Hate crimes have surged in the ten days following the election of President-elect Donald Trump, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The group, which tracks hate activity from white supremacists and other extremists across the nation, released a new report documenting nearly 900 reported hate incidents since Election Day, many which have directly invoked the President-elect’s name. A majority of the reported incidents in the report, “Ten Days After”, have been anti-immigrant. This is disturbing but unsurprising, since Trump made xenophobia a feature of his Presidential campaign from the start.
In one of the reported incidents, a 10-year-old California boy was approached by a middle-aged white man in and “called him a ‘beaner’ and told him to ‘get the fuck out’ of the country.” In an anti-Muslim incident, “a white man in a truck hurled racial slurs at a woman wearing a hijab while she waited for the bus with her son,” telling her to “Go back to your fucking country and take your terrorist son with you” as he drove away.
“What we’re seeing is something quite unusual. People are reporting seeing swastikas painted in neighborhoods that they’ve lived in for 20 years. We’ve never seen anything like it,” said SPLC President Richard Cohen.
The group released the report in collaboration with other civil rights and labor leaders, including Wade Henderson of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights; Brenda Abdelall of Muslim Advocates; Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza; and Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers, and the leaders called out Trump for failing to adequately condemn the hate acts done in his name.
A second report released by SPLC, “After the Election, The Trump Effect,” details the findings of a survey of more than 10,000 educators. “Ninety percent reported that their school’s climate has been negatively affected, and 80 percent described heightened anxiety and concern among minority students worried about the impact of the election on their families.”
“Mr. Trump claims he’s surprised his election has unleashed a barrage of hate across the country,” said Cohen. “But he shouldn’t be. It’s the predictable result of the campaign he waged. Rather than feign surprise, Mr. Trump should take responsibility for what’s occurring, forcefully reject hate and bigotry, reach out to the communities he’s injured, and follow his words with actions to heal the wounds his words have opened.”
Trump has taken no forceful action to stop his supporters from exploding in hate acts, and any suggestion from his campaign that he has is simply not true. During a recent “60 Minutes” interview, Trump’s only direct words to his supporters were “stop it”, and that was only after he was repeatedly pressed by interviewer Lesley Stahl. When a group of neo-Nazis and white supremacists recently gathered to celebrate Trump’s victory, his transition team released a statement of condemnation that didn’t do any actual condemning. In fact, Trump rode to victory thanks in part to the support of many of these groups.
Wade Henderson, President and CEO of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, challenged Trump to follow through on his election night promise to unite the country, saying “President-elect Trump vowed to be a President for all of us. Today, we’re calling on him to make good on that vow by disavowing the hate speech that has infected our public discourse and by telling his supporters – in no uncertain terms — to stop committing these acts. He must lead by example in both word and in deed. The nation – and the world – are watching.”
SPLC’s Cohen made a similar point, saying “President-elect Trump’s first commitment to the American people was to be a president for ‘all Americans’ and to ‘bind the wounds of division’ in our country. He needs to make good on that pledge by taking decisive action.”
“This polarized and divisive election has left its mark on all of us but most tragically on our children,” said NCLR President Janet Murguia. “We have heard countless stories of harassment, intimidation, and bullying of Latino and other students in schools across the country. This cannot stand. President-elect Trump, we need you to protect and defend all Americans and condemn violence and hate being committed in your name.”
At America’s Voice, we’ve tracked many of these Trump-inspired hate incidents on our “Trump Hate Map” since his announcement, with Trump not only failing to condemn many of these incidents, but encouraging them, like when he said he would pay for the legal fees of a supporter who assaulted a Black man at one of this rallies. Now that Trump is just weeks away from being inaugurated as the nation’s 45th President, the onus is now on him and only him to demand his supporters end this wave of hate.
Frank Sharry, Executive Director of America’s Voice said, “Since the Trump campaign started, we’ve seen so much anger, hate and violence aimed at immigrants, Muslims and people of color – often done in his name. Since election day, that has escalated. For Trump to remain passive in the face of this is appalling. It’s telling that he tweets about ‘Hamilton’ and ‘Saturday Night Live’ and the media, yet fails to show that same outrage about the outbreak of hate. And, it’s equally appalling that his fellow Republicans aren’t sticking up for their constituents and demanding that Trump address this.”
