My brother sent me a couple of good pieces from the Post on how Trump’s rhetoric is trickling down into schools. The longer story is a lengthy and well-researched rundown of how students bully other students using Trump’s rhetoric:
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
It’s not just students, of course. That story includes many examples of teachers who single out minority students for bad treatment. Today’s Post has another story about a teacher in Chicago who singled out minority students who did not stand during the national anthem and told them “Go back to your country.” That teacher was fired. Some of the other MAGA hat teachers are still on the job.
Open thread.
scav
As always, the return to cherished all-xian ‘mercan greatness marches onward.
?BillinGlendaleCA
If there were only someone prominent focusing on anti-bullying.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kindergartners. Jesus Christ.
MomSense
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
Ye jest.
Billy Barty
You have to be carefully taught …
debbie
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
She’d tell them they’d brought it on themselves, just like Greta had.
LuciaMia
The fact that they feel like theyve been ‘given permission’ means this was always how they felt, but just had to keep it under wraps, blaming PC.
trollhattan
A girl at my kid’s high school OD’d Wednesday, so there’s always that to worry about as well.
Citizen Alan
I will hate the people responsible for Trump forever. I will hate them from beyond the grave.
cliosfanboy
Unfortunately the Post did indulge in some bothsiderism.
smintheus
College students as well. Day after Trump’s “election” there were MAGAT flyers posted on my college building taunting minority students (‘this college belongs to us’). Took students on an overseas course and several of them surreptitiously flashed White Power hand signals in every one of our group photos (even while draping their arms around minority students). As with these schools, the university administrators expressed horror at the behavior but did nothing to hold the students accountable. Scum keeps floating to the surface.
zzyzx
This is why I hate the whole idea that we just have to wait for the bigots to die off and then we’ll be fine. 8chan, the MRA communities, these all are young men who find bigotry to just be a fun game.
LuciaMia
” Scum keeps floating to the surface.”
Or more precisely, Shit Floats.
Chyron HR
Well maybe those kindergartners should have voted for Bernie in the primary if they didn’t want Trump to win.
Mnemosyne
@smintheus:
“It’s free speech!” ?
This is why I can’t be a free speech absolutist: people vastly underestimate the extent to which certain people’s free speech is privileged over that of others. Once we have a level playing field where the words of white people are not automatically given more weight than those of non-white people, then we can talk about how great unrestricted free speech is.
pamelabrown53
Yes, yes and yes! Truthfully, I think she was “given” this bullying issue by operatives as a means to project and inoculate the Orange Emperor.
How else to explain the lack of self-awareness and another violent attack on irony?
Kent
Totally totally true.
The week after Trump won in 2016 I caught a bunch of white MAGA boys leaning against the tennis court fence at my HS, shaking the fence and chanting “Build the Wall, build the wall,” when Hispanic girls walked by. The identical entitled and shit-eating grins of the famous MAGA kids on camera in Washington DC. And this Vancouver WA (suburban Portland).
I read them the riot act and told them to stop being flaming a-holes and they were all like “shrug…Trump does it, what’s the big deal”
Suzanne
I was in Cleveland this week for work, and I went to a taco restaurant because it was within walking distance of my hotel and had good reviews on Yelp. There was not one Latino person in there. The tacos were terrible.
I am always amazed, when I am in the north and middle parts of the country, how much less diverse and more segregated it is than what I am used to.
Cameron
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Well, that’s the level the Swinish Oaf relates to.
Anya
@cliosfanboy: How do you both side this when only one side has made their whole campaign about hating on immigrants and building a stupid wall?
MattF
When toddlers are xenophobic, it’s home-schooling from parents who admire the schoolyard bully in the WH. I do wonder, though, how name-calling ever became an effective form of debate.
Anya
@?BillinGlendaleCA: That whole campaign is about her. Remember how she’s “the most bullied person in America.” I loathe her as much as I loathe the vulgarian sullying our whitehouse.
Mary G
My teen housemate, who was 12 at the time, came home the day after the election in distress because a white kid had told him he would be sent back to Mexico. He was born here.
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne: I can’t get butthurt about supposed violations of free speech because they’re not violations. Deplatforming is not a free speech violation. Losing your job is not a free speech violation. Losing friends or the esteem of others is not free speech violation. Being disinvited from speaking at a college campus is not a free speech violation. Having the right to speak doesn’t mean others have the responsibility to listen.
Just Chuck
@Mnemosyne:
It’s not really free speech when it’s outright bullying. It’d be like sexual harassment being treated as free speech. I think what you’re getting at is whether the philosophy of tolerance should be extended to intolerance, and the growing consensus on that is a hard “No”, because intolerance is by definition inimical to tolerance.
cliosfanboy
@Anya: some RW kids were insulted forbacking trump.
Anya
I think the hidden trauma that trump’s legalized white supremacy has caused a large segment of the country is worse than these open bullying incidents. There are a lot of families who are scared and their kids are petrified of what will happen to them and their parents. Anyone who didn’t vote in 2016 bears as much responsible as the braindead MAGAs for this. Every single asshole who voted for a third party, sat out the election because “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Hillary and Trump” is responsible for this.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
@Just Chuck:
I agree with you guys, but I think there are way too many school administrators who decide that racial bullying that passes through a political filter first is “free speech” and therefore shouldn’t be punished as the bullying it actually is.
