A group of New Jersey residents are pushing for more education around Sikhism in New Jersey schools at the end of June the assembly passed a resolution urging the State Board of Education to require school districts to incorporate Sikh instruction into the social studies curriculum senior correspondent Brenda Flanagan spoke with leaders in New Jersey's Sikh Community about their efforts to improve education that they hope will stop discrimination and persecution in their Community we are the only people on the planet where the turbine is religiously mandated but kavneet Singh says it's widely misunderstood he recalls when images of Osama bin Laden flooded news reports after 9 11 viewers noticed he wore a white turban and that drove a spike in bias attacks against members of the American seek Community but it's an old prejudice and from cartoons to movies it's how Hollywood often stereotypes the villain Singh says the bad guy paying 95 percent of the movies is a brown-skinned man with a scruffy beard and wearing a sloppy turban and guess what's got he's got in his hands he's got a Kalashnikov in AK-47 He's the bad guy who's the hero it's a shaman white guy the FBI reports anti-seek hate crimes are on the Rise Again from 89 incidents in 2020 to 214 in 2021 140 percent increase in just one year jerseys home to a hundred thousand Sikhs my my father and mother came here as as immigrants as Jersey as it gets Hoboken mayor Ravi Bala believes divisive political rhetorics turned up the heat as xenophobia escalates across the U.S in 2018 Jersey's attorney general Gerber Grewal was targeted with the slur turban Man by conservative Jersey talk show hosts um after the election of President Trump uh there was a a spike unfortunately in um in cases of assaults or bias crimes I think the sick Community got caught in the crossfire Bella actively tries to dispel misperceptions he taught his high school classmates how to tie a Sikh turban and repeated the demo for Hudson County Court staffers he says it helps folks understand they're not Muslim and that forsake men a turbines part of their religious faith that was born in India more than 500 years ago uh it was well received it was appreciated it kind of opened a lot of people's eyes and and um you know I got a lot of you know wow that's pretty cool you know that the those the types of things that would really kind of you know bring the temperature down do you see education as an important component uh education and awareness as an important component which uh which has the power to heal which is a vaccine for the hate bhupinder Singh heads jerseys Sikh youth Alliance it's trying to persuade Local School Board Church to offer more education about the Sikh religion even though New Jersey's state board of education in 2009 required schools to do that as part of their curricula it's not happening according to a recent survey of 522 Sikh students by the alliance the majority of them are responded that they learned very little about Sikhism in the classroom they were saying hey we need this in our social studies book as a full chapter if possible not a little paragraph somewhere a paragraph does not explain someone's Heritage and what they're all about there's no context that's why the Sikh community supports a resolution approved by Jersey's assembly that urges the State Board to again require a complete Public School curriculum about seeks it hasn't passed the Senate again it it all boils down to you know education when somebody asked me where I'm from I say I'm from New Jersey he says that should and surprise people I'm Brenda Flanagan NJ Spotlight News NJ Spotlight News