented immigrants solely on the basis of their immigration status. Levy continued his racist remarks even after the hate-crime slaughter of Latino immigrant Marcelo Lucero on November 8th in Patchogue, allegedly by a group of seven teenagers (six of them white). Levy trivialized the murder of Mr. Lucero calling it "a one-day story." When enough people called him out on his racism, Levy issued a belated apology on November 18th. Racism and race-based hate crimes were so bad in 2008 on Long Island that by the end of the year the federal government launched an investigation: the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, the FBI, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District began a joint probe about whether hate crimes are improperly handled and/or not investigated at all by law enforcement in Suffolk County.

Number Two: Washington, DC
The nation's capital was the second most hateful place in the United States in 2008. With less than 62 square miles of total land, the District of Columbia had in 2008 eight active hate groups with five different hate ideologies, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. For the second year in a row DC has had, on average, one active hate group covering less than every eight square miles of its dry land! Equally disturbing—and a major reason Washington, DC made our list this year—were its hate crimes. Often directed at gay men, these hate crimes at times were not considered hate crimes by the police. One example was the September slaying of a Maryland man, allegedly beaten to death by an 18-year-old while the victim was walking with a friend to a popular DC gay bar. Another was the December stabbing of a Chinese restaurant patron by two unidentified males who hurled anti-gay slurs at their victim before fleeing on foot. See our July 13th, October 3rd, and December 24th entries at our "This Date In Hate" for yet other DC hate-related crimes in 2008. These crimes occurred despite the DC City Council's June 3rd unanimous vote condemning hate crimes. They also occurred in the context of the United States Attorney’s Office dropping all charges in April against the son of a former George W. Bush administration member in an alleged gay bashing of a Georgetown University student. The city's saving grace appears to be its City Council: on December 12th a DC police commander and two U.S. Attorney’s Office prosecutors were grilled by the City Council at a hearing on the city’s response to anti-gay hate crimes.

Number Three: Brooklyn, New York
Long-standing racial tensions simmered to a boil in 2008 in Brooklyn, making the New York City borough our third most hateful place to live in the United States. In May, a Jewish teenager was beaten and robbed by black assailants, but police failed to classify it as a hate crime; a month earlier a 20-year-old black college student was attacked by two Jewish men, and that was classified as a hate crime by police. Jose Osvaldo Sucuzhañay and his brother Romel, walking arm-in-arm as is a custom in their native Ecuador, were attacked in Brooklyn on December 7th, allegedly by two men who hurled anti-gay and also anti-Latino slurs at them. Mr. Sucuzhañay died as a result of the attack. In addition to these hate crimes, there were five active hate groups in 2008 operating out of Brooklyn.