Dec 10, 2016 3 min read

Ankur Mehta was sitting at the bar of the Red Robin restaurant at South Hills Village mall last month, earphones on his head and oblivious to the world around him.

That had to make it all the more startling when an elbow landed in his face. Mehta hadn’t heard the slurs his attacker was using, his provocations that things were “different now,” and that he didn’t want people like Mehta sitting next to him. Punches followed, leaving Mehta with a loose tooth and a cut lip.

A 54-year-old Bethel Park man who apparently believed Mehta was a Muslim has been charged in the attack. He later said alcohol consumption blunted his better instincts and that “I’m not that kind of person.” But, as we all know, an excess of alcohol has a way of lowering inhibitions and allowing unvarnished feelings a pathway out of the id.

The attack on Mehta can be considered a hate crime and, unfortunately, it’s not an anomaly. Hate crimes have been rising in the United States, with a spike occurring in the wake of Donald Trump’s election last month. Following Trump’s Islamophobic calls to ban Muslim entry into the United States and his campaign’s understated anti-Semitism, the president-elect’s more rabid followers have apparently felt emboldened. The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks incidents of hate, reported that episodes of harassment, vandalism and other forms of intimidation increased markedly in the week after Trump’s surprise victory – surpassing even the number of incidents reported after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Consider the following:

• Mosques in various parts of the country, including one outside Harrisburg, have received photocopied letters from a group calling itself “Americans for a Better Way,” calling Muslims “children of Satan,” and “a vile and filthy people.” The letters called Trump the “new sherriff (sic) in town,” and warned Muslims “would be wise to pack (their) bags and get out of Dodge.”

• Racist messages were sent to black freshmen at the University of Pennsylvania that included racial slurs and references to lynching. The messages were traced back to an account at the University of Oklahoma.

• The New York Times reported last week that libraries have seen books on Islam defaced, and threatening messages scrawled on walls. While it was assembling a presentation on the Quran, the public library in Evanston, Ill., found books on Islam had racist imagery and language scribbled in them. Someone wrote “lies cover to cover” in the library’s copy of “The Koran for Dummies.”

• An employee of the Metropolitan Transit Authority in New York City who was wearing a hijab was pushed down a flight of stairs and called a terrorist.

Trump has said he wants to heal the divisions in the country that opened during the rancorous presidential campaign. The president-elect has also said that he doesn’t know why white supremacists have felt empowered as a result of his White House bid, and he did look into the camera and say “Stop it!” when asked about hate crimes on “60 Minutes.” But this is not enough. When he does assume the presidency next month, Trump should use the full force of the bully pulpit to remind Americans that we live in a pluralistic society, and that discrimination based on race or faith flies directly in the face of American ideals.

Will he do it? It doesn’t seem to be in his nature. But Trump has surprised us all before.