Anya
@cliosfanboy: ugh. I actually subscribe to the stupid paper and this makes me annoyed.
Percysowner
@Suzanne: It’s interesting where different populations migrate. When I was in the Cleveland area we had great unique Thai restaurants. When I moved to Columbus all the Thai food was so-so, but there are a ton of good Indian and Somali restaurants, Recently Ethiopian restaurants are opening up.
When I lived in Southeast Ohio, all the stores had signs in Spanish and English. It was rural and guess where all the farm workers came from?
Even the older waves of immigrants settled in different areas. In Northeast Ohio we had lots of old-school Italian restaurants, and eggplant Parmesan was in every one. Down in Columbus, most of the Italian restaurants are Americanized and only one or two have eggplant.
I happen to live in a highly diverse Columbus neighborhood. I have East Asian neighbors, Indian neighbors, Hispanic neighbors, Black neighbors, a neighbor who wears a turban that I associate with the Sikh religion, women who wear a chador (full body coverage, face not covered) and white people like me all in my little subdivision. I wasn’t looking for that much diversity, but I lucked out.
Omnes Omnibus
The day after the election in 2016, a couple of students at my nephew’s high school ( may old school as well) told a Latino kid to “Go back to Mexico” or some such. My nephew overheard it and told the racists to go fuck themselves. My whole family was proud of him. Seriously. My mom called me to tell me. Some of the kids are alright.
Just One More Canuck
@Mnemosyne: it’s not that they want free speech as much as they want freedom from the consequences of their speech
Sab
@Suzanne: Tacos? Cleveland’s hispanics tend to be Puerto Rican background. And if I want tamales I have to make them myself.
John Revolta
@Percysowner:I was reading about Eritrea the other day…….thousands of Italians moved down there in Colonial days and now the local cuisine is a combo of indigenous East African and Italian food. Now I want to go there and try it.
Chetan Murthy
This racist bullying is awful. As with everything, Shitlord just makes (some) Americans secure in their awfulness, and they feel more comfortable showing it … and their asses. But they were feeling this way before, and in some parts of the US, were acting it.
I remember growing up in Delaware, and jokes about Polish immigrants were pretty common, and there was a general attitude of despising them. I remember growing up in Texas, and all brown/black people were subjected to a litany of racist epithets, of a kind that would fit right in with what I read above. Utah? Tennessee? I can sure believe that they were just like Texas …. in 1975, and today.
He gives permission for the assholes in our midst to wave their freak flag. We have to stop that.
Just Chuck
@Mnemosyne: Yep, it’s definitely a growing consensus, not a a universal one. Even then it’s never a binary thing, and there will always be shades of gray. It’s almost as if we’re fallible humans making judgment calls…
Mnemosyne
@Sab:
Puerto Rican food is really good but (for obvious reasons) it’s more similar to other Caribbean food than it is to Mexican food.
Poor Suzanne just moved there from one of the states where you can get Mexican food from multiple different regions of that country, so she is going to have a sad about that for a while.
What Have The Romans Ever Done for Us
@Citizen Alan: Ditto
Orange is the New Red
I am in schools a lot for my work (special education advocacy). One place has 2 faculty cars plastered with Infowars stickers. Sigh.
Just Chuck
@Mnemosyne: I lived in PR for 4 years or so as a wee child … 2-6, I think. Military brats like me remember places better than years. Anyway, I remember a lot of black beans, plantains, and seafood. Heck, I remember eating beans and rice and shark. Pretty similar to Cubano food, more or less.
Kent
@Orange is the New Red: Probably physics teachers or math teachers if your schools are anything like mine. And maybe football coaches to boot.
Just Chuck
@Orange is the New Red: Man, when Alex Jones was mostly about Area 51, Roswell, cell phone radiation, and HAARP, I counted among my friends both a left-wing and left-libertarian (yeah there’s a few) who loved them some Alex Jones. It’s kinda sad to see him gone full metal wingnut.
Well, he was always a wingnut (in the old sense) of some form, but mostly just a paranoid conspiracy nut, not a right wing cultist. I guess birds of a feather…
LongHairedWeirdo
You know, it was weird. I grew up in working class Philadelphia, and I never would have known Reagan was racist – but he was. It’s one of those “you’re soaking in it” situations. See, people nominally agreed in the 70s to 80s that racism was terrible – so terrible that you didn’t *dare* accuse someone of it.
I later learned more about it, but the thing that stunned me was watching Angels In America, where some of the politicos were glorying in how they could cut loose, now that Reagan was in the White House.
It struck me how that all worked.
First, everything Reagan said was okay-ish, because he was so *friendly*.
Second, nothing you said that was similar to what he said could be that big of a deal, because THE PRESIDENT said the same thing.
Third, all the people who worked for the administration could now provide the most transparently bigoted rationales for their actions, without fear of upsetting their boss, unless they created enough bad press.
