A couple of days ago, Lance, a 10-year-old student in Queens, New York, was walking to his seat in his favorite class: technology. He is training to be a programmer.
A boy, or bully #2, walked up to him and told him, "Hello, Mexican." The boy meant to insult Lance by calling him Mexican; the bully has told Lance that “He sucks,” because he is Mexican or Puerto Rican. Lance is Hispanic. His family is from Colombia.
Apparently, there is a group of people in this country who mistakenly think that being Mexican is terrible. Who could have given them that idea?
In response to the bully's insult, Lance "roasted" him by cracking some kid-safe jokes about him.
Then the boy punched Lance in the back of his head.
The teacher saw the incident and seated bully #2 away from Lance. Then she screamed at Lance for cracking jokes about him. She sent Lance to the school guidance counselor's office.
The guidance counselor told Lance that he needed to ignore people when they talk negatively about his ethnicity. Why are school administrators allowing hate among our children to continue? Since when has solely the act of ignoring a problem solved it?
After several similar incidents, the father told NY1 that he filed a complaint with the New York City Department of Education, but no one at the agency took his calls. Do education agencies in this country just want to talk about how much they're doing about bullying after children kill themselves?
NY1 released a DOE report revealing that Mayor De Blasio’s administration is not keeping its promise to stop bullying in New York City schools.
The De Blasio administration is ignoring a countless number of families subjected to bullying on a regular basis. In Lance's case, these are only a couple of the incidents where the bullies have verbally and physically attacked him because he is Latino.
A couple of weeks ago, another boy or bully #1 told Lance, "Go back to your country!"
Lance got angry, and again teachers told him to ignore people when they negatively refer to his ethnic background - Lance was born in St. John's Hospital in Queens, New York.
A few weeks before that incident, bully #1 scribbled on Lance's notebook.
Bully #2 threatened to knock Lance out, and the assistant principal held Lance in the office for 30 minutes while the rest of the school celebrated at a Thanksgiving event.
Don't blame the children, for apparently, the current executive administration's discriminatory and anti-immigrant rhetoric has empowered people around the boys to demonize Hispanics and people with other ethnic backgrounds. All the racist political dialogue also appears to be influencing teachers, other school staff members, and education agencies to disregard racial slurs in the classroom.
Buzzfeed reported that children are using President Trump's words to bully classmates in several cities across the country.
Hate crimes have been soaring in several parts of the country since the 2016 presidential election.
Governor Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio have declared a "zero-tolerance policy" towards hate crimes in New York City and the rest of New York State.
Mayor De Blasio has been blaming President Donald Trump’s racist remarks and discriminatory positions to the dramatic hike in hate crimes for the past year.
However, they're ignoring how much this divisive political discourse is influencing our children and encouraging them to hate each other because of their backgrounds.
Are we allowing politics to turn our children into the next generation of hate criminals?