By ADAM SPECTOR
The rate of hate crimes has gone up over the past several years, yet it has received little media attention.
Eric Blankenstein, a senior Trump appointee responsible for enforcing laws against financial discrimination, used to write blogs and once questioned in if using the n-word was inherently racist and said that the majority of hate crimes were big hoaxes.
In a statement, Blankenstein admitted that he wrote the posts but claims they have no bearing on his work now.
According to WBAL-TV 11, “from vandalism to murder, a new report from Maryland State Police shows that Maryland is seeing more hate crimes.”
In 2017, Maryland saw a 35 percent increase in hate crimes since 2016. This has also been a nationwide increase. Despite this severe issue, sources such as CNN, Variety and the Huffington Post seem to spend more time talking about irrelevant issues.
The problem right now is that there are so many irrelevant topics of debate that the issue of hate crimes, racism, and anti-Semitism seem to have been put on the back burner.
In other words, people right now are more focused on minor issues of perceived political correctness, such as banning Speedy Gonzalez reruns and removing Apu from “The Simpsons” than the actual issue of ending hate crimes.
The way many people enjoy pretending to be offended by very minor things puts others under a false impression that racism is over even though it’s clearly not.
Even though Speedy Gonzalez offended Americans over potential Hispanic stereotypes, the Looney Tunes cartoon character remained popular in Latin America. This means the people that Americans thought would be offended by the character were not offended, yet Americans were.
Another example of people wasting their time was with Vogue’s recently released photo with of Kendall Jenner, with an Afro. This was somehow considered racist because she didn’t really have an Afro?
These people should instead spend their time raising awareness of hate crimes and should try to take action in their communities to prevent violence, vandalism, and any other crimes against people on the basis of race, religion, sexuality and or nationality. News editorials should promote this idea.