PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A student at the University of Oklahoma was temporarily suspended and police are investigating a threat against a Muslim student near the University of Michigan amid racially charged outbursts at schools and universities across the country following Donald Trump’s presidential election.
The Associated Press and other local media outlets identified several reports of racist incidents at schools since Tuesday, including a group chat that the Oklahoma student got involved with aimed at black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania, Trump’s alma mater.
The chat contained “violent, racist and thoroughly disgusting images and messages,” and Penn is “appalled” its students were added to the GroupMe account,” UPenn President Amy Gutmann said. Gutmann said UPenn police have been working with the FBI. She earlier said officials had increased campus safety and were “reaching out to support the affected students.”
University of Oklahoma President David Boren in a statement said the student has been temporarily suspended as the school investigates further.
“It would appear this matter did not originate at the University of Oklahoma, but started elsewhere,” Boren said in a statement.
In Ann Arbor, Michigan, police are looking into a report of a man who threatened to set a Muslim student on fire with a lighter if she didn’t remove her hijab on Friday. The incident apparently happened near the University of Michigan campus, according to Ann Arbor police Sgt. Patrick Maguire. He added that the department is “investigating it actively … and soliciting information from anyone who may have witnessed anything.”
A crime alert issued by the university said the woman took off her hijab and left the area. Witnesses told police the man was white with an “unkempt appearance” and “intoxicated with slurred speech.”
The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called Saturday for the incident to be investigated as a hate crime, saying the “alleged attack is just the latest anti-Muslim incident reported since the election of Donald Trump as president.”
“Our nation’s leaders, and particularly President-elect Donald Trump, need to speak out forcefully against the wave of anti-Muslim incidents sweeping the country after Tuesday’s election,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
A racial backlash also unfolded after the election of Barack Obama, America’s first black president, in 2008. At the time, police documented alleged crimes, from vandalism and vague threats to at least one physical attack. Insults and taunts were delivered by adults, college students and even children.
Anti-Trump protests have taken place since the election in cities including Philadelphia, Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and New York.
I predicted this. They feel legitimized. It started yesterday in public schools.
God help us.
Tuesday was our Kristallnacht. (spell?)
What did anyone expect? He normalized being a bigoted creep.
I do realize this is a result of our horrid election but I do wonder if now all of a sudden the garbage media is underlining every single incident even more creating a narrative. I do wonder if things like this that I am sure happened before were not just simply ignored.
Every memory of a United States (that is one country) is going to disappear more and more as the days go on. Mental visions of being on teams, bands, groups of army buddies, etc. will seem like Camelot to those fortunate enough to have had experiences across the white/non-white divide. There will be an increasingly unequal two Americas…Trump’s America and the remaining others (who will be allowed to live).
Untrained people have little notion of how fast a country with a history of racial conflict can go this way. From what I can see–and from I have gleaned from the gallow-humour meisters on this site, the Press will be of little or no use in exercising any type of journalistic analysis on this phenomenon and its relationship to Trump.
That is really all we have.
Without a Fourth Estate (which Trump will take away, eventually), the United States is a rabble of self-criticizing, contentious and directionless drones. Journalism was the tool which made the Civil Rights advances (which the GOP and the Trump SCOTUS will take away) possible.
Lack of journalism will aid in this reality TV huckster taking them away faster than you can say “dictator”
Saw statistics that such incidents are up 70% - I don’t think it is just a case of more attention to these vile events. It is particularly alarming that these attacks are happening at universities which should be the center of open-mindedness.