******************************
From The Washington Post [Democracy Dies in Darkness],
February 23, 2015. SEE
https://www.washingtonpost.
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Trump's words, bullied kids, scarred schools
The president's rhetoric has changed the way hundreds of
children are harassed in American
classrooms, The Post found
By Hannah Natanson, John Woodrow Cox and Perry Stein
By Hannah Natanson, John Woodrow Cox and Perry Stein
Two kindergartners in Utah told a Latino boy that President Trump
would send him back to Mexico, and teenagers in Maine sneered
"Ban Muslims" at a classmate wearing a hijab. In Tennessee,
a group of middle-schoolers linked arms, imitating the president's
proposed border wall as they refused to let nonwhite students pass. In
Ohio, another group of middle-schoolers surrounded a mixed-race
sixth-grader and, as she confided to her mother, told the girl:
"This is Trump country."
Since Trump's rise to the nation's highest office, his
inflammatory language - often condemned as racist and xenophobic - has
seeped into schools across America. Many bullies now target other
children differently than they used to, with kids as young as 6
mimicking the president's insults and the cruel way he delivers
them.
Trump's words, those chanted by his followers at campaign rallies
and even his last name have been wielded by students and school staff
members to harass children more than 300 times since the start of
2016, a Washington Post review of 28,000 news stories found. At least
three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic,
black or Muslim, according to the analysis. Students have also been
victimized because they support the president - more than 45 times
during the same period.
Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that
Although many hateful episodes garnered coverage just after the election, The Post found that
Trump-connected persecution of children has never stopped. Even
without the huge total from November 2016, an average of nearly two
incidents per school week have been publicly reported over the past
four years. Still, because so much of the bullying never appears in
the news, The Post's figure represents a small fraction of the actual
total. It also doesn't include the thousands of slurs, swastikas and
racial epithets that aren't directly linked to Trump but that the
president's detractors argue his behavior has exacerbated.
"It's gotten way worse since Trump got elected," said
Ashanty Bonilla, 17, a Mexican American high school junior in Idaho
who faced so much ridicule from classmates last year that she
transferred. "They hear it. They think it's okay. The president
says it ... Why can't they?
Asked about Trump's effect on student behavior, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham noted that first lady Melania Trump - whose "Be Best" campaign denounces online harassment - had encouraged kids worldwide to treat one another with respect.
---------------------
SIDEBAR PHOTO: First lady Melania Trump speaks at the
White House in May 2018 about her "Be Best" campaign, which
denounces online harassment. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
-----------------------
-----------------------
"She knows that bullying is a universal problem for children
that will be difficult to stop in its entirety," Grisham wrote
in an email, "but Mrs. Trump will continue her work on behalf of
the next generation despite the media's appetite to blame her for
actions and situations outside of her control."
Most schools don't track the Trump bullying phenomenon, and
researchers didn't ask about it in a federal survey of 6,100 students
in 2017, the most recent year with available data. One in five of
those children, ages 12 to 18, reported being bullied at school, a
rate unchanged since the previous count in 2015.
However, a 2016 online survey of over 10,000 kindergarten through
12th-grade educators by the Southern Poverty Law Center found that
more than 2,500 "described specific incidents of bigotry and
harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric,"
although the overwhelming majority never made the news. In 476 cases,
offenders used the phrase "build the wall." In 672, they
mentioned deportation.
For Cielo Castor, who is Mexican American, the experience at
Kamiakin High in Kennewick, Wash., was searing. The day after the
election, a friend told Cielo, then a sophomore, that he was glad
Trump won because Mexicans were stealing American jobs. A year later,
when the president was mentioned during her American literature
course, she said she didn't support him and a classmate who did
refused to sit next to her.
"I don't want to be around her," Cielo recalled him announcing as he opted for the floor instead.
Then, on "America night" at a football game in October
2018 during Cielo's senior year, schoolmates in the student section
unfurled a "Make America Great Again" flag. Led by the boy
who wouldn't sit beside Cielo, the teenagers began to chant:
"Build-the-wall!
Horrified, she confronted the instigator. "You can't be
doing that," Cielo told him.
He ignored her, she recalled, and the teenagers around him booed
her. A cheerleading coach was the lone adult who tried to make them
stop.
