On April 28, Patel, who had emigrated from India, was working in a Pittsburgh grocery when Richard Baumhammers, a gunman who said he hated immigrants, allegedly shot him. Patel awoke in the hospital to find that he was the sole survivor of a shooting rampage through Pittsburgh that killed a South Asian man, a Jewish woman, an African-American man, a Chinese man and a Vietnamese-American man.

Patel, 25, faces permanent paralysis. We need a national effort to end hate crimes.

Patel's sister, Sangita, understands this all too well. ``(Sandip's) shooter wanted us to believe that we are different, that we do not belong,'' she said. ``Most importantly, he wanted us to fear that one day, any member of the Indian-American community will be targets of a hate crime. My brother and I refuse to live that way.''

Baumhammers' rampage illustrates why hate crimes should be treated more seriously than other crimes: The Richard Baumhammers of the world are not attacking just one person -- their aim is to send a message of hate to all minorities. This message of hate has not been lost on the Asian Pacific American community.

Sandip Patel joins a growing list of Asians and Asian Pacific Americans who have become the targets of racial violence. According to an annual audit published by the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium and its affiliates, six Asian-Americans have lost their lives to hate in the past 12 months alone: Naoki Kamijima, Won-Joon Yoon and Joseph Ileto, along with Thao Quoc Pham, Ji-Ye Sun and Anil Thakur, who were killed in the Pittsburgh shooting spree.

Hundreds more Asian-Americans have been victims of anti-Asian incidents, from taunts and slurs to attacks and beatings, reports the Consortium. And it's not just Asian-Americans. In 1998, 7,755 hate crimes were committed in 46 states and the District of Columbia, according to the FBI.

We minorities are targets simply because of our race. Anyone can reduce the risk of being a random mugging victim by staying away from underpopulated areas and steering clear of poorly lit streets. Minorities cannot, however, reduce our risk of being targeted for hate crimes by changing our behavior. No matter what we do, we cannot change our core identity.

But Congress has dragged its feet when it comes to strengthening the hate-crimes laws. States need support in their efforts to combat racial and religious violence, but the current federal law is outdated and too restrictive for national authorities to render effective assistance.

Under the law, which has been in existence for the past 30 years, federal prosecutors can get involved in hate-related cases only if the victim was stopped from engaging in one of six specific federally protected activities, such as walking on the sidewalk. But if the victim was home, there's no protection. Common sense tells us that both victims should receive equal treatment. The law should be broadened.

Some members in Congress who oppose federal hate-crimes legislation have declared that all crimes should be treated equally even if they are motivated by blind racial hatred or other irrational bias. But our criminal-justice system already allows certain characteristics of a crime to influence the consequences for the criminal: Judges and juries differentiate between the murder of a police officer and the murder of someone else, between murder and manslaughter, and between killing in cold blood and killing for self-defense.

So, too, should they differentiate between crimes committed out of hate and other crimes. The harm that bias-related crime causes goes beyond the individual victim: It target's the victim's entire group.

Strong anti-hate-crime measures will not cure the pain of Patel, nor will they bring back the lives of others who have been killed by hate crimes. But they do represent society's clear rejection of bias-motivated violence, a clear signal to hate perpetrators that they are not welcome in the neighborhood.

Narasaki is the executive director of the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. She can be reached in care of the Progressive Media Project, 409 E. Main St., Madison WI 53703. Distributed for the project by KRT News Service.

© 2000 PioneerPlanet / St. Paul (Minnesota) Pioneer Press

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