US president-elect Senator Barack Obama’s victory earlier this month has provoked a rise in hate crimes against ethnic minorities, civil rights groups said on Monday.
Hundreds of incidents of abuse or intimidation apparently motivated by racial hatred have been reported since the election, though most have not involved violence, the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
White supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the Council of Conservative Citizens have seen a flood of interest from possible new members since the landmark election of the first black president in US history.
“We have seen a fairly dramatic backlash over the last three or four weeks, since the final weeks of the campaign,” said Mark Potok of the Montgomery, Alabama-based center, which monitors far right groups.
“These [incidents] are merely gut level reactions from a lot of people,” Potok said. “There is a substantial subset of white people in America who are boiling angry over this.”
In the highest-profile case, a federal grand jury indicted Jeffrey Conroy, 17, for second-degree murder and classed it as a hate crime last week after Marcelo Lucero of Ecuadoran descent was stabbed to death on New York’s Long Island.
Six other teenagers face lesser charges in the case. All pleaded not guilty. Police said last week the seven youths set out to find and attack Latinos.
About a quarter of black Americans live in poverty — nearly three times the rate for whites — at a time when rising budget deficits and expensive corporate bailouts are going to leave little federal money for anti-poverty programs. The federal budget deficit is likely to hit a record US$1 trillion next year.
Black adults are more likely than whites to be in prison. Homicide is the leading cause of death among black males ages 15 to 34 — and it has been for years.
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