What happened in 2004 was that a Sikh man complained to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights’ (OCR’s) New York office that his son, a New Jersey junior high school student, had been beaten up and called “Osama.” The father said that his son had been beaten up because of his “faith.” Instead of simply dismissing the case, as they might earlier have done, the New York regional staff immediately forwarded the case to OCR’s national headquarters. They knew that I was concerned about mistreatment of religious minorities as well as other vulnerable groups. In this case, I instructed regional staff that the father’s statement of the nature of discrimination (i.e., that it was based on his son’s “faith”) should be taken with a grain of salt. After all, the legal categorization of the assault is a question for OCR to assess independently.

Sikhism is one of the world’s great religions. For purposes of enjoying civil rights protection, however, I emphasized that Sikhs also shared numerous ethnic characteristics, such as distinctive dress, music, and culture and common geographic origins. While Sikhism is neither a race nor a national origin when those terms are defined narrowly, Sikhism’s adherents generally share the ethnic or ancestral characteristics that should suffice to bring them within the law’s broad protections. When the New Jersey child was taunted as “Osama,” it was not because his classmates disagreed with the tenets of the Sikh faith. Rather, the bullies were taunting him because of his (achial or perceived) ethnicity and geographic origins. To be sure, their taunts showed ethnic ignorance. This is neither unusual nor surprising in bias cases. Either the bullies confused Sikhs with Arabs, or they misunderstood Bin Laden’s ethnic heritage, or they did not care. Ethnic and racial ignorance is common, and such ignorance should not become a defense for the discriminator. “Go ahead and investigate,” I directed my enforcement staff. “This looks like a case of ethnic or racial harassment.”