'Go back to your country,' Chicago teacher tells student who sat for anthem - The Washi... - 0 views
www.washingtonpost.com/...teacher-tells-student-go-back
teacher racism rhetoric bullying culture politics trump
shared by Javier E on 16 Feb 20
- No Cached
-
The students were assembled in the auditorium of their high school on Chicago’s North Side, there to celebrate Hispanic heritage — but first, their teachers told them, they had to stand for the national anthem.
-
When one student — a Latina and U.S. citizen — refused a teacher’s pointed direction to stand, she said he replied with an infamously racist line: “Go back to your country.” The same teacher turned to a black student, who was also sitting down, and asked whether she was part of the public school system’s free and reduced lunch program, telling her she should stand for the people who have died for the country, the students said.They were then told to leave the assembly.
-
The teacher’s alleged remark appears to be just the latest example of caustic rhetoric that began in the White House and seeped into schools, fueling attacks and bullying against students of color. Since 2016, President Trump’s words have been used to harass children and teens at least 300 times, according to a recent Washington Post analysis.
- ...2 more annotations...
-
Among the phrases often deployed: “Go back to where you came from” or “Go back to Mexico” or “Go back behind the wall” — all derivatives of Trump’s July 2019 tweet telling four congresswomen of color that they should “go back” to the “totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”
-
If the teacher’s alleged comments set a toxic example, Woods is hoping she and her classmates sent the opposite message.“I am glad we did the sit-in,” she said. “I wanted to teach the younger class that we all got a little fighter inside us. They give me hope that they will continue to call adults out and stand up for what they believe in. The students will always strike back.