And The Hatred Spews Forth

It has only just begun. Black students at University of Pennsylvania were added to a an internet group called “Nigger Lynching”. It seems virtually every single black freshman/woman was added to the group which is apparently based in Oklahoma. At Wellesley College in Boston, a group, obviously not from the university, drove around campus and harassed black students, spitting and jeering at them and yelling “Trump” and “make America great again”. Hispanics and Muslims report being bullied at school. In Utah, a student was told “you wetbacks need to go back to Mexico”; in Minnesota, graffiti saying “fuck niggers” was written on a school door. In North Carolina, a gay couple was left a note on their car stating, “Can’t wait until your ‘marriage’ is overturned by a real president. Gay families = burn in hell. Trump 2016”. In Delaware, a group of men pull up to a black woman at a gas station and call her a “nigger”, before brandishing a gun and saying, “you’re lucky there are witnesses else I’d shoot you right here”. The KKK is actively recruiting in Alabama, passing out flyers saying, “Get off the fence, whitey, and join the only group that has ever stood for the white man. Black radicals have reverted back to savages and more Muslims arrive daily.” In Tennessee, an Afghan woman who thought she had been friends with a neighbor for 10 years received a message from her “friend” telling her to get out of her country and go back to Afghanistan. And finally, in Wisconsin, a University of Wisconsin-Stout student from Saudi Arabia died from wounds received in an attack by an as-yet unidentified white male.

If, as suspected, this was a hate crime, then the blood of this victim is on the hands of all those Republicans who refused to stand up to the hatred and bigotry Trump spewed throughout the campaign and on the hands of all those who voted for him. That may be harsh, but true. And it will be on the hands of all the rest of us who do not rise up and make clear that this will not stand.