NBC Bay Area: Sikhs get that ‘here we go again’ feeling from Gap ad controversy

Unfortunately for many Indian and Sikh Americans, what happened with the recent defacing of a Gap ad featuring a turban wearing Sikh model doesn’t surprise them, reports NBC Bay Area.
“It was there we go again,” said Mandeep Dhillon, a Sikh-American entrepreneur in the Bay Area. “There are two aspects to it. One is frustration and the other is a look for safety. Post-9/11 our primary concern was about safety because our community was under attack. The first people killed were Sikhs, who had nothing to do with anything.”
A recent study by Stanford University and the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund found that a overwhelming majority of those surveyed could not identify a Sikh man in a picture and 49 percent think a person wearing a turban is a Muslim.
“It’s a reminder that even as a society over the last decade, we haven’t come very far,” Dhillon said.
You can hear more reaction to the Gap ad from Sikh Americans in the clip below.