Hate crimes surge in US after Obama election: experts

[sabra]

Source: AFP

LOS ANGELES (AFP) — An interracial couple in Pennsylvania who woke up to find the remains of a burnt cross in their front garden.

A California town which 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 chanting "assassinate Obama" on a schoolbus in Idaho.

...

Mark Potok, director of the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, said the final weeks of the US election campaign and its immediate aftermath had witnessed "hundreds and hundreds" of hate-related incidents.

...

Potok traced the onset of the incidents to around the time of election rallies by Republican vice-presidential hopeful Sarah Palin where shouts of "Kill Him!" were reportedly heard from sections of the crowd.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iLuM82fV5cnL4bRwUuFDGp19twpw

[redirish28]

1. This is sad. Perhaps the truth is hard to take that America isn't as forward

thinking as we want to believe.

[Terran]

2. America as a whole has gotten a lot better

but the 75% of us who are at least more or less free of racist attitudes are always being dragged down by human scum that is the rest of our nation.

[liberal N proud]

3. We can not let the few hate filled among us pollute the whole

America has changed and will continue to change for the better in cultural acceptance.

Electing Barack Obama was the most monumental change in America in a generation but it will not be the last.

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

4. Hate crimes started to go up during McPalin campain(?)

and if (IF) she does try to run in 2012, it will spike even more..

[DuaneBidoux]

5. I think this is good. The roaches are coming into the light of day. As long as they remain hidden we

can fool ourselves about what is really there (or not). This way the country gets a taste of what is really out there (vs. what we are pretending is out there) and we can approach it in a broad, culturally mature way and begin working on these last (previously) hidden pockets of racism.

It must be loudly proclaimed everywhere and at everytime that this is no longer what we as a people are.

[keepCAblue]

6. Hate crimes against glbtqis surging after prop 8's passage

How deplorable THAT isn't making headlines, too.

[AspenRose]

11. Both are despicable

Please don't paint it as an either/or.

[LynnTheDem]

7. America; NOT LIKE IRAN, so stop saying that!!1!

America, where TOLERANCE is just a useful slogan.

[LatteLibertine]

8. I believe the United States has moved forward too

These sorts of bigots are a distinct minority and I am actually glad they are revealing themselves. I say smack them down and do so with authority.

Soon we will have a President that represents us and he will not sit by while these things occur. The decent citizens of the United States have spoken and we want to move forward.

Stay positive and continue to work the message of inclusion, empathy and tolerance. The irrational bigots know they are losing and losing big. This is why you are seeing more activity from some of them lately. They're frustrated and probably beginning to realize the United States has had it with this sort of shit.

[Joe Chi Minh]

9. I can't see how poublicity does anything but give comfort to the dim-wits responsible.

Before long they'll crawl back under their rocks - after receivng due punishment I expect - shamed by the palpable benefits to the country and its people, of Obama's administration.

[rvablue]

10. "Go back to Africa"....WTF? I blame stuff like that on Palin

and her "real" America comments.

If people don't like Obama as President why don't we start chanting:

"Go back to England"
"Go back to Russia"
"Go back to Sweden"

I'm not trying to besmirch any of those particular nationalities, they are just examples.

It makes no sense to tell someone to "go back" anywhere unless you are Native American.