From NBC News:
African American employee’s office vandalized inside Education Department
Aug. 23, 2019, 12:14 PM PDT
By Suzy Khimm, Heidi Przybyla, Jonathan Allen and Laura StricklerWASHINGTON — The office of an African American employee of the U.S. Department of Education was vandalized earlier this week, and other employees have expressed concern that the attack may have been racially motivated. African art figurines were found beheaded, with their limbs removed, and a school desegregation poster was damaged, according to Education Department employees and a congressional aide.
The incident happened at the department’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, the employees and the aide told NBC News. The department said the employee had been out of the office for several days and reported the incident on Tuesday afternoon.
The poster, which was pulled off the wall and damaged, was believed to depict Ruby Bridges, an African American schoolgirl who became an icon of the civil rights movement, sources told NBC News. Some of the employee’s co-workers are now looking for copies of the poster to put up in their own offices to show solidarity, they added.
The office belongs to an African American woman who was recently designated as a “diversity change agent” within the Education Department to provide diversity and inclusion training to department staffers, the sources said. …
Both department employees and the congressional aide said they did not believe that a personal feud or conflict led to the incident, because the staffer whose office was vandalized seemed to have a collegial relationship with her colleagues.
“I could not believe that something like this happened,” a department employee said. “This should be a place that’s safe for all of us.”
Suzy Khimm is a national reporter for NBC News, focused on investigating federal agencies.
Heidi Przybyla is an NBC News correspondent.
Jonathan Allen is a Washington-based national political reporter for NBC News who focuses on the presidency.
Laura Strickler is an investigative producer in the NBC News Investigative Unit based in Washington.
As I’ve often noted in the past, eventually one of these types of incidents is going to prove to be legit. Maybe this will be the one?
Probably not, though. Indeed, this one sounds like a hilariously obvious Hate Hoax.
Of course, there isn’t a whisper of skepticism in the NBC News account.
Did any of the four NBC reporters assigned to this Breaking National News have any Doubts? Do any of them know that Hate Hoaxes have been a Thing for many years now, with a history traceable back to the Tawana Brawley-Al Sharpton whoop-tee-doo of 1987?
In contrast, here’s a local police blotter item from SFGate.com today:
3 Family Members Suspected Of Hate Crime Kidnapping, Assault On African-American Teen
Bay City News Service | on August 23, 2019
SAN BRUNO (BCN)Three members of a family are suspected of tying up and assaulting an African American teen in what police described as a racially motivated attack early Thursday in San Bruno.
Wilfredo Amaya, 46, and Haydee Arguello, 46, both of San Bruno, and Luisandor Suarez, 49, of San Francisco, were taken into custody on suspicion of committing a hate crime, kidnapping, assault with a deadly weapon and criminal threats, police said Friday.
But the subsequent details suggest this wasn’t what most people think of as a Hate Crime — a random attack on a member of a hated group. Instead, three Latinos were really mad at the black youth for a very personal reason.
The 17-year-old boy told police that he was visiting a girl at the family’s home in San Bruno when members of the girl’s family arrived at about 2:30 a.m.
Three of the family members reportedly became irate and allegedly assaulted the victim, restrained him with rope, held him against his will and threatened to kill him, police said.
The victim told police that the suspects yelled at him using racial slurs, and he believed his race to be a motivating factor for the attack. He is African American and the suspects are Hispanic, according to police.
The suspects eventually released the boy and he was later treated at a hospital and then released, according to police.
A lot of what are counted as Hate Crimes these days are not what people assume Hate Crimes are — violence against random members of a group — but instead are run-of-the-mill personal conflicts in which the aggressor uses a forbidden epithet to express his personal anger.
