In an interview with theGrio, King\u2019s daughter Bernice King says in the United States, \u201cwe don\u2019t know how to deal with hate.\u201d
\nOn what would\u2019ve been the 94th birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the civil rights icon who helped turn the tide on racial inequality in the United States and abroad, hate in America continues to dominate decades after his 1968 assassination.
\nAccording to\u00a0data\u00a0compiled by the extremism research center at California State University at San Bernardino, over the past four years hate crimes have continued to climb.
\nAs reported by VOA News, \u201cU.S. hate crimes have been on the rise in recent years, driven by factors ranging from a surge in anti-Asian sentiments during the COVID-19 pandemic to anti-Black animus in reaction to racial justice protests that broke out across America in 2020 after the killing of African American George Floyd while in police custody.\u201d
\n\u201cI feel that not all, but many whites, feel threatened,\u201d Dr. Amos Brown, a pastor who sits on the NAACP\u2019s National Board of Directors, tells theGrio. \u201cPeople tend to hate each other because they fear each other; they fear each other because they do not know each other.\u201d
\nBrown was one of eight students taught by King at Morehouse College from 1961 to 1962. He is one of only two surviving members of the small social philosophy class.
\nBrown offers a simple solution to the modern rise in hate in America: \u201cWe need to get to know each other, and particularly the majority needs to understand that we are human.\u201d
\nCivil rights leader Al Sharpton tells theGrio, \u201cunless we aggressively work along with the [Assistant] Attorney General [for Civil Rights] Kristen Clarke and [Associate Attorney General] Vanita Gupta and prosecute people, and back them up, we\u2019re going to continue to see it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n