Hate crimes, intolerance on the rise in the US
Only days after US President Barack Obama lectured India on the importance of religious tolerance, the manhandling of an Indian citizen by police officers in Alabama and the shooting of three Muslims in North Carolina have brought America's own record on religion and race issues under scrutiny yet again. In the first case, 57-year-old Sureshbhai Patel was so violently tackled to the ground that he suffered a paralytic attack. Given that Mr Patel was neither armed nor did he pose an imminent threat — he was just out for a stroll around the neighbourhood in broad daylight — the police’s response was clearly unjustified. Moreover, the town of Madison, where the incident took place, is a relatively safe area. Again, the police had no reason to over-react.
Whether one calls it a hate crime, the fact remains that the only way to explain the police officer's disproportionate use of violence against Mr Patel is an irrational fear of brown skin. The neighbours who didn't recognise Mr Patel (he recently moved to the US to be with his son) had called the police to report an unknown man peeping into their garages. Would they have also raised an alarm if a White man was hovering in the area, is open to speculation but the racial undertones of this incident that put a healthy man in the hospital cannot be wished away — especially when viewed against the backdrop of the Ferguson attack and other related incidents. On August 9, 2014, 18-year-old Michael Brown, a Black male, was fatally shot by a White police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, leading to widespread protests that continue till date.
And Brown's case was hardly an exception. In July that year, New York City police confronted Eric Garner, a 43-year-old asthmatic Black man; when he resisted being cuffed, an officer put him in a chokehold — a tactic banned since 1993 — which killed him on the spot. In yet another case that got much media attention, George Zimmerman, a mixed-race man who was keeping watch at his gated community in Florida, fatally shot Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old Black male in 2012. A year later, he was acquitted of all charges.
And the prejudice against Blacks is just one part of the problem in America, where even Brown people have been targeted post-9/11. The story of dot-busters is well known, and the 2012 carnage at the gurudwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, has not yet been forgotten. With regard to Tuesday's killing of the three Muslims in North Carolina, some say that a parking dispute was at the crux of it but the absurdity of that assertion in itself underscores the racial and religious aspects of the crime. Also, like Madison, Alabama, Chapel Hill in North Carolina is a relatively safe and peaceful area; and like Mr Patel, the deceased here posed no imminent threat to anybody.
In fact, all three were American citizens, well-educated and well-integrated into the local community. That such an incident could happen in a university town like Chapel Hill, which is home to a large and diverse groups of students, and therefore, arguably more open and tolerant than the average southern town, is a cause for great concern for Indians. Every year, thousands of Indian students go to the US, without worrying for their safety. Should that begin to change nowIJ