This column, from the weekly opinion piece MATTER OF FACT, first appeared on BrooklynReporter.com, the Home Reporter and Spectator dated July 2, 2021
On the morning of Sunday, June 27, a swastika was found spray painted on a tree on 85th Street in Bay Ridge. Surveillance video caught some teenagers marking the tree earlier that morning, just after 1 a.m.. Councilman Justin Brannan had the symbol removed the same day and Senator Andrew Gounardes shared his outrage, adding that a recent survey found that 30 percent of 18-to-39-year-old New Yorkers believe the Holocaust is a myth.
This is not a new phenomenon and it has been getting worse. According to NYPD statistics, compared to the same time last year, hate crimes in New York City are up about 123 percent.
Late last year, on December13, a man was videoed marking a swastika on a yeshiva in South Slope in broad daylight. After St. Athanasius Church in Bensonhurst had the crucifix on the property of their school smashed and the American flag at their rectory burned, a suspect was apprehended on May 13. Police believe that days after the church vandalism, the suspect also set a fire at a Brooklyn yeshiva/synagogue and punched a Hasidic man on the street.
On May 22, antisemitic and racist graffiti was scrawled in marker underneath a play element at the recently renovated Bensonhurst Park at Bay Parkway and Cropsey Avenue. There was no swastika, but the phrases “Heil Hitler” and “Kill all Jews” were inked on the metal, along with an obscenity that included the N-word.
Last week, after a statue of George Floyd was unveiled on Flatbush Avenue, it was vandalized early Thursday morning and police are investigating the incident as a hate crime. In addition to spray painting the likeness of George Floyd’s face, the name of a website for the white nationalist hate group, Patriot Front, was spray painted on the pedestal.
“…compared to the same time last year, hate crimes in New York City are up about 123 percent.”
Patriot Front is no stranger to Brooklyn. After the hate group targeted Brooklyn with recruitment posters, stickers, and banners over a year ago, including throughout Bay Ridge, on January 5, 2020, a dozen neighborhood grassroots organizations organized a community demonstration that stretched along two blocks on Third Avenue, to make it clear to hate groups that their presence was not welcome here.
It has been clear that all protected classes of people have faced an increased level of hate. Vile instances of anti-Asian hate have dominated our local news throughout the entire pandemic. On the day before the month-long, June Pride celebration was to begin, a man randomly punched another man in a Manhattan CVS, while shouting homophobic remarks at him.
Though hate crimes definitely saw a noticeable increase over the years since Donald Trump first announced his presidential campaign with a racist speech, the surge in these crimes is not entirely due to one man. Conversely, despite the fact that crime, in general, has increased since the pandemic began, anyone telling you that is the sole reason for the rise in hate crimes is oversimplifying a complex societal issue.
Though the FBI has been clear that white supremacist and fascist groups account for the greatest terrorist threats in the United States and they make up the predominance of those committing hate crimes, there have been a significant number of instances where minorities have committed these crimes against other minority groups this past year.
The George Floyd statue that was vandalized last week in Brooklyn had been unveiled in conjunction with a Juneteenth celebration. Juneteenth is now our nation’s newest federal holiday, marking the end of slavery in America. Just as soon as the new holiday was signed into law, many Conservatives who have been preoccupied with Critical Race Theory and the New York Times 1619 Project, rather than the economic impact the pandemic has had, began telling their audience that the intention of Juneteenth was for it to replace Independence Day.
Juneteenth should be a separate holiday that is noted twenty days before each Fourth of July, in tandem with it. We have certainly made much progress, but our country can never truly live up to the words in the Declaration of Independence, ensuring “certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” if we do not reckon with our history of depriving people those freedoms.
