According to the New York Times, on August 5th a white supremacist, Wade Page, entered a Sikh temple and fatally shot six people before killing himself. The event was somewhat overshadowed by the Colorado movie theater shooting, but nonetheless got the attention of many Americans and people around the world. In the past week, it has been uncovered that Page’s presumed target may have actually been Muslims, not Sikhs. This opens questions regarding previous attacks on Sikhs. Were these too a case of “mistaken identity?” The answer is most likely no, because there is a long history of discrimination and hate crimes against Sikhs in the United States. These hate crime are largely under-documented because the FBI classifies all hate crimes against Sikhs as “anti-Islamic” or “anti-Muslim.” Because of this, we do not have accurate statistics and data on the actual extent of hate crimes against Sikhs. The article discusses a call to change this classification process, which would not require executive order or legislation, as the FBI is allowed to update its methods. This update would only require “anti-Sikh” to become one of the twenty-two subcategories of the five larger categories in the Hate Crime Incident Report.
This article on hate crimes against minority groups in America reflects a much larger global crime problem. Not only are hate crimes occurring around the world daily, they are also either being under-documented or not reported at all. This article does a fantastic job describing the problem and posing a starting place for a solution as well. It is apparent that violence against Sikhs is very often purposeful and should be documented that way. Governments have a duty to fight against discrimination and hate, and to report it properly for both Americans and people around the world.
8/28/12 10:45 AM
1 comment:
You started to link this to a global problem, but you didn't follow through with it. It’s okay to pick an article that is US-centric, as long as you link it to other global events, and then write around why it is a global problem. Be sure to that in future blogs. Back up claims with empirical evidence.
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