Introduction

I received this “Security Alert…” five days after the Presidential election of 2016. Were an identical alert sent out a week, a month or a year earlier, it would have marked a single incident. After the election, though, it marks an enlarging category—the hate crime—with its iconic couple: the newly 2emboldened perpetrator/the newly vulnerable target. Words shift meaning. “Alert” becomes “Emergency.” The offhand threat of “fire” becomes a reminder of ovens.