Since the election of Donald Trump in November, there has been a 35 percent increase in hate crimes across New York City, according to Straus News.  Throughout the presidential campaign, reported NYPD statistics of the city’s hate crime count has doubled in a year with 43 incidents in the 27 days following the election. The rhetoric and tone of the Trump campaign targeted many minorities and could be the reason for this rise.

These hate crimes and incidents included verbal and physical assaults on two Muslim women, a police officer and an MTA employee, and swastika graffiti in multiple places including the NYC subway and inside the elevator of state Senator Brad Hoylman’s apartment building. New Yorkers met for a workshop last month to educate themselves and help others by speaking up for victims of these attacks.

“When you have groups that are being dehumanized or considered the ‘other,’ there’s something else that’s at play when people don’t do anything,” said Dr. Celia B. Fisher, Director of the Center for Ethics Education and psychologist at Fordham University. “People are violent against others because it gives them a sense of power and belonging to a larger group. In order to combat that, it’s a larger cultural issue in terms of beginning to talk about minorities … in terms of Americans who are one of us.”

Please visit Straus News to read the full article, “Responding to Hate Crimes.”

Celia B. Fisher, Ph.D. is the Fordham University Marie Ward Doty University Chair in Ethics and Director of the Center for Ethics Education. Fisher’s  Decoding the Ethics Code: A Practical Guide for Psychologist, is now in its fourth edition from Sage Publications.

Rimah Jaber, MA, Senior Editor of Ethics and Society blog