--------------------------
"I felt like I was personally attacked. And it wasn't like
they were attacking my character. They were attacking my ethnicity,
and it's not like I can do anything about that. Cielo Castor (Rajah
Bose For The Washington Post)
--------------------------
After a photo of the teenagers with the flag appeared on social
media, news about what had happened infuriated many of the school's
Latinos, who made up about a quarter of the
1,700-member student body. Cielo, then 17, hoped school officials
would address the tension. When they didn't, she attended that
Wednesday's school board meeting.
"I don't feel cared for," she told the members,
crying.
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[RELATED: What is your school doing to stop politically
charged bullying? Fill out our form and let usknow. -- SEE
https://www.washingtonpost.
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A day later, the superintendent consoled her and the principal asked how he could help, recalled Cielo, now a college freshman. Afterward, school staff members addressed every class, but Hispanic students were still so angry that they organized a walkout.
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A day later, the superintendent consoled her and the principal asked how he could help, recalled Cielo, now a college freshman. Afterward, school staff members addressed every class, but Hispanic students were still so angry that they organized a walkout.
Some students heckled the protesters, waving MAGA caps at them.
At the end of the day, Cielo left the school with a white friend who'd
attended the protest; they passed an underclassman she didn't
know.
"Look," the boy said, "it's one of those f---ing Mexicans."
She heard that school administrators - who declined to be
interviewed for this article - suspended the teenager who had led the
chant, but she doubts he has changed.
Reached on Instagram, the teenager refused to talk about what
happened, writing in a message that he didn't want to discuss the
incident "because it is in the past and everyone has moved on
from it. At the end, he added a sign-off: "Trump 2020."
President Trump's rhetoric has been condemned as racist and xenophobic since his candidacy began in 2015. Here is what he's said. (The Washington Post)
Just as the president has repeatedly targeted Latinos, so, too,
have school bullies. Of the incidents The Post tallied, half targeted
Hispanics.
In one of the most extreme cases of abuse, a 13-year-old in New Jersey told a Mexican American
In one of the most extreme cases of abuse, a 13-year-old in New Jersey told a Mexican American
schoolmate, who was 12, that "all Mexicans should go back
behind the wall." A day later, on June 19, 2019, the
13-year-old assaulted the boy and his mother, Beronica Ruiz, punching
him and beating her unconscious, said the family's attorney, Daniel
Santiago. He wonders to what extent
Trump's repeated vilification of certain minorities played a
role.
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SIDEBAR: More than 300 Trump-inspired harassment incidents
reported by news outlets from 2016-2019
Anti-Hispanic: 45%
Anti-black: 23%
Anti-Semitic: 7%
Anti-Muslim: 8%
Anti-LGBT: 4%
Anti-Trump: 14%
Anti-Hispanic: 45%
Anti-black: 23%
Anti-Semitic: 7%
Anti-Muslim: 8%
Anti-LGBT: 4%
Anti-Trump: 14%
Note: Some incidents targeted multiple groups and, in
other cases, the ethnicity/gender/religion of the intended target was
unclear. Figures may not precisely add up because of rounding.
---
---
Source: Washington Post analysis of media reports
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"When the president goes on TV and is saying things like
Mexicans are rapists, Mexicans are criminals - these children don't
have the cognitive ability to say, "He's just playing the role of
a politician,' " Santiago argued. "The language that
he's using matters."
Ruiz's son, who is now seeing a therapist, continues to endure
nightmares from an experience that may take years to overcome. But
experts say that discriminatory language can, on its own, harm
children, especially those of color who may already feel
marginalized.
"It causes grave damage, as much physical as psychological,"
said Elsa Barajas, who has counseled more 1,000 children in her job
at the Los Angeles Department of Mental Health.
As a result, she has seen Hispanic students suffer from
sleeplessness, lose interest in school, and experience inexplicable
stomach pain and headaches.
For Ashanty Bonilla, the damage began with the response to a
single tweet she shared 10 months ago. [SEE
https://bengalspurr.com/5173/
"Unpopular opinion," Ashanty, then 16 and a sophomore
at Lewiston High School in rural Idaho, wrote on April 9. "People
who support Trump and go to Mexico for vacation really piss me off.
Sorry not sorry."
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SIDEBAR PHOTO: Some of Ashanty Bonilla's classmates at
Lewiston High in rural Idaho harassed her last April after she tweeted
a comment critical of Trump supporters. (Rajah Bose/For The Washington
Post)
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A schoolmate, who is white, took a screen shot of her tweet and
posted it to Snapchat, along with a Confederate flag.
"Unpopular opinion but: people that are from Mexico and come
in to America illegally or at all really piss me off," he added
in a message that spread rapidly among students.
