Trends in hate speech victimization
The total proportion of students ages 12 to 18 who reported being targets of hate-related words (defined as “a derogatory or bad name concerning race, religion, Hispanic origin, disability, gender, or sexual orientation”) at school during the previous year declined from 1999 to 2015, from 13 to 7 percent. A large part of that decline can be attributed to a reduction in the percentage of students who reported hate-related words referring to gender, which decreased by more than half from 2001 to 2015 (2.8 to 1.3 percent).
In 2015, students were most likely to report hate-related words referring to their race (3.2 percent), followed by ethnicity (1.8 percent). Rates of students being targeted for their religion, disability, gender, or sexual orientation were around 1 percent each (Appendix 1).