By: Marc H. Morial
President and CEO
National Urban League
"History will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Since the election of Barack Obama as the nation's first Black President, some have erroneously concluded that on November 4, 2008, racism and hate in America suffered a final, crushing defeat. But the murder of Holocaust Museum security guard Stephen T. Johns last week was only the latest in a rising tide of racially and politically motivated crimes revealing that the battle between hope and hate not only continues, it is actually intensifying.
In addition to the Holocaust Museum murder, in recent weeks we have seen the fatal shooting of George Tiller, the medical director of a women's health clinic in Wichita, Kansas by a pro-life zealot. We have been shocked by the brazen drive-by killing of an army recruiter in Little Rock, Arkansas by an American jihadist. The FBI recently arrested four men for planning to blow up a synagogue in the Bronx. And last November, I stood with the leaders of seven other national civil rights organizations to condemn the murder of Marcelo Lucero, a Long Island man of Ecuadoran descent who was beaten to death by a group of teenagers simply for being Hispanic.
The fact is, hate crimes, fueled by the struggling economy, anti-immigrant hysteria and the election of America's first Black President, are on the rise. In April, the Department of Homeland Security released a report claiming that "Right-wing extremists have capitalized on the election of the first African American President, and are focusing their efforts to recruit new members, mobilize existing supporters, and broaden their scope and appeal through propaganda." According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, there are now 926 documented hate groups in America, a 54% increase since 2000. Attacks against immigrants have risen by 40% in the last four years.
This must be a call to action. Even as we continue to lead the fight against terrorism throughout the world, we must also focus our efforts on combating the rise of terrorism in our own back yard. First, we must step up the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes and pass the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which is now before the Congress. We need to pass along the values of unity, equality and non-violence to our children and reinforce those values in our schools. We must heed the call of groups like the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence to close gun-show loopholes, ban assault weapons and do all we can to make our streets free of gun violence.
Finally, we cannot allow the only voices heard on this issue to be those of elected officials and talk radio hosts whose extremist views contribute to an atmosphere where these crimes are somehow justified. In a recent article on salon.com, Leonard Zeskind, a long-time researcher and author on the subject of extremist violence said, "The reason we're talking about this [latest] incident is because it happened in Washington, D.C., at the Holocaust Museum, instead of somewhere in the backwoods of Montana."
Hate crimes must be confronted whenever and wherever they occur. As Dr. King reminded us, the good people must not remain silent.
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