Biden calls for efforts to fight U.S. hate crimes

Source: Xinhua| 2019-09-16 11:09:36|Editor: xuxin
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WASHINGTON, Sept. 15 (Xinhua) -- Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden warned on Sunday that "hate is on the rise again" in the United States and called for efforts to fight it.

Biden made the remarks when delivering a speech in Birmingham, Alabama to commemorate the 56th anniversary of a deadly bombing at the city's 16th Street Baptist Church.

On Sept. 15, 1963, a bomb blast at the church killed four African-American girls during church services, which sparked a national outrage. Three former Ku Klux Klan members were convicted of murder for the bombing.

"Hate is on the rise again, and we're at a defining moment again in American history," Biden said. "Hate only hides. It doesn't go away. If you give it oxygen it comes out from under the rocks."

Biden listed several hate crimes in the past few years, including the 2018 mass shooting at a synagogue in the city of Pittsburgh, the U.S. state of Pennsylvania, and the 2017 white supremacist rally in the city of Charlottesville, the U.S. state of Virginia.

"Lynch mobs, arsonists, bomb makers, and lone gunmen ... and as we all now realize, this violence does not live in the past," he said. "The struggle against hate injustice, and institutional racism must be the unrelenting work of our lives."

Biden, 76, served as U.S. vice president from 2009 to 2017 to the nation's first African American president, Barack Obama.

A Democratic candidate for U.S. presidency in the 2020 general election, Biden has been scrutinized for his past statements on racial issues.

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