White Students Shout Racist Trump Chants At Minorities On Opposing Soccer Team
A Wisconsin school district is investigating a disturbing incident that took place at Elkhorn High School in Beloit during a girl’s varsity soccer game. From the bleachers, Elkhorn students were heard shouting racist chants that mentioned Donald Trump by name at minority students on the opposing team.
According to local news WISC-TV, the students were repeatedly chanting “Donald Trump, build that wall” directly at black and Latina soccer players from Beloit Memorial. The chants seemed to be referencing one of Donald Trump’s biggest political platforms for his presidential campaign, which is the plan to build a wall between the United States and Mexico to keep out immigrants. Even to those who support Donald Trump’s ideas, someone shouting “build that wall” at minority students very clearly suggests some degree of racial intolerance.
The girls’ soccer coach Brian Denu claimed the minority students were so upset by the racist shouts that they couldn’t continue the match.
“They came off the field and weren’t able to finish the game because they were too upset and distraught over what happened to them,” Denu said. “One of the girls was cradled in the arms of one of our assistant coaches for a good 15 to 20 minutes.”
In response, Elkhorn High School authorities promised to look into the incident and claimed that only a small group of Elkhorn students were shouting the Donald Trump chants. Elkhorn district administrator Jason Tadlock admitted in an email that “some students near the sidelines yelled inappropriate/offensive comments toward some of the players.”
While Tadlock tried to diminish the weight of the racist Donald Trump chants by claiming that they came from elementary school students as opposed to high school students, the source of the chanting didn’t change the impact it had on the students who heard it.
“Those are just words you’ll never be able to take back from those kids and an experience that you wish you could take back,” said coach Denu. “It was really disturbing for them. I could just see the hurt and pain on their face and know that this was obviously something that they hadn’t seen before.”
According to the Huffington Post, a few high school students did join in with the pro-Donald Trump chanting. While they didn’t echo the “Donald Trump, build a wall,” chant, at least two high school students were heard chanting “Trump, Trump, Trump,” several times at the end of the game. According to the New York Daily News, while black and Latino students are a minority in America, the majority of the soccer players on the Beloit Memorial team identify as one of those ethnic backgrounds.
Regardless of the motivations behind either of the Donald Trump chants, Jason Tadlock made a point to apologize on behalf of the student body for their racial insensitivity.
“Obviously, any time a team comes to our school… we all want them to feel welcome and have a positive experience. It was definitely inappropriate and insensitive and not representative of our expectations as a school.”
Despite how traumatized his students were by the Donald Trump chants, Brian Denu says he believes the students who shouted them are probably good kids, they just have “really bad ideas in their head.”
The Inquisitr reported on a very similar incident in February wherein a Catholic Private School was seen chanting “build a wall” at Latino student rivals while wearing Donald Trump masks. Read more here.
When Donald Trump was asked by NPR if he was “proud” of how some white students use his name to degrade minorities he responded, “I’m not proud of it because I didn’t even hear of it, okay?”
[Donald Trump photo by Scott Olson, soccer photo by Matthew Lewis/Getty Images]
