Heartbreak and Outrage as Minorities Recount "Day 1 in Trump's America"
Kids as young as kindergartners are being harassed across the US
In the mere hours since Donald Trump emerged as the surprising victor of the presidential election, there has been an observed uptick in reports of abuse, hate speech, and assault against Muslims, people of color, immigrants, Latinos, and the LGBTQ community, pointing to--as The Verge's Sean O'Kane put it--some "really dark days ahead" for minorities living in "Trump's America."
Many such reports have been emerging from schools, where some young people appear to have been emboldened by the divisive and often bigoted rhetoric of the president-elect.
At Southern Lehigh High School in Pennsylvania, "students have been subjected to classmates yelling gay slurs and the n-word in the halls, calling black students cotton pickers, and using heil Hitler salutes," Lehigh Valley Live reported Wednesday, according to a letter sent home to families by principal Christine Siegfried.
Also in Pennsylvania, a number of white students at York Technical High School were filmed marching down the hall chanting "white power" while carrying Trump signs.
According to New York Daily News columnist Shaun King, who has been collecting and sharing such reports on social media, parents in that community "literally had to go and pull their Black children out of school...[because] of racial slurs and physical threats."
King said Wednesday that he got "about a hundred" similar reports as "[k]ids as young as kindergartners are being harassed today and told they'll be deported."
In another instance, Julio Puentes from West Valley, Utah wrote online that when standing in line with his son he witnessed two kindergartners "saying they voted for Trump and...teasing a Hispanic kid...saying he's Mexican and...will be going back to Mexico."
At Hillary Clinton's alma-mater, Wellesley College near Boston, two students from nearby Babson College reportedly laughed and screamed as they sped through the all-female campus in a pick-up truck Wednesday, waving a large Trump flag. The white males then reportedly parked outside the Harambee House, which "serves as the focal point for African-American students," the Boston Globe explained, where they "jeered at [black students], screaming Trump and Make America Great Again," according to one account. "When one student asked them to leave, they spit in her direction."
There have also been multiple reports of attacks of female Muslim university students, the Washington Post reported Thursday:
A Muslim student at San Diego State University was robbed and may have had her car stolen Wednesday by two men who made comments about President-elect Donald Trump and Muslims, according to police and university officials, who called the attack a hate crime.
In a separate incident Wednesday, a female student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was beaten, robbed and had her hijab ripped off by two men, one of them wearing a white "Trump" hat, police and university officials said.
Such reports are prompting some Muslim women to remove their sacred hijabs, out of fear of being targeted. Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement Thursday calling on Trump to denounce the actions of some of his supporters.
"If President-elect Trump truly wishes to be the leader of all Americans, he must begin unifying the nation by repudiating the type of bigotry generated by his campaign for the White House," said CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Hooper. "Unless Mr. Trump speaks out forcefully against hate attacks by his supporters, they will take his silence as tacit endorsement of their actions."
Scrolling through the accounts collected by King and others under the title "Day 1 in Trump's America," the reports are seemingly endless.
@ShaunKing @DayBracey from Maple Grove, MN highschool yesterday pic.twitter.com/TuYs8wQwBl
-- Winnie Mosa Dixon (@HistoryofSALMON) November 10, 2016
Speaking late Tuesday, CNN commentator Van Jones explained the racial undertones of Trump's win.
"I have Muslim friends texting me tonight asking, 'Should I leave the country?' I have families of immigrants that terrified tonight," he said.
"This was many things," he continued, referring to Trump's unexpected success, "this was a rebellion against the elites. True, it was a complete reinvention of politics...but it was also something else."
"This was a white-lash," Jones continued. "This was a white-lash against a changing country, it was a white-lash against a black president in part, and that's the part where the pain comes." He added, "This is a deeply painful moment."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate crimes around the country, is asking people to report incidents of intimidation or harassment.
Urgent. It's never been this bad.