Fourth, once people raise a question, in official capacity, it’s part of the political conversation – so holding the Presidency lets one drive the news cycle.
That didn’t work with George Senior – face it, he was boring. It worked great with George W, though.
And look how well it works with Trump. Seriously, stop and think about it. How many nasty, all-around, insults has he thrown? That’s now normal, and the GOP has their President with enough working digits to sign legislation and nominate judges who’ve sold their impartiality to the GOP.
(Yes, I know, it’s horrible to accuse a judge of having political motives in writing an opinion. Makes me really happy not to be a lawyer! But come on; Roberts isn’t so stupid that he thinks the we don’t need the Voting Rights Act because everything is fine now; and, once he gutted racial gerrymandering, and saw the sudden rush to harm minority voting, it would only make sense to make partisan gerrymandering non-Justiciable, if his goal was to serve Republican interests. Face it; the Federalist Society was founded out of corrupt motives: the idea was to prevent *surprises* from the federal bench. You can’t pretend to educate your way out of surprises – you can only show how certain decisions lead to advancement, while others lead to stagnation. )
Suzanne
@Mnemosyne:
I haven’t moved yet (waiting for the end of the school year), and we’re going to Pittsburgh. But the project I’m working on is in Cleveland, so I’m doing a lot of traveling in the next few months.
Speaking of which…. anyone interested in a meetup in the first week of March? I did find a good BBQ place near the hotel that my company sets me up at.
Suzanne
And yeah, I’m going to miss Mexican food, especially Sonoran…. really, really badly.
Ghost of Joe Lieblings Dog
@Anya: “The Times condemns the extremists on both sides – those who want to put immigrants in cages, on the one hand, and those who don’t, on the other.”
I’m exaggerating. (I hope I am, at any rate.)
John Revolta
@LongHairedWeirdo: When Rudy first got elected Mayor, cops started beating up black suspects in the precinct houses while yelling, “It’s Giuliani time now!!” The gloves were off and they knew it.
J R in WV
@?BillinGlendaleCA:
@Anya:
You both use pronouns to allude to someone… I follow the blog and the news, and I have no idea who “her” and “she” is that you’re talking about, so how about a clue? Please?
just a person’s name when we want to go off on them, please.
Steeplejack
@J R in WV:
Melania Trump. #BeBest.
J R in WV
@Suzanne:
I dunno much about Phoenix, but Damm!! the food in Tucson is great. All of it. Mexican is real, Mariachi music with guacamole made table-side, sushi, pretty much every ethnicity I can think of.
J R in WV
@Steeplejack:
OK, thanks… should have known, she’s been so low profile off and on I forget about her. But when she shows up, boy howdy~!!~
Dan B
@John Revolta: The Eritaean restaurants here in Seattle are fantastic! A friend who teaches ESL says the Eritraeans bring the best food to school potlucks.
John Revolta
@Dan B: Well that’s some good news! Maybe I don’t have to go all the way to the Horn!
Dan B
@John Revolta: Eritaea has a brutal dictator so the after dinner “treats” might be unnerving, or highly ennerving.
BTW most Eritaeans are christian so they pour some mean cocktails.
Omnes Omnibus
@Suzanne: Every area has its ethnic foods. You just need find out what they are and where to get them. For example, I would expect that Cleveland has some Slavic (of various types) that would be worth tracking down.
Mnemosyne
@Suzanne:
Ah, I though you were already in the ‘Burgh. My bad. How is the tiniest Spawn?
Marigold
@Suzanne: I’m barely more than a lurker, but I can get most places in Cleveland in a hour. I’d be interested in a meetup.
Sab
@Suzanne: I am a tax accountant. March is insanely busy, but I would very much like to meet you. Please do this, or help me help somebody else organize this.
Sab
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes it does. Office people keep trying to stuff it down my face, I am on a diet. Please stop!
BellyCat
@Suzanne: Congratulations on choosing Pittsburgh! (I missed the final decision if you posted it)
It’s a great city. Very progressive Mayor, too. I love it here.
Would enjoy a meetup after you arrive.
Jay Essel
@Suzanne: mucho interest! I’m on the west side of CLE, but we have good restaurants all over.
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: I have to agree with you about Mexican food: it’s a universe, a delicious, delicious universe. But Caribbean food ain’t nuthin’ to sniff at. Here in SF, I really miss (real) cubano sandwiches, ropa vieja, oxtail soup, fried plantains, and on and on and on ….. 20 years since I lived in NYC, with cuban, dominican, and cuban-chinese restos within walking distance. Oh sigh. But yeah, it’s not the same as Mexican food, in its diversity.
Starfish
The bullying in schools started as soon as the electoral outcome was known. The kids of Trump voters were being ostracized where I live.
Immediately after that, the schools were dealing with kids who were afraid that their parents would be deported by ICE and needed more school counseling support than usual.
All this other stuff started at about the same time.
Boris Rasputin (the evil twin)
Speaking of hate, Steve Bannon was on “Firing Line” this weekend. Why is PBS giving a platform to Nazis?