Of the 917 active hate groups operating in the United States listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, 40 are located in Pennsylvania — the sixth-highest total in the nation.
The SPLC is a non-profit activist group that tracks civil rights and hate crimes. It defines a hate group as an organization with “beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics.”
“Over the course of a year, we have a team of investigators that scours the internet for racist publications and real world activities to find out which groups exist, which groups are still active and which groups come along,” said Ryan Lenz, a senior investigative reporter for the SPLC’s Hatewatch project.
Some are classified as anti-LGBT groups, and some are black separatists, who don’t believe in interracial marriage and want a nation only for black people, according to the SPLC.
Some critics of the SPLC say the group’s activism biases how it categorizes certain groups.
But since the FBI doesn’t keep track of domestic hate groups, the SPLC’s tally is the widely accepted one.
Pennsylvania’s total number of hate groups ranks fifth among the nation’s 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the SPLC.
California (79), Florida (63), Texas (55), New York (47) and Virginia (42) are the only states with more hate groups on the list.