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission from the outset was simple. To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It’s never been this bad out there. And it’s never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed and doing some of its best and most important work, the threats we face are intensifying. Right now, with just four days to go in our Spring Campaign, we are not even halfway to our goal. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Can you make a gift right now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? There is no backup plan or rainy day fund. There is only you. —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
In the mere hours since Donald Trump emerged as the surprising victor of the presidential election, there has been an observed uptick in reports of abuse, hate speech, and assault against Muslims, people of color, immigrants, Latinos, and the LGBTQ community, pointing to--as The Verge's Sean O'Kane put it--some "really dark days ahead" for minorities living in "Trump's America."
Many such reports have been emerging from schools, where some young people appear to have been emboldened by the divisive and often bigoted rhetoric of the president-elect.
At Southern Lehigh High School in Pennsylvania, "students have been subjected to classmates yelling gay slurs and the n-word in the halls, calling black students cotton pickers, and using heil Hitler salutes," Lehigh Valley Live reported Wednesday, according to a letter sent home to families by principal Christine Siegfried.
Also in Pennsylvania, a number of white students at York Technical High School were filmed marching down the hall chanting "white power" while carrying Trump signs.
According to New York Daily News columnist Shaun King, who has been collecting and sharing such reports on social media, parents in that community "literally had to go and pull their Black children out of school...[because] of racial slurs and physical threats."
King said Wednesday that he got "about a hundred" similar reports as "[k]ids as young as kindergartners are being harassed today and told they'll be deported."
In another instance, Julio Puentes from West Valley, Utah wrote online that when standing in line with his son he witnessed two kindergartners "saying they voted for Trump and...teasing a Hispanic kid...saying he's Mexican and...will be going back to Mexico."
At Hillary Clinton's alma-mater, Wellesley College near Boston, two students from nearby Babson College reportedly laughed and screamed as they sped through the all-female campus in a pick-up truck Wednesday, waving a large Trump flag. The white males then reportedly parked outside the Harambee House, which "serves as the focal point for African-American students," the Boston Globe explained, where they "jeered at [black students], screaming Trump and Make America Great Again," according to one account. "When one student asked them to leave, they spit in her direction."
There have also been multiple reports of attacks of female Muslim university students, the Washington Post reported Thursday:
A Muslim student at San Diego State University was robbed and may have had her car stolen Wednesday by two men who made comments about President-elect Donald Trump and Muslims, according to police and university officials, who called the attack a hate crime.
In a separate incident Wednesday, a female student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was beaten, robbed and had her hijab ripped off by two men, one of them wearing a white "Trump" hat, police and university officials said.
Such reports are prompting some Muslim women to remove their sacred hijabs, out of fear of being targeted. Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement Thursday calling on Trump to denounce the actions of some of his supporters.
"If President-elect Trump truly wishes to be the leader of all Americans, he must begin unifying the nation by repudiating the type of bigotry generated by his campaign for the White House," said CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Hooper. "Unless Mr. Trump speaks out forcefully against hate attacks by his supporters, they will take his silence as tacit endorsement of their actions."
Scrolling through the accounts collected by King and others under the title "Day 1 in Trump's America," the reports are seemingly endless.
@ShaunKing @DayBracey from Maple Grove, MN highschool yesterday pic.twitter.com/TuYs8wQwBl
-- Winnie Mosa Dixon (@HistoryofSALMON) November 10, 2016
Speaking late Tuesday, CNN commentator Van Jones explained the racial undertones of Trump's win.
"I have Muslim friends texting me tonight asking, 'Should I leave the country?' I have families of immigrants that terrified tonight," he said.
"This was many things," he continued, referring to Trump's unexpected success, "this was a rebellion against the elites. True, it was a complete reinvention of politics...but it was also something else."
"This was a white-lash," Jones continued. "This was a white-lash against a changing country, it was a white-lash against a black president in part, and that's the part where the pain comes." He added, "This is a deeply painful moment."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate crimes around the country, is asking people to report incidents of intimidation or harassment.
