Last Thursday, a Black woman in a historically Black community in New Jersey discovered racist graffiti spraypainted on her home, which included the words, “I hate n****rs” along with racist symbols.
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Now, county officials are condemning the hateful graffiti, which has since been cleaned off by community members, after the victim of the hateful attack spoke out about how “disheartened” it made her feel.
“I felt violated,” Lawnside, N.J. resident Dawn Hines previously told ABC 6. “Immediately, I was disheartened. I was sad. I was a little angry because like out of everything, I felt, ‘How was I targeted?’”
Hines, 53, said that in her 20 years of living in the community, she had never experienced anything like it before. She and other Lawnside residents believe it was an intentional message of hate towards the historically Black town and its community members, and that even the placement of the message was part of the message.
“They knew where to put it,” Hines’s neighbor, Qawi Austin, said of the graffiti, which faces the busy intersection of Evesham Avenue. “They knew where to get the message and they wanted to make sure everyone saw it because of the busy traffic that comes here.”
“Some of us are feeling more empowered around what we do next as a community while you’ll have others who are looking over their shoulders,” Austin continued.
One would think that after getting their orangey-white nationalist overlord elected president for a second time, white supremacists would be happy and busy celebrating the fact that they made America, well, the same old America again, but since the election of Donald Trump, Black residents across the country are receiving racist texts, suspected hate crimes have already increased, and cowardly Klan-ish stormtroopers are going around Black neighborhoods letting Black people know how they truly feel about us — not that we didn’t already know.
Anyway, local police are investigating the graffiti on Hines’ fence as a hate crime. According to the Courier Post, anyone with information on the vandalism is asked to call borough police at 856 573-6205 or the county prosecutor’s office at 856-225-8400.