Nearly 900 reports of harassment, intimidation, racial slurs, and other hateful incidents were recorded in the 10 days after the U.S. presidential election, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said Tuesday.
Many of the harassers documented in the incidents invoked President-elect Donald Trump's name, according to the report "Ten Days After: Harassment and Intimidation in the Aftermath of the Election".
The SPLC said that hate crimes and "lower-level incidents of racial or ethnically charged harassment" are far from new in the United States, but many minorities reported incidents they say they have never before experienced, from a Jewish woman in New York hearing the first anti-Semitic comment in all her 25 years, to an Asian-American woman being told to "go home" by a stranger in Oakland, California.
The report cited multiple victims saying they had "never witnessed anything like this".
Incidents were documented in workplaces, on the street, on public transportation, grocery stores, houses of worship, places of business, in the victims' cars and even outside their own homes.
But perhaps some of the most alarming cases happened in schools - with children as young as 12 being told by classmates that they would be deported or killed. "Build a wall" was repeatedly chanted in one cafeteria in Washington state.
One African-American 12-year-old was approached by a boy who said "Now that Trump is president, I'm going to shoot you and all the blacks I can find," according to her mother.
Anti-immigrant incidents made up the largest proportion of the 867 reported, with anti-black incidents coming in second.
Twenty-three of the hate incidents reported were against Trump supporters or members of his campaign.
The report is the culmination of incidents recounted to the SPLC in response to its "report hate" campaign in the wake of the election of Trump, who touted anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric throughout his campaign. U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch also called on Americans to report incidents of hate after the election.
"We need you to continue to report these incidents to local law enforcement, as well as the Justice Department, so that our career investigators and prosecutors can take action to defend your rights," she said in a video statement on hate crimes in the United States.
Her statement followed the release of the FBI's report on 2015 hate crime statistics, which showed an increase in hateful incidents long before the election of Donald Trump.
Hate crimes against minorities rose 7 percent in the United States last year, the FBI reported last week, with incidents targeting Muslims jumping 67 percent.
Hate crimes escalated to 5,850 from 5,479 last year, according to the bureau's latest data.
