Hate Crimes Surge After the Election

by Johnnie Grant

Incidents of abuse or intimidation apparently motivated by racial hatred have been reported since the Nov. 4 election. Parts of the country from Maine to California have experienced a wave of hate crimes, according to police, federal officials, and monitoring hate-watch organizations.

An interracial couple in Pennsylvania woke up to find the remains of a burnt cross on their front lawn. A California town saw cars and garages vandalized with swastikas, racist epithets, and slogans such as “Go Back to Africa.”

Black effigies hung from nooses in an island community in Maine. Students chanted, “Assassinate Obama” on a schoolbus in Idaho.

Another incident happened in Snellville, Ga., where Denene Millner said
a boy on the school bus told her 9-year-old daughter the day after the
election, “I hope Obama gets assassinated.” Later that night, someone
trashed her sister-in-law’s front lawn, mangled the Obama lawn signs,
and left two pizza boxes filled with human feces outside the front
door, Millner said.

Federal investigators were at the scene of a predominantly black church
still under construction that was destroyed by a suspicious fire in
Springfield, Massachusetts. “It gave every appearance of being a
deliberate act or hate crime,” said Springfield Fire Department
spokesman Dennis G. Leger. The fire loss was estimated at $2 million.
The suspicious fire started hours after Barack Obama made history as
the nation’s first black president-elect.

In the highest-profile case, a federal grand jury indicted Jeffrey
Conroy, 17, for second-degree murder and classified it as a hate crime
after Marcelo Lucero of Ecuadorian descent was stabbed to death on New
York’s Long Island. Six other teenagers face lesser charges in the
case. All pleaded not guilty. Police said the seven youths set out to
find and attack Latinos.
On election night, two teenagers beat up a black man on Staten Island,
New York, and cursed him with racial epithets and “Obama.”

“These are just some of the incidents that have been documented; many
more than usual. There is a substantial subset of people in America who
are boiling angry over this election,” according to Mark Potok,
director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law
Center, which monitors hate crimes.

Opposition to President-elect Obama is at its highest and has
highlighted the stubborn racism that lingers where reports of hate
crimes emerged before the election. Those in opposition have poured
their frustration into vandalism, harassment, threats, and even
physical attacks.

“It’s really been quite something. I can’t quantify the figures beyond
saying that clearly there have been hundreds and hundreds of these
incidents,” said Brian Levin, a professor at the Center for the Study
of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
The rise in hate crimes appeared to fit into part of a longer-term
trend.

“We don’t have exact figures, but what I can say anecdotally is that
there seem to be significant spikes in hate crimes from around the
election period up until the present. President-elect Obama is a
perfect storm that incites a nerve in the hardcore racist movement
within the United States,” Levin concluded.