{"id":6152,"date":"2024-03-03T09:20:46","date_gmt":"2024-03-03T09:20:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=6152"},"modified":"2024-03-12T09:25:17","modified_gmt":"2024-03-12T09:25:17","slug":"school-bullying-mirrors-deeper-racial-ethnic-faultlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=6152","title":{"rendered":"School Bullying Mirrors Deeper Racial, Ethnic Faultlines"},"content":{"rendered":"

By<\/span>Selen Ozturk<\/a><\/p>\n

Though bullying seems a nearly inevitable part of coming of age, its impacts can last years.<\/p>\n

At a Fri., Oct 27 EMS briefing, community leaders across California school campuses shared how bullying can incubate cultures of hate at a time of rising racial tensions; who the prime targets and perpetrators are; and what insights bullying can provide about racial and ethnic tensions among youth.<\/p>\n

Bullying issues as civil rights issues<\/h2>\n

Civil rights issues are at the heart of bullying issues, said Becky Monroe, Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives and External Affairs at the California Civil Rights Department.<\/p>\n

While not all forms of bullying represent unlawful discrimination, some are acts of hate crimes, she added. These acts of hate \u201cinflict physical and emotional harm on students and their school communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSchools have a legal obligation to ensure that students are not denied opportunities, treated differently, discriminated against, or harassed because of their race,\u201d Moore continued. Conversely, \u201cwhen there is tension and an increase in acts of hate in the greater community, it will be reflected in schools and among students.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018Many kids are playing both roles\u2019<\/h2>\n

In her book, \u201cAccountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed,\u201d journalist and author Dashka Slater wrote about how one Albany High School student\u2019s racist Instagram account sent the whole community into a six-year saga of interpersonal hate acts and legal tensions.<\/p>\n

The Instagram account featured \u201cimages of lynchings and slurs, antisemitism and body shaming, and it was specifically racist towards Black girls at the school, who were friends with the creator of the account, a Korean American junior,\u201d said Slater. \u201cIt was a massive rupture in the community that included a demonstration at school which devolved into violence, and subsequent lawsuits over free speech.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe often see kids of color harassed for their identity, who harass someone else for their identity,\u201d she explained. As happened at Albany, \u201cMany kids are playing both roles, both the bully and the bullied \u2026 The radicalization happens online, as social media algorithms serve kids \u2014 many who consider themselves anti-racist \u2014 extremist content.\u201d There is \u201can insane disconnect between what they were doing and who they thought of themselves as being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three out of four Americans aged 15 to 25, have encountered extremist content online, and half of this content focuses on race or ethnicity, according to the Government Accountability Office.<\/p>\n

In responding to this extremism, schools often rush to disciplinary codes, but Slater said they can\u2019t punish kids out of bullying. \u201cThe same people who have been marginalized by the justice system are not likely to be helped by it. Schools need to be supporting the victims\u201d \u2014 which means \u201cmedia literacy for students\u201d \u2014 \u201cand not think their work is done once they\u2019ve punished the perpetrators.\u201d<\/p>\n

Black youth as primary targets<\/h2>\n

Connie Alexander-Boaitey, president of NAACP Santa Barbara, said across California \u2014 even in communities where they\u2019re underrepresented \u2014 Black students experience \u201cthe highest levels of hate.\u201d African Americans comprise 2% of the population of Santa Barbara County, or \u201c100 to 300 youth in our schools. We are often positioned in a way that says \u2018Oh, but there\u2019s not that many,\u2019 but that many are still being harmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

This violence most often starts \u201cwith the violence of language,\u201d often between ethnic groups, she said, highlighting one example in spring 2022 of a junior high student \u201ccalled the N-word by young Latino students. It\u2019s every day, it\u2019s weekly, it moves itself into physical violence. This young man was assaulted, thrown to the ground, beaten up. The boys jumped on his neck and chanted \u2018George Floyd\u2019 \u2026 It took five months for him to even be able to see a therapist.\u201d<\/p>\n

The same dynamic of bullying between Latino and African American students has since continued in similar, more recent verbal and physical assaults, she added.<\/p>\n

The origin of this hate, said Alexander-Boaitey, is a \u201cbreakdown between communities. This is where the struggle is: how do we have leaders from the Latino and Black community sit down and have our own conversations? What supports it not happening is the erasure culture of \u2018we don\u2019t really need to talk about that, it was just a single incident.\u2019 But it\u2019s a constant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fighting AAPI hate in liberal areas<\/h2>\n

Mina Fedor \u2014 a sophomore at Piedmont High School and the Founder and Executive Director of AAPI Youth Rising \u2014 said school bullying is pervasive even in progressive areas, \u201cand a lot of it is Asian students making fun of other Asian students, and trying to bring down other AAPI groups to seem like they can fit in more, or else it\u2019s seen as a big joke that people adhere to.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said she first began experiencing this hate while attending seventh grade in Berkeley during the COVID-19 pandemic. \u201cAt the time,\u201d she said, \u201cmany Asians were being blamed for a virus that doesn\u2019t discriminate, with comments that target our sense of belonging \u2014 \u2018Go back to where you came from,\u2019 the idea that we\u2019re perpetual foreigners, model minorities that are too successful.\u201d<\/p>\n

To combat this hate, Fedor said she \u201corganized a small community gathering at Berkeley\u2019s aquatic Park hoping for about 70 attendees. Instead, over 1200 people showed up for the rally. That day, I realized that I can make a difference by taking these small actions \u2026 and I formed AAPI Youth Rising.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2018It\u2019s easier being a bully than it is being bullied\u2019<\/h2>\n

Anah\u00ed Santos \u2014 Youth Wellness Coordinator of One Community Action in Santa Maria, on the Central Coast \u2014 said \u201cI am Mixteca, from the Mexican state of Oaxaca; most of us who migrate come to California, and what we see here are Latino youth bullying indigenous peers. The closer you are to whiteness the safer you are \u2026 and you see that even with the gangs here on the south side of our city which are predominantly indigenous and sometimes Black,\u201d segregated from whiter Latino north side gangs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our communities it\u2019s easier being a bully than it is being bullied,\u201d she said, \u201cbecause by the age of 12 we\u2019re already worrying about being a caretaker in our family, having to work to survive. It\u2019s easier to navigate school through that violence, and in the long term it turns into gun violence, drug abuse, even jail.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since this path stems from an inability to connect socially with peers, Santos said that encouraging this connection is key: \u201cThere\u2019s just a lot of racism that\u2019s embedded within Latino culture, and it\u2019s our own community hurting itself \u2026 Even though we\u2019re from the same country, we\u2019re not experiencing the same things, not learning what it is to be proud of ourselves and where we come from. When youth can express themselves in healthy ways, they can care for themselves in healthy ways.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen youth can understand peers\u2019 different cultural backgrounds,\u201d she added, \u201calthough we can\u2019t 100% experience it ourselves \u2014 whether that be the hatred or the joy in being other \u2014 students can connect in the sense of being proud of themselves, their history and future.\u201d<\/p>\n

Source: Published without changes from Ethnic Media Services<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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