Arjun Singh Sethi

American Hate tries not to be totally about Donald Trump, but it’s difficult. Trump sets the tone for the nation. He has validated hate in the USA, expressing it often himself, and promulgating executive orders to entrench it in American society. He is far worse than a bad example; he is causing significant increases in incidents of hate and intolerance across the country, from women in general to immigrant children in particular.

Arjun Singh Sethi collected stories from across the country, and reconstituted them as chapters. Jews, Natives, the disabled, Muslims, and more. They are not lurid reporting; they are the view from the victims’ side: innocent bystanders, unintended consequences, legal and medical fallout. And very often, enduring PTSD. The stories are self-explanatory, hurtful, shameful and revolting. Sethi warns early on that “The promises of equality under the law and freedom from harm are often the most enduring and dangerous illusions of American life.”

In the chapter on bullying, we learn that parents have the ability to block efforts to lessen it. In this case, a Sikh gave children lectures on his religion, to demystify it, to help reduce the bullying of a Sikh student at his California school. But parents removed their children from those lectures on the basis of religious freedom – the freedom to close minds to any but their own religion. They don’t even want to hear about it. The bullying is not their problem.

In a chapter on anti-Semitism, we learn that social media are used to rally the stormtroops to harass and threaten Jews at will, with voicemail gunshots, threats, spam, editorials and marches. All that is necessary is for someone to be Jewish in the USA.

For a trans man, there is a double whammy, as he is wheelchair-bound. “White supremacists now act with impunity, and think they have license to hurt others,” he says. He has given up identifying as trans. Dealing with disability is enough of a burden when confronting hate.

Incredibly, hate crimes rarely result in convictions because of the requirement that hate be the sole motivation for the crime. If someone has an ongoing complaint, the murders he commits may not be hate crimes in the United States. It is so pointless that 17% of law enforcement agencies didn’t bother to report a single hate crime for the five years up to 2014. In 2016, 88% reported no hate crimes at all.

In one particularly sickening story, a family in Tulsa was all but destroyed by a man who moved next door. He ran over the mother, got out on bail, and shot the eldest son who was talking to her on the phone from their front porch. They had called the police, but when the gunman, who had been shooting inside the house, did not answer, the police simply left. The family’s offense? They are Lebanese, in Tulsa for decades.

Hate has been normalized. Boys and men are parroting the president, Sethi says. One in six girls now complains of being groped in school.

It might be like a scene from a bad medieval movie, but more than 800 churches find they must provide sanctuary to those hiding from ICE. The mayor of Berkeley leaks word of its plans so immigrants can hide. The governor of California has tried to pardon immigrants in advance. That is what has become of “freedom” and the state of hatred. Clearly, the government is not about to help, since it is the cause.

Sethi says we need a new kind of support group, a hate victims support group, where they can heal together, and the community can understand what is happening. Because it is not just the individuals who are affected by these incidents. Whole communities become disoriented and fearful after a shooting or a stabbing. The work of one lone hater has far reaching and long lingering effects. This goes beyond the big, national protest groups which organize marches, petitions and lawsuits. At the human level, there is gratuitous destruction of families, communities and lives.

The Conclusion of American Hate is 25 pages of resources and hope. There is all kinds of activity battling hate. Sethi says it must come from the bottom up, but I disagree. As long as the leadership of the country signals it is desirable to discriminate, things will continue to deteriorate. The day Donald Trump hugs a Palestinian immigrant, the whole world will change.

David Wineberg… (mer)