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A Sikh family got a package meant for their pro-Trump neighbor. Their first emotion was fear.

A real-world example of prejudice’s effects.

In Donald Trump’s America, some minority groups are afraid to even approach their neighbors.

Jo Kaur, a Sikh lawyer and civil rights activist, gave the latest example of this kind of fear, sharing on Twitter the story of her own family’s struggles to merely deliver a package to a neighbor:

Kaur’s family was so terrified about how a group of brown people, particularly when one is wearing a turban, would look delivering a package to a neighbor’s house that they felt the need to strategize and coach their approach.

Sikh Americans are not Muslim, and they are in fact part of a wholly different religious group. But because they frequently have darker skin and perhaps a beard and turban, they are often the targets of Islamophobia from people who don’t know the difference between Sikh and Muslim Americans.

The result is stories like Kaur’s, in which people are afraid to go out into their own neighborhoods or even do something courteous for their neighbors. And they blame politicians like Trump, who have maligned Muslims as terrorists and proposed to ban all Muslims from entering the US, for that fear.


Watch: Fear and loathing at a Trump rally