In the mere hours since Donald Trump emerged as the surprising victor of the presidential election, there has been an observed uptick in reports of abuse, hate speech, and assault against Muslims, people of color, immigrants, Latinos, and the LGBTQ community, pointing to--as The Verge's Sean O'Kane put it--some "really dark days ahead" for minorities living in "Trump's America."
Many such reports have been emerging from schools, where some young people appear to have been emboldened by the divisive and often bigoted rhetoric of the president-elect.
At Southern Lehigh High School in Pennsylvania, "students have been subjected to classmates yelling gay slurs and the n-word in the halls, calling black students cotton pickers, and using heil Hitler salutes," Lehigh Valley Live reported Wednesday, according to a letter sent home to families by principal Christine Siegfried.
Also in Pennsylvania, a number of white students at York Technical High School were filmed marching down the hall chanting "white power" while carrying Trump signs.
According to New York Daily News columnist Shaun King, who has been collecting and sharing such reports on social media, parents in that community "literally had to go and pull their Black children out of school...[because] of racial slurs and physical threats."
King said Wednesday that he got "about a hundred" similar reports as "[k]ids as young as kindergartners are being harassed today and told they'll be deported."
In another instance, Julio Puentes from West Valley, Utah wrote online that when standing in line with his son he witnessed two kindergartners "saying they voted for Trump and...teasing a Hispanic kid...saying he's Mexican and...will be going back to Mexico."
At Hillary Clinton's alma-mater, Wellesley College near Boston, two students from nearby Babson College reportedly laughed and screamed as they sped through the all-female campus in a pick-up truck Wednesday, waving a large Trump flag. The white males then reportedly parked outside the Harambee House, which "serves as the focal point for African-American students," the Boston Globe explained, where they "jeered at [black students], screaming Trump and Make America Great Again," according to one account. "When one student asked them to leave, they spit in her direction."
There have also been multiple reports of attacks of female Muslim university students, the Washington Post reported Thursday:
A Muslim student at San Diego State University was robbed and may have had her car stolen Wednesday by two men who made comments about President-elect Donald Trump and Muslims, according to police and university officials, who called the attack a hate crime.
In a separate incident Wednesday, a female student at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette was beaten, robbed and had her hijab ripped off by two men, one of them wearing a white "Trump" hat, police and university officials said.
Such reports are prompting some Muslim women to remove their sacred hijabs, out of fear of being targeted. Meanwhile, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement Thursday calling on Trump to denounce the actions of some of his supporters.
"If President-elect Trump truly wishes to be the leader of all Americans, he must begin unifying the nation by repudiating the type of bigotry generated by his campaign for the White House," said CAIR national communications director Ibrahim Hooper. "Unless Mr. Trump speaks out forcefully against hate attacks by his supporters, they will take his silence as tacit endorsement of their actions."
Scrolling through the accounts collected by King and others under the title "Day 1 in Trump's America," the reports are seemingly endless.
@ShaunKing @DayBracey from Maple Grove, MN highschool yesterday pic.twitter.com/TuYs8wQwBl
-- Winnie Mosa Dixon (@HistoryofSALMON) November 10, 2016
Speaking late Tuesday, CNN commentator Van Jones explained the racial undertones of Trump's win.
"I have Muslim friends texting me tonight asking, 'Should I leave the country?' I have families of immigrants that terrified tonight," he said.
"This was many things," he continued, referring to Trump's unexpected success, "this was a rebellion against the elites. True, it was a complete reinvention of politics...but it was also something else."
"This was a white-lash," Jones continued. "This was a white-lash against a changing country, it was a white-lash against a black president in part, and that's the part where the pain comes." He added, "This is a deeply painful moment."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which monitors hate crimes around the country, is asking people to report incidents of intimidation or harassment.