The next morning, as Ashanty arrived at school, half a dozen
boys, including the one who had written the message, stood
nearby.
"You're illegal. Go back to Mexico," she heard one of
them say. "F--- Mexicans."
Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up.
Ashanty, shaken but silent, walked past as a friend yelled at the boys to shut up.
In a 33,000-person town that is 94 percent white (See
https://www.census.gov/
------------------------------
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SIDEBAR PHOTO: "It's gotten way worse since Trump got
elected. They hear it. They think it's okay. The president says it ...
Why can't they?" Ashanty Bonilla (Rajah Bose For
The Washington Post)
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She had known those boys who'd heckled her since they were
little. For her 15th birthday the year before, some had danced at her
quinceanera.
A friend drove her off campus for lunch, but when they pulled
back into the parking lot, Ashanty spotted people standing around her
car. A rope had been tied from the back of the Honda Pilot to a pickup
truck.
"Republican Trump 2020," someone had written in the
dust on her back window.
Hands trembling, Ashanty tried to untie the rope but couldn't.
She heard the laughing, sensed the cellphone cameras pointed at her.
She began to weep.
Lewiston's principal, Kevin Driskill, said he and his staff met
with the boys they knew were involved, making clear that "we have
zero tolerance for any kind of actions like that." The
incidents, he suspected, stemmed mostly from ignorance.
"Our lack of diversity probably comes with a lack of
understanding," Driskill said, but he added that he's encouraged
by the school district's recent creation of a community group -
following racist incidents on other campuses - meant to address those
issues.
That effort came too late for Ashanty.
That effort came too late for Ashanty.
Some friends supported her, but others told her the boys were just joking. Don't ruin their lives.
She seldom attended classes the last month of school. That summer, she started having migraines and panic attacks. In August, amid her spiraling despair, Ashanty swallowed 27 pills from a bottle of antidepressants. A helicopter rushed her to a hospital in Spokane, Wash., 100 miles away.
After that, she began seeing a therapist and, along with the
friend who defended her, transferred to another school. Sometimes, she
imagines how different life might be had she never written that tweet,
but Ashanty tries not to blame herself and has learned to take more
pride in her heritage. She just wishes the president understood the
harm his words inflict.
Even Trump's last name has become something of a slur to many
children of color, whether they've heard it shouted at them in
hallways or, in her case, seen it written on the back window of a
car.
"It means," she said, "you don't belong."
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SIDEBAR PHOTO: Georgia Clark taught English at Amon
Carter-Riverside High School in Fort Worth, where a student accused
her of racism. (Allison V. Smith/For The Washington Post)
----------------------------
Three weeks into the 2018-19 school year, Miracle Slover's English teacher, she alleges, ordered black and Hispanic students to sit in the back of the classroom at their Fort Worth high school.
----------------------------
Three weeks into the 2018-19 school year, Miracle Slover's English teacher, she alleges, ordered black and Hispanic students to sit in the back of the classroom at their Fort Worth high school.
At the time, Miracle was a junior. Georgia Clark, her teacher at
Amon Carter-Riverside, often brought up Trump, Miracle said. He was a
good person, she told the class, because he wanted to build a
wall.
"Every day was something new with immigration," said
Miracle, now 18, who has a black mother and a mixed-race father.
"That Trump needs to take [immigrants] away. They do drugs, they
bring drugs over here. They cause violence."
Some students tried to film Clark, and others complained to administrators, but none of it made a
Some students tried to film Clark, and others complained to administrators, but none of it made a
difference, Miracle said. Clark, an employee of the Fort Worth
system since 1998, kept talking.
Clark, who denies the teenager's allegations, is one of more than 30 educators across the country accused of using the president's name or rhetoric to harass students since he announced his candidacy, the Post analysis found.
In Clark's class, Miracle stayed quiet until late spring 2019.
That day, she walked in wearing her hair "puffy," split
into two high buns.
Clark, she said, told her it looked "nappy, like Marge off
'The Simpsons.' " Unable to smother an angry reply,
Miracle landed in the principal's office. An administrator asked her
to write a witness statement, and in it, she finally let go, scrawling
her frustration across seven pages.
"I just got tired of it," she said. "I wrote a ton".
Still, Miracle said, school officials took no action until six
weeks later, when Clark, 69, tweeted at Trump - in what she
thought were private messages - requesting help deporting undocumented
immigrants in FortWorth schools. The posts went viral, drawing
national condemnation. Clark was fired. [SEE
https://www.washingtonpost.
