Hatred is an omnipresent, inevitable default of the human race, however, Donald Trump’s presidential election has sent open acts of hatred in the United States spiraling through the roof.
Up until the most recent political campaigns, the United State’s racial and religious tolerance had, collectively, seemingly improved significantly from its previous condition of provincialism and moved towards a more liberal, yet still fairly nationalistic, America. Hate crimes can be as small as a single person being attacked, or as large as hundreds of people with a common identifying factor being attacked for just that. A single hate incident does not mean that only a single person was affected.
Specific examples of hate incidents would be: graffiti intended to convey a hateful message, assaults on people or their personal property, bomb threats, harassment, vandalism, etc. Most hate crimes specifically pertain to minorities in an area, such as Muslims, Jews, people of color, etc…
Most recently, mainstream media has streamlined the hatred directed towards Muslims, since the election, and distracted from the many other groups who are being similarly affected. WAccording to ThinkProgress.com, within the first three months post-election day, there were 261 documented incidents, and nearly half of them, 41.7% to be exact, were directly related to or in response to Trump’s win. In the first three months of Trump’s America, the most targeted people were the Jews (26.8%) and closely following were: black people (22.9%), identifiers of the LGBTQ group (13.7%), Muslims (11.8%), Latino and Latina people (10.3%), as well as many other groups (14.9%). Each specifically targeted group’s incidents have primarily pertained to specific states. New York, California, Texas, and Florida recorded the highest number of hate crimes in the U.S.
ThinkProgress.com found that in New York, there have been thirty-three documented hate crimes since the election. Of those thirty-three, eleven of them specifically targeted Jews. Similarly, in Florida, there were eighteen acts of intolerance and ten were directed at Jewish people. California documented twenty-seven incidents, 9 of which were directed at Muslims, and five targeted Latinx people. Twenty-five hate incidents were recorded in Texas; seven of those aimed at black people.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), ten days after the election the number of hate crimes had risen to 867. One week prior to the actual election, attackers set a historically black church in Greenville, Mississippi, on fire. The church was, according to authorities, targeted in an act of voter intimidation. The walls of the church were also spray-painted with the phrase “Vote Trump.” This kind of attack shows that the apparent progression that Americans have made over the past century has not been no more than superficial.
Although past presidential elections have also induced hateful outbursts, Trump’s election has actually created a safe-space for all the worst kinds of people. In Trump’s America, racism, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and misogyny are far more protected and encouraged than they have been in the past, resulting in the outrageous amount of hatred exhibited by this country’s citizens.
By: Sequoia Green
The Claw 