Third-grader Victor Reza was watching CNN in the living room in Houston with his family when Donald Trump was announced as the winner of the Florida Republican primary. Victor teared up, his older sister, Maria, said in a telephone interview.
"I don't want him to win," he announced. "If he wins, I'm never going to see any of you again." Victor, 10, is a U.S. citizen, but members of his immediate family are not. And, says 21-year-old Maria, "I'm pretty sure he's heard hateful rhetoric from his classmates at school. His friends at school were saying, 'Ha-ha, your family's going to be deported now because Donald Trump is going to win.' "
This has been an unusually long and hotly contested presidential campaign, in both parties. Trump and other candidates have used language that wouldn't be acceptable in most classrooms.
The tone of the debate, and specific statements about building a wall on the Mexican border, deporting millions of immigrantsand how "Islam hates us," have raised concerns about how all this is affecting students. Especially given that nearly a third of the children in U.S. public schools, like Victor Reza, have foreign-born parents.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a liberal-leaning advocacy organization, asked 2,000 teachers to weigh in on this question recently, in a report titled The Trump Effect. It was not a scientific sample, but of those who filled out the survey, more than two-thirds reported that students — especially immigrants, first-generation students and Muslims — have expressed fears about what might happen to them or their families after the election.
[For more of this story, written by Anya Kamenetz, go to http://www.npr.org/sections/ed...residential-election]
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