(Editor's note: Colin Flaherty has done more reporting than any other journalist on what appears to be a nationwide trend of skyrocketing black-on-white crime, violence and abuse. WND features these reports to counterbalance the virtual blackout by the rest of the media due to their concerns that reporting such incidents would be inflammatory or even racist. WND considers it racist not to report racial abuse solely because of the skin color of the perpetrators or victims.) Videos linked or embedded may contain foul language and violence.
He was supposed to be one of the good guys: A white doctor in Harlem. Professor at Columbia. A national leader against white racism. Frequent guest on the Huffington Post, New York Times and other liberal outlets. Active in U.N. public health initiatives for poor people.
He even lives in Harlem. So when Dr. Prabhjot Singh decided he would stroll through his neighborhood Saturday night, he figured he was safe.
After all, he said to Huffington Post about his Harlem neighbors: "It's one thing to be told in the news or in a book that a community is not as dangerous as you thought they were. But it's completely another thing to know somebody personally. Understanding really comes from deeper engagement.”
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And no one was more deeply engaged than Dr. Singh.
Then four blocks from Malcolm X Boulevard, Dr. Singh met up with 20 black people on bikes. According to the NBC affiliate in New York:
"I heard 'Get Osama' and then 'terrorists,' and then the next thing I felt was someone moving past me, ripping at my beard and then hitting me in the chin."
He ran. They chased him and knocked him down and beat him some more.
"Singh said he thought he could have died if passersby hadn't intervened to help fight off the more than dozen young men who jumped him."
They broke his jaw. Kicked out a few of his teeth. And all that.
Dr. Singh is a Sikh, a faith where members wear distinctive turbans and beards. But this mob thought he was a Muslim and taunted him for that. Not knowing that Muslims and Sikhs are long and bitter rivals.
After the attack, he wondered why anyone would bother him: He is, after all, an American and a member of the Harlem community. He said on MSNBC:
Singh's priority now is to continue his work as a doctor in his East Harlem community, he said. "This is not the Harlem I know," he said. "If anything, [this experience] makes me more committed to our community and the work we do there."
Last year, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times saying the biggest danger of hate crimes to Sikhs was from white racism. He cited that six times in one article: "There is also the question of whether white supremacist groups have specifically targeted American Sikhs," Singh said. His commentary was in response to the killing of six Sikhs in Wisconsin by a neo-Nazi.
But in Harlem that Saturday night, there was nary a white face to be found. Besides his, that is.
Police released surveillance video that showed the attackers were black.
But the same man who relentlessly condemned white racism for violence against Sikhs all of the sudden became circumspect about the race of his attackers. And eager to explain it away.
When Lamont Hill from the Huffington Post asked him to describe the assailants, Singh said:
They were young men. Probably from the neighborhood. Certainly not reflective of the neighborhood I’ve come to know and work in.
It was dark. They seemed like they were young African-American men. But again, it was dark.
No one has been arrested.
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