------------------------------
SIDEBAR PHOTO: "Every day was something new with
immigration. That Trump needs to take
[immigrants] away. They do drugs, they bring drugs over here.
They cause violence." Miracle Slover, referring to Georgia
Clark, her former English teacher (Allison V. Smith For The Washington
Post)
------------------------------
Not always, though, are offenders removed from the classroom.
------------------------------
Not always, though, are offenders removed from the classroom.
The day after the 2016 election, Donnie Jones Jr.'s daughter was
walking down a hallway at her Florid high school when, she says, a
teacher warned her and two friends - all sophomores, all black - that
Trump would "send you back to Africa."
The district suspended the teacher for three days and transferred him to another school. [SEE https://www.tampabay.com/news/
The district suspended the teacher for three days and transferred him to another school. [SEE https://www.tampabay.com/news/
Just a few days later in California, a physical education teacher
told a student that he would be deported under Trump. Two years ago in
Maine, a substitute teacher referenced the president's wall and
promised a Lebanese American student, "You're getting kicked out
of my country. More than a year later in Texas, a school employee
flashed a coin bearing the word "ICE" at a Hispanic
student. "Trump," he said, "is working on a law where
he can deport you."
Sometimes, Jones said, he doesn't recognize America.
"People now will say stuff that a couple of years ago they
would not dare say," Jones argued. He fears what his two
youngest children, ages 11 and 9, might hear in their school hallways,
especially if Trump is reelected.
Now a senior, Miracle doesn't regret what she wrote about Clark.
Although the furor that followed forced Miracle to switch schools and
quit her beloved dance team, she would do it again, she said. Clark's
punishment, her public disgrace, was worth it.
About a week before Miracle's 18th birthday, her mother checked
Facebook to find a flurry of notifications. Friends were messaging to
say that Clark had appealed her firing, and that the Texas education
commissioner had intervened.
Reluctant to spoil the birthday, Jowona Powell waited several
days to tell her daughter, who doesn't use social media.
Citing a minor misstep in the school board's firing process, the
commissioner had ordered Carter-Riverside to pay Clark one year's
salary - or give the former teacher her job back.
------------------------------
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SIDEBAR: A snapshot of the harassment in 2019. In the
three months after the president tweeted on July 14, 2019, that four
minority congresswomen should "go back to the countries they
came from, more than a dozen incidents of Trump-related school
bullying - including several that used his exact language - were
reported in the press.
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Jordyn Covington stood when she heard the jeers. "Monkeys!"
"You don't belong here." "Go back to where you came
from!"
From atop the bleachers that day in October, Jordyn, 15, could
see her Piper High School volleyball teammates on the court in tears.
The sobbing varsity players were all black, all from Kansas City,
Kan., like her.
Who was yelling? Jordyn wondered.
Who was yelling? Jordyn wondered.
She peered at the students in the opposing section. Most of them were white.
"It was just sad," said Jordyn, who plays for Piper's
junior varsity team. "And why? Why did it have to happen to us?
We weren't doing anything. We were simply playing volleyball."
Go back? To where? Jordyn, her friends and Piper's nine black
players were all born in the United States. Just like everyone else,"
Jordyn said. "Just like white people."
--------------------------
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SIDEBAR: "It was just sad. And why? Why did it have
to happen to us? We weren't doing anything. We were simply playing
volleyball. Jordyn Covington (Christopher H. Smith For The
Washington Post)
------------------------------
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The game, played at an overwhelmingly white rural high school,
came three months after Trump tweeted that four minority congresswomen
should "go back" to the totally broken and crime infested
places from which they came."
It was Jordyn's first experience with racism, she said. But it
was not the first time that fans at a school sports game had used the
president to target students of color.
The Post found that players, parents or fans have used his name
or words in at least 48 publicly reported cases, hurling hateful
slogans at students competing in elementary, middle and high school
games in 26 states.
The venom has been shouted on football gridirons and soccer
fields, on basketball and volleyball courts. Nearly 90 percent of
incidents identified by The Post targeted players and fans of color,
or teams fielded by schools with large minority populations. More than
half focused on Hispanics.
