Sikh Americans highlight historical, 'invisible' racism after Indianapolis shootings

As details emerge about the fatal shooting at an Indianapolis FedEx facility last week, the Sikh community nationwide is mourning the aftermath of what some leaders say should be investigated as a racially motivated attack.

Academics, activists and community members say they are grappling with the fact that Sikhs made up 90 percent of the location’s staff and were four out of the eight people killed. They are also reflecting on a history of discrimination and violence that they feel has often gone unseen.

Both Sikh existence and Sikh pain are swept under the rug, experts say.

“It’s a double invisibility that they receive,” said Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, chair of the department of religious studies at Colby College. “We have very warped notions of the Sikhs.”

From their treatment when immigrants from Punjab, India, first came to the U.S. in the 1800s to heightened hate crimes after 9/11, Sikhs face everyday discrimination, experts say. They also stressed the importance of learning and continuing conversations about Sikhism beyond tragedies.

Community members and experts said that, despite a lack of information about the shooter's motive, the killings in Indianapolis cannot be viewed in a vacuum. Sikh pain right now is real, they said, and it should be a pain that’s felt by the whole country.

“If you are a Sikh or any minority in America, it’s impossible to look at this tragedy in Indianapolis and not immediately consider the possibility that bias is a motivator,” said Nikki Singh, manager of policy and advocacy at the Sikh Coalition, said. “It's important for all Americans and everyone to understand our lived experience.”

Kaur Singh said conversations about Sikhs shouldn’t only be ones of tragedy or mourning. The recognition of the community should extend to the everyday. She wants to see Sikhs represented in movies, TV shows, kids’ books and literature.

“I want kids to be reading storybooks where they see little boys with long hair, their hair braided, wearing turbans,” she said. “We have to make sure that this culture is known at a very popular level, not just in these academic universities where we have our conferences and we write our papers.”

For now, as Sikhs in Indianapolis reel from the shooting, Singh said it’s as important to look back as it is to look forward.

“The community is just heartbroken,” she said. “It's going to be a long road of healing, both physically and mentally.”

An extensive, ‘invisible’ history

The first Sikhs in the U.S. were mostly lower-income farmers who migrated to California in the late 19th century to work in agriculture and lumber.

“The headlines said, 'Hindu invasion,' 'Hindu menace,'” Kaur Singh said. “As soon as they arrived on the continent, there were all sorts of problems for them — legal, social, economic and even physical barriers from material success — from day one.”

In 1907, California formed the Asiatic Exclusion League, a group whose aim was to keep out Asian immigrants. Initially called the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League, it was renamed as a reaction to the large number of South Asian Sikhs immigrating to the state. Sister chapters began to pop up all over the U.S. and Canada.

Sikhs were asked to cut their hair and remove their turbans, Kaur Singh said. And in 1907, a Bellingham, Washington, chapter of the Asiatic Exclusion League made up of 500 white men gathered to drive Sikhs out of the city. They invaded the rooms where Sikh mill workers stayed, beat them, stole their valuables and violently forced the town’s entire South Asian community to flee.

The next few decades proved no easier. If a Sikh married a white woman, she lost her citizenship, but immigration laws also prevented workers from bringing their wives and families to the U.S., Kaur Singh said. Like many people of color in the country, Sikhs couldn’t own land and didn’t earn fair wages.

Amid the hostility was a total ignorance, Singh said. The lack of knowledge about Sikhism has persisted over the years, even as their population in the U.S. has grown to around 500,000. The turban, worn as a symbol of faith by Sikh men, has long been one of the most misunderstood facets.

After the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, Sikh families began coming to the U.S. in larger numbers, working in different fields and owning businesses.

After 9/11, “stereotypes and prejudices and discriminations really come to the fore,” Kaur Singh said.

Increasing hate after 9/11

On Sept. 15, 2001, Sikh immigrant Balbir Singh Sodhi was murdered outside of a gas station he owned in Mesa, Arizona, in the first post-9/11 deadly hate crime. Hundreds of other hate incidents followed as attackers intending to target Muslims went after Sikhs instead because of their turbans and beards, Singh said.

According to FBI data, there was a 200 percent increase in anti-Sikh hate crimes from 2017 to 2018, the Sikh Coalition noted in 2019. Singh works with Sikh Americans across the country, and she said that because of police mistrust and underreporting from local departments to the FBI, there isn’t enough data when it comes to hate crimes against Sikhs.

In August 2012, a white supremacist killed six Sikhs and injured several more at a gurdwara temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, prompting a national conversation about anti-Sikh violence. Before the shooting, the gurdwara was preparing for langar, a meal served free of charge to anyone in the community regardless of religion.

Even after the 2012 shooting, Singh sees a stark lack of awareness of Sikhs and, by extension, anti-Sikh hate.

“Sikhism is the world's fifth-largest religion, but a lot of people still are unaware of who we are,” she said.