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Donald Trump Victory: Minority Utah Students Bullied And Harassed Day After Election

By Patricia Ramirez
Published on: 18:03 PST, Nov 9, 2016

Donald Trump managed to eke out an electoral college victory (while losing the popular vote) on election night. At school the next morning, many minority Utah students began to face the fallout of Trump’s unexpected win. Minority Utah students in grades as low as kindergarten were reportedly harassed and bullied at school following the Donald Trump victory, and teachers and school districts are taking no chances with the emotional and physical safety of their kids.

As KSL News reports, the Donald Trump victory hit minority Utah students hard as the Wednesday school day got its start, with children from multiple grades, schools, and school districts reported being bullied during the first day of Donald Trump’s official “President Elect” status. In some cases, the bullying was witnessed by parents or other adults, and in all cases, it appeared to be disturbingly racially motivated and targeted at Utah minority students.

Farnsworth Elementary School, located in West Valley City just outside of Utah’s capital of Salt Lake City, was reportedly where a kindergarten-aged minority Utah student was targeted by young bullies following the unlikely Donald Trump victory on election night. A parent reportedly saw two kindergarten students bullying their Hispanic classmate. They allegedly told him that Donald Trump’s win meant that he would have to go back to Mexico, alerting the concerned parent to report the bullying to school administrators.

Local news station Fox 13 Now reports that minority students enrolled in Utah’s Granite School District may have gotten the worst of the post-election, Donald Trump victory-related bullying. Granite School district received multiple reports of minority students being harassed and/or bullied due to their race, gender, or ethnicity in the wake of Tuesday night’s Donald Trump election win. The Utah school district is reportedly not tolerating the bullying and has reported that it is actively and aggressively investigating reports that minority students are being bullied following the Donald Trump win on Election Day.

“No student in our schools should be made to feel unsafe or intimidated.”

The school district took to Twitter to share the news that Utah minority students were being bullied after Donald Trump’s win, as well as to unequivocally state that the bullying behavior wouldn’t be tolerated and to remind students to report bullying that they experience or witness.

The Utah school district wasn’t the only entity to tweet about minority students being bullied following Donald Trump’s election victory. Parents and students responded in kind, sharing their experiences and complaints regarding what was happening and how the situation was being handled.

Fox13Now further reports that after the school day, more reports of Utah minority students being bullied due to Donald Trump’s victory came to light.

“There was a lot of rude and negative comments towards Latinos.”

Some students reported that the comments and bullying got deeply personal and offensive on Wednesday. They were reportedly almost exclusively directed at Hispanic students, based on nothing more than the color of their skin as their classmates couldn’t possibly know their immigration status.

“Hey man, you get a free trip back to Mexico, you should be happy.

You wetbacks need to go back to Mexico.”

Ultimately, Granite School District called out parents, asking that they moderate their speech at home and be aware of how the things they say impact the things their children do.

It wasn’t just in schools that Utah minorities were feeling the terrifying effects of Donald Trump’s unexpected rise to the status of President-Elect. In Utah and around the nation, lawyers, agencies, and non-profits dedicated to the service of the minority, immigrant, and refugee communities were reportedly inundated with phone calls, electronic communications, and even visits from terrified, anxious clients fearing that they are about to be unceremoniously shipped back to their country of origin.

“Our clients are really worried and scared. Many of them are saying to us, ‘What’s next? What’s going to happen to us?’ — especially refugees coming from Muslim countries.”

At this point, there are very few answers for fearful minority students and their parents. Donald Trump hasn’t laid out a real, comprehensive plan to carry out all of his campaign promises to remove people from the United States and to seal off the border with a giant wall. The only notable thing that has happened on the first-day post-election is a nominal but potentially progressive change on Donald Trump’s website regarding the handling of Muslim immigrants to the United States.

As ABC News Go reports, a very disturbing pre-victory Donald Trump promise/statement has disappeared from the President Elect’s website. Since December 2015, Donald Trump has boasted a very divisive statement on his site, a statement proposing a total ban on Muslim immigration to the U.S.

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

That statement, which has haunted strained Muslim relations in and outside the United States since it was posted has disappeared since Donald Trump scored an election night victory. Neither Trump nor his team has commented on the disappearance of the anti-Muslim rhetoric, but many are hoping that it could mean that Trump may be less aggressive with immigrants as POTUS than he was throughout his campaign.

The reports of Utah minority students facing bullying in the wake of Donald Trump’s victory are far from the first reports of Trump-related school bullying that have surfaced during this contentious and controversial election cycle. As The Nation reports, Donald Trump and his campaign promises unleashed a “new wave of bullying in schools.”

Teachers across the nation, including Hillary Tulley of Illinois, have reported increased instances of hate, racism, sexism, and even Antisemitism in the year since Donald Trump began his campaign. According to Tulley, one of her ninth-grade students was recently overheard asking, “Is it okay to burn Jews?”

“I’ve been a teacher for 24 years and I’ve never heard that kind of talk before.”

In Washington state, sixth-grade teacher Kyrian Smith, who is African-American, reports that her students were using shocking hate speech and targeting Muslim classmates, as well as classmates of color.

“The two Muslim students were bullied and called ISIS fighters. My black students were being called n-words.”

In Newtown, Massachusetts, Michael Zilles reports that his school district has been overwhelmed by the instances of race-related and Anti-Semitic bullying that occurred during Donald Trump’s campaign for POTUS.

“We have had more racial incidents in the last 12 months than there have been in years.”

Now that the nation is struggling to transition from a Donald Trump campaign to a Donald Trump victory, it is unclear whether or not the trend of racially-motivated anti-minority bullying is going to continue to be a bigger-than-average problem at the nation’s schools. What is clear is that Utah minority students suffered bullying in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s presidential victory, and Utah schools are doing everything they can to stem the tide of ugliness and hate.

[Featured Image by a katz/Shutterstock]

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