The father of an 18-year-old Buffalo, N.Y., man whose son was brutally beaten by a group of African-American men is begging the community to turn in the abusers, saying that the assault only occurred because his son, who is White, was dating a Black girl. Brian Milligan Sr., says that the assailants beat his son with their fists, feet and a huge chunk of concrete, leaving him bloody, bruised and with a broken jaw and gash in the back of his head. But, despite the seriousness of the beating, Milligan said he has heard very little from the police, the media and overall community. He’d like to see the case prosecuted as a hate crime. “If this was a Black guy who was beaten by a group of White guys for dating a White girl, people would be up in arms,” he said. “There’s a double standard.” Buffalo Police say that a group of 10 to 15 Black men attacked Milligan Jr. late at night. Mike DeGeorge, a spokesman for the police department, said that although no arrests have been made, the matter is still being investigated. Milligan Sr. said that his son and girlfriend, Nicola Fletcher, also 18, are regularly harassed because of their interracial relationship. “Every time they walk the streets, people stop him and call him ‘cracker’ and ask her why she’s not with a Black guy,” Milligan Sr. said. Just two days before the attack, Fletcher said she was shot with paintball pellets by the same group. “I’m afraid to walk the streets,” she said. “Those guys are still out there.”

An immigrant-advocacy group says it will ask the Justice Department to file federal charges against two White teens acquitted Friday of beating to death a 25-year-old Mexican man in a small Pennsylvania mining town. Read the rest.

 Talk about hatin’ on Barack Obama …, three White men from New York were so angry that he had become the first African-American president that they went into a frenzy, yelling racial slurs and beating up Black folks, according to federal prosecutors. They even whipped a White man they thought was Black. “Shortly after learning of Barack Obama’s victory, [they] decided to find African Americans to assault in retaliation for an African-American winning the election,” prosecutors said in court papers Wednesday. Read the rest here.

Seven Russians sentenced for hate-murders. As investigators probe last week’s stabbing of an African-American exchange student in Russia, authorities sentenced seven young men who murdered 19 people in a series of hate crimes. Their prison terms were handed down Monday amid a dramatic rise in racist assaults, xenophobia and neo-Nazism in Russia, The Associated Press reports. The hate group’s leaders, Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, got 10 years – the maximum possible term since they were minors at the time of the attacks in 2006 and 2007 – and another man was sentenced to 20 years; four others got between six to 12 years, Moscow City Court spokeswoman Anna Usachyova said. The racist attacks appeared to peak earlier this month with the gruesome beheading of a Tajik migrant worker near Moscow, AP reported. Prosecutors say that the murderers preyed upon Central Asians, Caucasians and other non-Slavs with distinctly dark skin or Asian features. The group would attacked their victims on the streets and in pedestrian tunnels with hammers and other weapons, and they often videotaped their attacks and posted the clips online, AP reports. Meanwhile, the mother of 18-year-old Stanley Robinson, the Black student stabbed in the southern Russian city of Volgograd dismissed the notion that his attack was an act of random violence. She said she believes racism was the motivating factor. Stanley Robinson is in grave but stable condition in a Russian hospital, according to AP.

Respected Black writer dies. Dorothy Sterling, known for her ability to engage young readers with her intriguing stories of African-American historical figures, died earlier this month at her home in Wellfleet, Mass. She was 95. Among her most well known books are “Freedom Train: The Story of Harriet Tubman,” which was published in 1954 and is still in print;  “Captain of the Planter: The Story of Robert Smalls” (1958), the first children’s biography of the slave who captured a Confederate gunboat during the Civil War; and “The Making of an Afro-American: Martin Robinson Delany” (1971), which helped stir interest in the little-known abolitionist, Harvard-educated physician and early proponent of Black nationalism. Read more about Sterling here.

Brother of hate-crime victim seeks help. As the New York Police Department’s hate crime task force looks for suspects in the attack of a Ecuadorean immigrant who was beaten to death on Dec. 5, the victim’s brother is asking his neighbors to help find the murderers.  Diego Sucuzhanay’s 31-year-old brother, Jose, was jumped on a Brooklyn street by men who yelled racial and anti-gay slurs at him, police said. Jose Sucuzhanay was attacked by three men who smashed a beer bottle over his head, hit him in the head with an aluminum baseball bat and kicked him, police said. “It shows how far we must still come to address the devastating problem of hate crimes in our communities. Only by exposing these crimes and working together will we be able to make a difference,” Sucuzhanay said at a news conference outside the hospital where his brother died. He said a $27,000 reward was being offered for information that could solve the crime.