----------------------------
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SIDEBAR PHOTO: Students at Utah's Woods Cross High School
chant "Build the wall and wave a Trump cutout during a football
game in September 2017. (Courtesy of Gaby Salkic)
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------------------------------
In one of the earliest examples, students at a Wisconsin high
school soccer game in April 2016 chanted "Trump, build a wall!"
at black and Hispanic players. A few months later, students at a high
school basketball game in Missouri turned their backs and hoisted a
Trump/Pence campaign sign as the majority-black opposing team walked
onto the court. In 2017, two high school girls in Alabama showed up at
a football game pep rally with a sign reading "Put the Panic back
in Hispanic" and a "Trump Make America Great Again"
banner.
In late 2017, two radio hosts announcing a high school basketball
game in Iowa were caught on a hot mic describing Hispanic players as
espanol people." "As Trump would say, "one
broadcaster suggested, "go back where they came from."
Both announcers were fired. After the volleyball incident in
Kansas, though, the fallout was more muted. The opposing school
district, Baldwin City, commissioned an investigation and subsequently
asserted that there was "no evidence" of racist jeers.
Administrators from Piper's school system dismissed that claim and
countered with a statement supporting their students.
An hour after the game, Jordyn fought to keep her eyes dry as she
boarded the team bus home. When white players insisted that everything
would be okay, she slipped in ear buds and selected "my mood
playlist," a collection of somber nighttime songs. She wiped her
cheeks.
Jordyn had long ago concluded that Trump didn't want her - or
"anyone who is just not white" in the United States. But
hearing other students shout it was different.
Days later, her English teacher assigned an essay asking about
"what's right and what's wrong." At first, Jordyn thought
she might write about the challenges transgender people face. Then she
had another idea.
"The students were making fun of us because we were
different, like our hair and skin tone," Jordyn wrote.
"How are you gonna be mad at me and my friends for being black
... I love myself and so should all of you."
She read it aloud to the class. She finished, then looked up. Everyone began to applaud.
------------------------------
She read it aloud to the class. She finished, then looked up. Everyone began to applaud.
------------------------------
SIDEBAR PHOTO: Gavin Trump and his sister hang out with
their father, Ryan, while on vacation in Fairfax Station, Va.
(Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
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It's not just young Trump supporters who torment classmates
because of who they are or what they believe. As one boy in North
Carolina has come to understand, kids who oppose the president - kids
like him - can be just as vicious.
By Gavin Trump's estimation, nearly everyone at his middle school
in Chapel Hill comes from a
Democratic family. So when the kids insist on calling him by his
last name - even after he demands that they stop - the 13-year-old
knows they want to provoke him, by trying to link the boy to the
president they despise.
In fifth grade, classmates would ask if he was related to the
president, knowing he wasn't. They would insinuate that Gavin agreed
with the president on immigration and other polarizing issues.
"They saw my last name as Trump, and we all hate Trump, so
it was like, 'We all hate you,'" he said. "I was like, 'Why
are you teasing me?' I have no relationship to Trump at all. We just
ended up with the same last name."
Beyond kids like Gavin, the Post analysis also identified dozens
of children across the country who were bullied, or even assaulted,
because of their allegiance to the president.
School staff members in at least 18 states, from Washington to
West Virginia, have picked on students for wearing Trump gear or
voicing support for him. Among teenagers, the confrontations have at
times turned physical. A high school student in Northern California
said that after she celebrated the 2016 election results on social
media, a classmate accused her of hating Mexicans and attacked her,
leaving the girl with a bloodied nose. Last February, a teenager at an
Oklahoma high school was caught on video ripping a Trump sign out of a
student's hands and knocking a red MAGA cap off his head.
------------------------------
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SIDEBAR PHOTO: LEFT: Trump supporters respond as the
president speaks at a rally in El Paso in February 2019. (Susan
Walsh/Associated Press) RIGHT: People listen as Trump speaks at
a campaign event in Sioux City, Iowa, in November 2016. (Jabin
Botsford/The Washington Post)
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And in the nation's capital - where only 4 percent of voters cast
ballots for Trump in 2016 - an outspoken conservative teenager said
she had to leave her prestigious public school because she felt
threatened.
In a YouTube video, Jayne Zirkle, a high school senior, said that
the trouble started when classmates at the School Without Walls
discovered an online photo of her campaigning for Trump. She said
students circulated the photo, harassed her online and called her a
white supremacist.
A D.C. school system official said they investigated the
allegations and allowed Jayne to study from home to ensure she felt
safe.
"A lot of people who I thought were my best friends just all of a sudden totally turned their backs on me," Jayne said. "People wouldn't even look at me or talk to me."
