The Paris attacks, the San Bernardino mass shooting and the ready willingness of even governors and presidential candidates to paint Muslims as a universal threat is having repercussions. Attacks against Muslim Americans are on the rise, including in our schools.
A seventh grader in Vandalia, Ohio, threatened to shoot a Muslim boy on the bus ride home from school, calling him a "towel head," a "terrorist," and "the son of ISIS." A sixth-grade girl wearing a hijab in the Bronx was reportedly punched by three boys who called her "ISIS." Even before Paris and San Bernardino, a 2014 survey by the Council on American Islamic Relations found that 52 percent of Muslim students in California reported being the target of verbal abuse and insults. That's double the number of students who report being bullied based on gender and race nationwide.
[...] One in five Muslim students in California said they experienced discrimination by a teacher or an administrator at school. Of all the kids who were harassed, only 42 percent said reporting a problem to an adult made a difference. Muslim teens I have interviewed over the past two months have said many students don't even report bullying because "students like to call Muslim and Arab students 'terrorists' in a joking way," Nour explained.
At Mother Jones, Kristina Rizga documents some of the efforts by Muslim students, other students, and schools themselves to stem the tide. It's worth a read.