Overlooked

On Jan. 9, 2017, sixteen Jewish Community Centers (JCCs) in six states across the east coast, along with several Jewish schools in the U.K., received their second bomb threat in as many weeks. One of these, the center in Maitland, Florida, I personally attended for multiple years. For those who don’t know, JCCs provide community support (not just for Jews), education and religious services (i.e. Sunday schools) and often have attached synagogues. Furthermore, all of them are preschools, and some additionally provide kindergarten. However, this is not about the JCC, or even the bomb threats. This is about the fact that threats and actions against small communities in the United States are an issue and much of the time it seems we overlook them. We need to assure that not only our news covers these issues, but that we also bother to give them the time of day, especially in our current political predicament.The FBI provides a resource known as the Uniform Crime Report, which contains data from 15,000 of the U.S.’s 18,000 (as of 2008) law enforcement agencies (police, sheriffs’ offices, special jurisdictions, state law offices, etc.). This data is then broken down into categories relating to religion, race and sexual orientation. According to the UCR in 2015, almost 6,000 hate crimes were reported in the U.S., of 4,216 reported race crimes, 827 were targeted against Native Americans, Asians, Islanders and Arabs, and an additional 759 were anti-white race crimes. 86 percent of all religious based hate crimes were targeted against non-christians, over half were directed solely at America’s Jewish population, some 900 crimes, many of which were unreported or not presented widely beyond local news. The issue with these statistics is that these incidents are only those which are easily persecuted/identifiable as hate crimes, if the crime is reported in the first place. Sadly, the UCR is the only national database on hate crimes, and is sorely lacking. The Southern Poverty Law Center and the United States government estimate that some 260,000 hate crimes go unreported each year, based at least partially on data from the UCR. They also report that a quarter of known hate groups in the U.S. are solely anti-semitic groups, a percentage reflected by no other group.Despite the number of recorded incidents, which is growing every year in rate, these hate crimes seem to receive little of our focus. There is no real major coverage of either incidences, or the general trend in the growth of hate. In addition, the Anti-Defamation League reported last year that violence on college campuses had doubled, but no one seems to be focusing on the issue. It doesn’t help that colleges tend to have large numbers of incidents relating to minorities. According to the Department of Education only 13 percent of racial cases in colleges are reported. 146 incidents were reported in 2015, meaning that over 1,100 may have gone unreported. Though there are Jews of multiple races, they are primarily counted as that race in the eyes of the public; a Hispanic Jew will be counted as Hispanic, and a White Jew will be counted as White.Maybe you have seen coverage on the JCC bomb threats though, and in major publications. But check the date, were these reports from the 9th or the 18th? While many news sources did pick up the story, it was not until the third round of bomb threats on the 18th. This time 27 locations received threats across 17 states. It is a little insulting that it took 3 rounds of people threatening pre-schools for the press to notice. In addition, to find info on the subject at all, one has to specifically go look for it. Yes, there is coverage, but it is not active. No one is actively spreading the news. There are several groups where if a member gets a rude message the internet freaks out and if something more happens than half the country gets involved. But it takes two bomb threats to multiple preschools for the media to even mention the issue. Yet when a giant Menorah on a family's lawn was mangled and made into a swastika, it barely got onto the news,  and even then was sold more as vandalism with a tinge of hate, rather than hate expressed via vandalism. True, that social media does help in spreading news, but when you see something like this on your platform of choice how often do you read it, how often do you actually spread the word? In all likelihood, not enough.Jews are also not the only ones are discriminated against yet get overlooked in today’s culture and media. Hundreds of hate crimes occur against other minorities each year, as stated earlier 827 reported acts of racism are inflicted on small groups but many more are either not reported or simply overlooked. But of those that are noticed, how many do you hear about? For instance, the National Institute of Justice reports that 4 in 5 Native Americans or Alaskan Natives have been the victims of violent crime, and that of those victims, around 90 percent for both men and women, have been crimes perpetrated by non-Indians. To make matters worse, Native Americans report an amount of sexual assaults/rapes against women at four times the national average. The kicker to all this is that even if the offender is caught they are unlikely to be severely punished, according to the Indian Civil Rights Act (created in 1968 and modified in 2010), Tribal courts can only punish offenders with 3 years of jail, and/or a 15,000 dollar fine, no matter the charge. According to a New York Times article from 2012, the U.S. government failed to punish 52 percent of crimes brought to them from reservations in 2011. Of these, 65 percent of rapes, and 61 percent of cases related to sexual abuse against children were declined for federal prosecution. Few of us are even aware of the issue. This is the definition of disgustingly little coverage or national attention. If issues like this are being ignored by the media and your average joe, than think about what else we may be missing. Maybe we should consider Sikhs who are often victims of misdirected Islamophobia, or perhaps we should talk about issues communities in the United States have to deal with even if they are direct hate. I mean, when was the last time you even thought about Buddhists and Tibet?It is truly interesting that we so revile persecution and hate, and yet so much of it goes on and we can’t even be bothered to notice it. It may just be the media does not think that these issues will draw viewers or that the sheer amount of information the governments and private groups admit they may be missing makes the issue seem incredible. Whatever the case is, we need to do something to track the 260,000 crimes that go by each year without notice, and what's more is we need to do more about not only reporting on but fighting the hate we are aware of. With the rising tide of prejudice that has embedded itself into the heart of our nation, we must pay attention to what's happening to everyone.