“Do American Sikhs count?†Simran Jeet Singh and Prabhjot Singh raised the question in The Opinion Pages of The New York Times, highlighting the disturbing aspects of the response to the shooting at a Sikh temple in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on Aug. 5.
“It is wrong to assume that every attack against a Sikh is really meant for a Muslim,†they wrote, that assumption “overlooks the long history of discrimination and hatred directed at Sikhs in America.â€
This assumption is directly associated with a second problem: a lack of data about the extent of anti-Sikh hatred. “We do not have official statistics on the extent of hate crimes in which Sikhs are targeted†because the F.B.I. currently classifies nearly all hate violence against American Sikhs as instances of anti-Islamic or anti-Muslim hate crimes, they wrote.
The legacy of anti-Sikh violence and its c ontemporary prevalence make it painfully obvious that anti-Sikh violence is often purposeful and targeted. The government must begin tracking and counting anti-Sikh hate crimes, just as it must continue to vigorously combat bias and discrimination against all Americans, including Muslims. We must do away with a flawed and incomplete assumption of “mistaken identity†regarding Sikhs; until we do, we will all be the ones who are mistaken.
Read the full piece.
