Lifestyle

Kids Are Using Trump Talking Points To Bully Classmates

by Christina Marfice
Kids Are Using Trump Talking Points To Bully Classmates: Donald Trump
Drew Angerer/Getty

Kids, especially those who aren’t white, are being bullied and harassed by classmates who use Trump’s racist rhetoric

In an absolutely heartbreaking report, the Washington Post found that today’s students — especially nonwhite kids — face brutal bullying and harassment from classmates who use the same racist words as President Donald Trump.

Ever since he was on the campaign trail prior to the 2016 election, Trump has used bigoted, racist, and inflammatory language when talking about Muslims, immigrants, and minorities in the U.S. The Post‘s analysis of 28,000 news stories since 2016 shows that the president’s words have been used by fellow students and staff members to mock, bully, or harass children at school more than 300 times. 75 percent of those attacks have been directed at Hispanic, black or Muslim kids. And those are just incidents that made the news. They don’t account for incidents of bullying and harassment that were never publicly reported, as we can assume many weren’t.

“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,” the Post‘s report reads.

In thousands of words, the report goes on to share incident after incident of Trump-inspired bullying. Students from all over the country shared their heartbreaking stories with the reporters who worked on this piece, and it’s impossible to read them all without feeling a pit deep in your stomach.

There’s Mexican-American high school student Cielo Castor, who was told at school that Mexicans steal American jobs. Later, a Trump-supporting student refused to sit next to her in class, and then led a “Build the Wall” chant at a school football game. Cielo was booed by students when she tried to stop the chant.

There’s Ashanty Bonilla, whose mother is Mexican American, who arrived to school one morning to see a crowd of boys waiting for her.

“You’re illegal. Go back to Mexico,” one of them said, adding, “Fuck Mexicans.”

Later, Bonilla discovered someone had written “Republican Trump 2020” and tied a rope to her bumper. The boys laughed and filmed her as she struggled to untie the rope. Bonilla had known those boys since she was little. Some of them had even attended her quinceañera the year before. “It’s gotten way worse since Trump got elected,” Bonilla says. “They hear it. They think it’s okay. The president says it. . . . Why can’t they?”

There’s Donnie Jones Jr., a black student who was walking with two classmates, also black, when a teacher warned them that Trump would “send you back to Africa.” The teacher was suspended for three days then transferred to teach at a different school, but was not fired.

These are just a few of the stories the Post has collected. There are many more, in the article, and that have never been reported. This is Trump’s America, and this is what kids face under an openly racist president and administration.