US Attorney Rachael Rollins has spent more time than she expected in her new role going after perpetrators of hate crimes.

Earlier this month, her office indicted a man from Maine for burning down a Black church in Springfield in 2020. Rollins points out that this was the second church burned in that city; another was torched on Nov. 5, 2008, just hours after Barack Obama was elected America’s first Black president.

In addition, an East Longmeadow man was sentenced to five years in federal prison last week. His offense was placing a lit firebomb in the entrance of a Jewish assisted-living facility in 2020.

And in perhaps the oddest recent hate-crime case, Alexander Giannakakis, formerly of Quincy, was arrested in a Stockholm suburb and charged with obstructing an investigation into four fires set at Jewish-related institutions in Arlington, Needham, and Chelsea.

The prime suspect in those fires was his younger brother, who was hospitalized and fell into a coma a few months after the last fire. He died, without ever regaining consciousness, in 2019, and Alexander Giannakakis dropped out of sight. Now he is in custody, awaiting extradition.

Some of these cases have attracted significant public attention. But others have caused barely a ripple.

Rollins is anything but naive about the enduring presence of racism and antisemitism. But the crimes strike a nerve, in part because so many Massachusetts residents smugly assume that hate of this flagrant sort is something that happens somewhere else.

“It is just unreal that we are dealing with church burnings,’’ Rollins said. “We can’t be lulled into this sense that this ideology doesn’t exist here — that we’re Northerners and we’re better because we’re above the Mason-Dixon line.’’

It’s the casual public reaction to these incidents that both confounds and worries her.

“Are we getting numb?’’ Rollins asked.

“When you think about the vicarious trauma we have all experienced watching George Floyd murdered, watching Ahmaud Arbury, when we hear an antisemitic slur or a church burned — or almost burned — do we just move on to the next trauma?’’

That’s a fair question in this far-too-frequently traumatized age.

Springfield, in particular, has drawn attention from the US attorney’s office in recent years. Under Rollins’s predecessor, Andrew Lelling, the city’s narcotics unit was found to have engaged in a pattern of discriminatory behavior toward suspects. It’s believed that was the only such finding by the Trump Justice Department.

As Suffolk DA, Rollins dealt with her share of hate crimes, including a racially motivated double-murder in Winthrop and an attack on a rabbi in Brighton last year. But her federal role has given her a different sense of the scope of attacks that occur across Massachusetts.

Rollins said she sees some grounds for optimism, citing the stellar antiracist work of such groups as the ADL and the NAACP.

She said she was heartened, too, by the Justice Department’s successful prosecution of the killers of Ahmaud Arbury, and a strong statement by Attorney General Merrick Garland that the federal government will not tolerate such behavior.

Still, the recent cases are a reminder that progress on racism doesn’t follow a consistent upward trajectory.

“It’s always a fight,’’ Rollins said. ’’We make progress, and then something happens.’’

That said, the haters — while clearly present — are outliers fighting a losing battle, in a culture tilting hard toward inclusion.

“What I’m optimistic about is that my daughter and niece are growing up in a world where Michelle Wu is their mayor and Ayanna Pressley is their congresswoman and Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren are their senators,’’ Rollins said.

“But we really have to keep our eye on the prize as far as calling things what they are and calling things out that are racist or antisemitic.’’

While individual cases must be, and are being, addressed, it’s the scope of the problem that should concern all of us. It takes so many forms: from a church burning in Springfield to the long-tolerated racism in a high school football program in Duxbury, where antisemitic language was incorporated into the team’s play calls.

When it comes to acting out of hate, Massachusetts isn’t nearly as exceptional as some residents would like to think.

Not every church burning is in Mississippi. Sometimes they happen in Western Massachusetts.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at adrian.walker@globe.com.