How to Stand Up Against a Bigoted Attack

Black university students added to a “N---er lynching” text message group at the University of Pennsylvania. Elementary schoolers chanting “build the wall” in Michigan. Latino high school students in California handed fake deportation letters. Muslim women having their head scarves forcefully removed by strangers in California, and threatened with fire in Michigan. Swastikas painted on buildings from New York to Indiana.

Hate crimes, especially against Muslim and transgender individuals, have already increased in the U.S. by about 7 percent since last year. And now a wave of racist, Islamophobic, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, homophobic, and misogynistic attacks has swept the country since Donald Trump’s victory in last week’s presidential election. A webpage created Thursday by the Southern Poverty Law Center to collect accounts of these aggressions gathered more than 200 responses within 24 hours, The New York Times reported. These incidents and Trump’s victory appear to be linked; indeed, many reports on social media recall statements made by perpetrators to this effect. In an interview with 60 Minutes, the President-elect said he was surprised to learn of the hate crimes, and remarked, in response, “I am so saddened to hear that...I will say this, and I will say right to the cameras—stop it!”