For Gavin, the teasing began in fourth grade, soon after Trump announced his candidacy.
After more than a year of schoolyard taunts, Gavin decided to go
by his mother's last name, Mather, when he started middle school. The
teenager has been proactive, requesting that teachers call him by the
new name, but it gets trickier, and more stressful, when substitutes
fill in. He didn't legally change his last name, so "Trump"
still appears on the roster.
The teasing has subsided, but the switch wasn't easy. Gavin likes his real last name and feared that changing it would hurt his father's feelings. His dad understood, but for Gavin, the guilt remains.
"This is my name," he said. "And I am abandoning my name."
------------------------------
SIDEBAR: Kentucky's Anderson County High School
football team runs through a "Make America Great Again Trump
Those Patriots" banner before a game in September 2019.
(Anderson County High School)
------------------------------
------------------------------
Maritza Avalos knows what's coming. It's 2020. The next
presidential election is nine months away. She remembers what happened
during the last one, when she was just 11.
"Pack your bags," kids told her. "You get a free trip to Mexico."
She's now a freshman at Kamiakin High, the same Washington state
school where her older sister, Cielo, confronted the teenagers who
chanted "Build the wall" at a football game in late 2018.
Maritza, 14, assumes the taunts that accompanied Trump's last campaign
will intensify with this one, too.
"I try not to think about it," she said, but for educators nationwide, the ongoing threat of politically charged harassment has been impossible to ignore.
In response, schools have canceled mock elections, banned
political gear, trained teachers, increased security, formed
student-led mediation groups and created committees to develop
anti-discrimination policies.
In California, the staff at Riverside Polytechnic High School has
been preparing for this year's presidential election since the day
after the last one. On Nov. 9, 2016, counselors held a workshop in the
library for students to share their feelings. Trump supporters feared
they would be singled out for their beliefs, while girls who had heard
the president brag about sexually assaulting women worried that boys
would be emboldened to do the same to them.
"We treated it almost like a crisis," said Yuri Nava, a counselor who has since helped expand a student club devoted to improving the school's culture and climate.
Riverside, which is 60 percent Hispanic, also offers three
courses - African American, Chicano and ethnic studies - meant to help
students better understand one another, Nava said. And instead of
punishing students when they use race or politics to bully, counselors
first try to bring them together with their victims to talk through
what happened. Often, they leave as friends.
In Gambrills, Md., Arundel High School has taken a similar
approach. Even before a student was caught scribbling the n-word in
his notebook in early 2017, Gina Davenport, the principal, worried
about the effect of the election's rhetoric. At the school, where
about half of the 2,200 students are minorities, she heard their
concerns every day.
But the racist slur, discovered the same month as Trump's inauguration, led to a concrete response.
A "Global Community Citizenship" class, now mandatory
for all freshmen in the district, pushes students to explore their
differences.
A recent lesson delved into Trump's use of Twitter.
"The focus wasn't Donald Trump, the focus was listening: How
do we convey our ideas in order for someone to listen?"
Davenport said. "We teach that we can disagree with each other
without walking away being enemies - which we don't see play out in
the press, or in today's political debates.
------------------------------
SIDEBAR PHOTO: Trump speaks at a rally in El Paso in
February 2019. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
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Since the class debuted in fall 2017, disciplinary referrals for
disruption and disrespect have decreased by 25 percent each school
year, Davenport said. Membership in the school's speech and debate
team has doubled.
The course has eased anxiety heading into the next election. She
doesn't expect an uptick in racist bullying.
"Civil conversation," she said. "The kids know
what that means now."
Many schools haven't made such progress, and on those campuses, students are bracing for more abuse.
Maritza' s sister, Cielo, told her to stand up for herself if
classmates use Trump's words to harass her, but Maritza is quieter
than her sibling. The freshman doesn't like confrontation.
She knows, though, that eventually someone will say something -
about the wall, maybe, or about how kids who look like her don't
belong in this country - and when that day comes, the girl hopes that
she'll be strong.
--------------------------
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SIDEBAR PHOTO: Left: Students at Royal Oak Middle School
in Michigan chant"Build the wall!" the day after the 2016
election. Students' faces blurred in provided video (Storyful).
Middle: Then-candidate Donald Trump Speaks during a rally at West High
School in Iowa in 2015. (Nati Harnik/Associated Press) Right: Students
at Utah's Woods Cross High School chant "Build the wall!"
during a football game in 2017. (Gaby Salkic)
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Julie Tate contributed to this report.
