The words in the subject line of Sree’s SAJA email blast made me cringe. HATE CRIME: NJ Record on Hindu family targeted

Oy.

I’ll take the tentative exotification over blatant intimidation any day, thanks. What puzzles me most about this crime is the syntax of the spray-painted hate:

We Kill U.

We will Fire your house.

Watch Your Kids.

Feel free to scream at me for this, but I know desis who sound just like that, not that I’m in any way implying that it’s an inside job OR that asshat racists are usually articulate. “We will Fire your house”? To quote OMC, how bizarre.

More from the Bergen record:

Those threats and other profanities — spray-painted on a two-story house in black and orange and neon green — are terrorizing a Wayne family of five who police say have been singled out for their Hindu beliefs and Asian Indian roots.

According to the 2000 Census, Wayne’s approximately 1,000 desi residents make it 2% brown.

…The father said his three children are aware of the graffiti but he will not let them see the words scrawled on the back of the family’s house, front steps and rear patio. He and his wife drive straight into their garage and enter the home from there.

“They don’t understand it,” the father said of his two boys, ages 11 and 16, and 13-year-old daughter. “They were born here [in the United States] and they go to school here in Wayne. They learn what everybody else does. They don’t feel any different from the next kid.”

I don’t know. I grew up in a similar town (98% white) and I understood “it” just fine when I was any of those ages. No matter. My heart goes out to them. You may not feel different, but that has no bearing on whether people treat you like you are.

Are people driving by to gawk like it’s a Christmas display? Wtf?

Such is their fear that the couple, who moved into the new house in the Toms Lake community in November, asked that their name not be published. Several times during an interview Wednesday, the couple stopped talking and stared at cars that had slowed or stopped on the street in front of their house.

This disgusting incident of vandalism was foreshadowed by several menacing letters which the family received at the end of January, a month when their garage door was similarly but not as extensively damaged. Four months passed without further intimidation.

Police said the crime apparently occurred Saturday after 4 p.m. A neighbor got suspicious when she saw two individuals, described only as dark-haired teenagers or men in their early 20s, in the victims’ back yard. She then saw the fluorescent paint and called her husband, who urged her to call police.

The neighbor’s husband said Wednesday he was stunned when he saw the painted words, including “I HATE INDIANS” and others targeting Hindus that are too vulgar to print.

The neighbor is frightened, too.

“You can’t believe your eyes when you see it,” the neighbor said, requesting anonymity. “I mean, how do you make sense of something like this?”

The Mayor, Scott Rumana, is all about loving thy neighbor as thyself:

“Any action like this is not tolerated whatsoever, and I’m appalled that any individual and any family would be subjected to this kind of treatment,” he said. “We are all neighbors no matter what religious or ethnic background. We expect people to be understanding and supportive of that position.”

A community leader who is a former president of Arya Samaj of New jersey expressed her shock while stating that she couldn’t quite relate:

(Jyoti Gandhi) said she has never felt discrimination in her home of Saddle River or in the town where she worships.

“I’m very surprised, to say the least, that this would happen here,” she said. But she speculated that many bias crimes against Hindus may go unreported.

“A lot of times the Hindu families don’t say anything,” she said. “They just swallow it to keep the peace.”

Uh, many bias crimes against Christians, Muslims and Wiccans go unreported, too. I’m just sayin’.

Until this incident, much like the afore-quoted Gandhi, the victimized family hadn’t encountered hate. The Dad moved to Passaic from Tanzania with his family when he was 17, married his wife when he was 24 and then moved to Clifton. (Do you like how I phrased that like I was your ten-year old cousin? “The Dad…”? 😉

Since resettling in Wayne, the couple said, they have had no problems with neighbors and that most had been friendly. The couple has a small Hindu temple in their house and pray daily, the husband said

Yes, but did the vandals know that they had or did that? Am I the only one who regards that detail like a pebble in my shoe? Annoying and hard to shake?

Also rather pebble-esque? The following:

Asked why the January incidents were not made public at the time, Detective Capt. Paul Ireland said police had hoped the crimes were isolated instances and that an arrest would be made quickly.

Hmmmm.

“We were hoping we would be able to solve it without the public’s help,” he said. “At this point we’re hoping the public can assist us in finding out who is responsible for this.”

He asked that anyone with information call the Wayne police juvenile bureau at (973) 633-3540.