Fighting Enmity Against Sikhs With Art, Talks and Superhero Garb
THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Samuel G. Freedman
NEW YORK---Standing before his living-room mirror one morning in August 2001, Vishavjit Singh put his fumbling fingers to the task of wrapping on his turban for the first time in a decade. Stares would qualify as the benign end of the spectrum for many American Sikhs, who follow a monotheistic religion founded in South Asia about 600 years ago. Because they are so often mistaken for fundamentalist or even jihadist Muslims — the turban being associated with the leaders of Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, the Taliban and the Islamic State — American Sikhs have endured a substantial amount of hate crime. Mr. Singh has made it his mission, in deeply felt and highly idiosyncratic ways, to address the ignorance and thus defang the hate. [link]
By Samuel G. Freedman
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| Vishavjit Singh, right, helped Holden Whitehead, a student at Alfred University, into a turban as part of a diversity program. |
