If Donald Trump loses the Republican nomination for President, he can at least content himself with having poisoned the minds of an entire generation of young people.
The anti-immigrant and “juvenile” rhetoric of the 2016 presidential campaign is driving an increase in bullying and fear among students in the nation’s schools, according to a new report by Teaching Tolerance, a project of the left-leaning Southern Poverty Law Center.
“It’s producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color and inflaming racial and ethnic tensions in the classroom…. “Other students have been emboldened by the divisive, often juvenile rhetoric in the campaign. Teachers have noted an increase in bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates on the campaign trail.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center is a non-profit legal advocacy organization usually associated with unveiling and tracking white supremacist and militia groups, the KKK, and similar organizations. Through its teaching arm, Teaching Tolerance, the SPLC conducted an online survey in March 2016 asking about the impact of the Presidential election in the schools, and yielding within a week the impassioned responses of nearly 2000 teachers. The Survey found an alarming, across-the board increase in racially charged bullying, harassment and intimidation in the nation’s schools, correlating to the Republican rhetoric in the 2016 Presidential campaign. SPLC’s Survey, titled: The Trump Effect: The Impact of the 2016 Presidential Campaign On Our Nation’s Schools is here in .pdf format, with teacher’s comments collected here.
From the 237 pages of teacher’s comments:
Kids are asking frightened questions, rather than positive ones.
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My fourth graders are having a difficult time understanding why Donald Trump is using such hateful and inflammatory rhetoric. One of my students who is Muslim is worried that he will have to wear a microchip identifying him as Muslim.
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They seem to be more afraid of people who are different from them. They seem to be angry. It seems as if they are echoing the rhetoric of their parents' candidates.
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My Hispanic students seem dejected about not only Donald Trump's rhetoric, but also about the amount of people who seem to agree with him. They feel sure that Americans, their fellow students, and even their teachers hate them (regardless of their citizenship).
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I hear children making statements they hear on TV or from misinformed parents that are racist and misogynist. They also talk about "keeping the Mexicans" out of the country. Kids are pretty ramped up from what they hear.
It is not only fear that Trump (and Ted Cruz) have generated in our schools, but bullying and harassment as well:
Teachers also report hearing and seeing students mimic the fear and hate-filled rhetoric of the 2016 campaign, as if it has given them a free pass to, like Trump, “speak their truth.” One teacher has seen an “increase in hate symbols worn by student and parents to school,” while another noted that the angry rhetoric of the campaign has given students the idea that they can “interrupt, insult, accuse, and generally disregard facts,” just like the candidates on TV.
The SPLC acknowledges its survey is not “scientific.” It was specifically directed to teachers through email and social media, and reached many of whom were already on SPLC’s email list and no doubt predisposed to be sensitive to racism and intolerance. It provides just one source of information about the impact of this election on our children. But there is already ample evidence in the news that Trump’s rhetoric has turned schoolchildren (and college and high school students) into nascent haters and bigots. Numerous instances of intimidation and Trump-inspired bullying racist behaviors have been reported in the media during the past few weeks, including
inflammatory chants at school sporting events directed at Latinos and Hispanic students, with loud, accompanying calls to “Build That Wall” to keep people like themselves out of the country.
A number of teachers reported that students are using the word “Trump” as a taunt or chant as they gang up on others. Muslim children are being called “terrorist,” or “ISIS,” or “bomber.” One teacher wrote that a fifth-grader told a Muslim student “that he was supporting Donald Trump because he was going to kill all of the Muslims if he became president!”
Leaving aside the obvious fact that no child deserves to have his or her childhood marred by racism, the worst aspect of this willful violation of children by the Republican Party and its leaders may be that most of these kids—including many of the college age ones—are too young to have a real understanding of why this type of hateful rhetoric is so harmful, not only to the society they live in, not only to the people they assault with it, but to themselves. They are too young to understand why people have fought against this kind of ugly bigotry for decades, and how badly it corrodes their futures and the quality of their lives. Some of them may already be inclined to this type of racism, but for others the Trump experience is their first taste of it.
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The larger problem is once these attitudes and beliefs are instilled in these kids (and made “popular” because “everyone’s doing it”) it could take decades to shed them if they can be shed at all. Racism has a habit of reinforcing itself, which is why it persists. Many of the teachers’ comments allude to children simply parroting what they hear from their parents, who ought to know better but don’t. While bad or heedless parenting certainly plays a role here, the fact is that many parents aren’t necessarily equipped or inclined to educate their children about the long and sordid history of racism in this country. Learning tolerance is hard. It’s much easier to join the crowd where you don’t have to think.
Which leaves us with the schools, now saddled with the responsibility of cleaning up Trump’s mess. Educators are faced with the dilemma of remaining silent and non-partisan, lest they incur the wrath of racist Republican parents, or speaking directly to these issues and risk their careers for something neither they nor any of the rest of us asked for—how to teach a generation of children forced to cope with a surge in violent, racist sentiment, all because of the recklessness of a fool named Donald Trump:
“Most teachers seem to feel they need to make a choice between teaching about the election or protecting their kids. In elementary school, half have decided to avoid it. In middle and high schools, we’re seeing more who have decided, for the first time, not to be neutral.”
The long-term impact on children’s well-being, their behavior or their civic education is impossible to gauge.
All indications are that the racially charged malice, ill will and spite that Trump and the Republican Party have unleashed will be with us long after his Presidential ambitions are consigned to an asterisk in the history books.