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Sikhs deserve the dignity of being a statistic


In the aftermath of the mass shooting in a Sikh gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wis., a sea of reporters have asked many Sikh leaders and activists to quantify how many Sikhs had been targeted in hate crimes and murders since Sept. 11, 2001. Although I have helped chronicle hate crimes against the Sikh American community for more than a decade, I could not tell them.
Even as the White House, U.S. Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation express their commitment to protecting Sikh Americans in response to the massacre, there is one glaring problem with how the federal government monitors hate crimes against Sikhs in America: It doesn’t.
The FBI tracks all hate crimes on Form 1-699, the Hate Crime Incident Report. Statistics collected on this form allow law enforcement officials to analyze trends in hate crimes and allocate resources appropriately. But under the FBI’s current tracking system, there is no category for anti-Sikh hate crimes. The religious identity of the eight people shot in Oak Creek will not appear as a statistic in the FBI’s data collection. As a Sikh American who hears the rising fear and concerns in my community, I join the Sikh Coalition and Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) in calling for the FBI to change its policy and track hate crimes against Sikhs.
It seems like a simple enough step.  However, the FBI has not changed its policy, because it assumes that all hate crimes against Sikhs are motivated by anti-Muslim bias: this is both wrong and dangerous. It seems like a simple enough step. Contrary to popular framing, hate crimes against Sikhs are not a case of “mistaken identity.”    Read Original Post Here...
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