#SMHNEWS: Hate Crimes Have Soared In America Following Trump’s Victory

Still, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate crimes, is “seeing a rash of hate crimes, of hate rhetoric, racist graffiti in campuses around the country,” said Mark Potok, an SPLC senior fellow, who called the uptick extraordinary.

“We have seen [Ku Klux] Klan literature drops, we have seen that suicide hotlines are ringing off the hook, and we are hearing of very extensive bullying in and around schools,” he added.

NBC has reached out to the Trump campaign and presidential transition team for comment.

Among the reports of events occurring in the aftermath of the election:

• A San Diego State University student walking to her vehicle had her purse, backpack and car keys taken by two men making comments about the president-elect and the Muslim community, university police said. She walked away to report the incident, and then returned to discover her vehicle was missing. Police are investigating the attack as a hate crime.
• A short video posted Wednesday and viewed at least 250,000 times on Facebook showed students at a school carrying a Trump sign while someone can be heard saying “white power.” Two students at York County School of Technology in Pennsylvania walked with a sign into the lobby and chanted “white power” twice before the director “squelched it,” said communication outreach coordinator Renie Mezzanotte, who added that “the administration has been absorbed by” the incident for two days, the outcry has become disruptive to instruction, and that instruction and student and staff safety are always the school’s priorities. An officer at the York Area Regional Police Department confirmed that they investigated the incident.
• Police were investigating the appearance of a swastika, the word “Trump” with a swastika replacing the T and the words “Seig Heil 2016,” on a store front in South Philadelphia hours after the election was called. The Anti-Defamation League said it was disgusted to learn of the graffiti.
• A representative of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering confirmed that someone had wrote the word “Trump!” in graffiti on a door at the school’s Muslim prayer room. It has since been removed and Dean K. R. Sreenivasan said in an email to students that any violation of civility and mutual respect in the community “is an offense against us all.”
• In Chicago, video posted to Twitter and shared thousands of times appears to show a man being beaten by a group of people who say he voted for Trump. The victim appears to be white, the assailants black. The attack happened just before 1 p.m. Wednesday on Chicago’s West Side, police said. Chicago detectives have the video but a representative did not elaborate about political affiliations of those involved.
• And the Times-Dispatch of Richmond, Virginia, reported that the words, “Your vote was a hate crime” were spray-painted on several monuments to figures from the U.S. Confederacy.

READ MORE