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Bullying Targets "The Other"
WHO DESERVES to be bullied? Forgotten in this recent cycle of events is an alarming epidemic of school bullying directed at Arab-American, American Muslim and Southeast Asian students. They have had to endure such verbal abuse as:
“You terrorist.”
“People can’t get jobs because of you.”
“You blow up buildings.”
“You are Muslim, you should go home.”
In post-Sept. 11 America, this is the sort of student-on-student bullying Arab-American, American Muslim and South Asian youth experience in our public school districts. Often this harassment escalates from name-calling to physical threats and violence, like the case of an Arab-American Muslim eighth-grader. The youth underwent surgery earlier this year to insert pins and a plate to repair his jaw, broken in two places after an assault by a schoolmate who had subjected him to racial and religious bullying.
In another instance, an Arab-American Muslim student was subject to student-on-student harassment that culminated in a false bomb threat made under that student’s name.
And, then there is the case of Kristian, a Muslim teen who suffered nine months of physical and emotional abuse, including being kicked in the head and punched in the groin so hard he later saw blood in his urine. His grades suffered, his personality changed and he withdrew from friends and family.
According to the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, a national civil rights organization with local chapters throughout the United States, Arab-American students continue to face significant problems with discrimination and harassment in schools around the country. In fact, ADC contends that there is persistent discrimination higher than in the past and that it is clearly related to the 9/11 attacks, the “war on terrorism” and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In a study commissioned by the Sesame Workshop, Arab-American children were found to be suffering from “vivid and immediate” anxieties and a “sense of shame” about violence in the United States. According to a study at Wayne State University, 43 percent of a group of Arab-American teens were found to be depressed.
Arab-American youth are not alone. Children perceived to be Middle Eastern, South Asian and/or Muslim are also targeted indiscriminately. According to a civil rights report published by the Council on American Islamic Relations last year, there was a 31 percent increase in reported cases of discrimination in school against kids perceived to be Muslim.
Yet, in our collective conversation about school bullying, the unsettling plight of these children has often been overlooked.
With the passage of the Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights in the New Jersey Legislature last week — which if signed would be arguably the toughest anti-bullying law in the nation — it is important for lawmakers, school administrators, teachers and parents to remain mindful that Arab-American, American Muslim and South Asian children are at an acute risk for harassment, intimidation and bullying.
Among other things, the proposed legislation requires new teachers and administrators to complete an anti-bullying training program and all teachers to learn about bullying as part of their suicide prevention training. It calls for disciplinary action against school administrators who fail to investigate an incident of bullying and includes “harassment, intimidation and bullying” as types of conduct warranting student suspension or expulsion. It provides for school superintendents to deliver a report twice a year at an open school board meeting on all acts of violence, vandalism, harassment, intimidation or bullying that would be used to “grade” schools by the state education commissioner.
This measure should be made law. Additionally, cultural proficiency training should be offered to students, teachers and administrators to protect all at-risk children.
The mind-set that stigmatizes Arab-Americans, Muslim Americans and South Asians as “the other” is part of the same bigotry that causes discrimination against African-Americans, Latinos, Jews and the disabled.
Engy Abdelkader
North Jersey