Black Mob Thrashes White Doctor, Screams ‘Get Osama!’

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.

{snip} 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.”

{snip}.

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. {snip}

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.

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