Lawmakers take aim at hate speech in schools

Doctor says it’s not a ‘one-town problem’

Connecticut schools have a hate speech problem, parents, teachers and psychiatrists say.

A proposal that would establish a task force to study the issue and its effects on youth health and achievement is currently before Connecticut’s General Assembly.

The Committee on Children voted to advance the bill after hearing from mothers, fathers, educators, mental health professionals and other community leaders who detailed personal and pervasive encounters with bias motivated by race, religion, disability or LGBTQ+ status in K-12 education and beyond.

In written testimony, a father shared that his children have been called “poop,” “monkey,” “slave” and “ape.” A mother said that a classmate pinned a post-it note on the back of her middle-schoolaged daughter with the words “Kick me, I am a slave.”

“We have to identify this is something that’s very different from bullying,” said Harold Bailey Jr., the chair of TEAM Westport, an official town committee that works to advance racial, ethnic, religious and LGBTQ+ inclusion. “This is very vicious and it has such a strong impact.”

Senate Bill 327 would require a task force to study the physical, mental and educational impact of hate speech and submit its findings and recommendations to the committee by Jan. 1, 2025.

According to the Committee Chair, Rep. Liz Linehan, the joint favorable substitute passed Tuesday expands the charge of the task force to examine the impact of bullying in addition to hate speech.

Linehan said the new language also adds new members to the task force, outlines several data points for study, and updates the definition of hate speech to include “expression concerning sex and body weight or type of individual.”

The original proposal defined hate speech as “any form of expression through which the speaker intends to vilify, humiliate or incite hatred against a group or class of persons on the basis of race, religion, skin color, sexual identity, gender identity, ethnicity, disability or national origin.”

“The changes were made to be more encompassing of issues which may not necessarily be considered hate speech, like body shaming,” Linehan said. “Currently, obesity is not a protected class. But words still hurt, and unfortunately there is data that shows bias against obese children in regards to perceived intelligence levels, negative behavior, and more.

“As our culture continues to skew towards a tolerance for hurtful words, it becomes necessary to collect data on how that affects our children, and how we can combat those negative effects,” Linehan added.

According to the American Psychological Association, “experiences of racial discrimination are consistently linked” with mental health disorders and physical ailments including anxiety, depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, hypertension, diabetes and obesity.

Dr. Tichianaa Armah, the president of the Connecticut Psychiatric Society said that some of her first patients were children who experienced a “stark change” in behavior and emotional wellbeing after experiencing racial discrimination and microaggressions at school.

“It took a lot to get them to even tell me about it,” Armah said. “They came to me for depression, they came to me for anxiety, but what I was able to uncover reluctantly from them was that a lot of this had to do with the experiences they were having.”

Armah said that this kind of trauma can lead to changes in an individual’s personality, difficulty interacting with others, declines in academic achievement, and severe anxiety and depression that can require medication.

Pointing to research that has found that the suicide rate for Black youth ages 5 to 12 is double that of their white peers in recent years, Armah said the consequences of leaving this behavior unchecked are “dire.”

As communities address these issues, Armah said monitoring the outcomes and effectiveness of interventions will be key. She also emphasized the benefits of school cultures that celebrate differences as opposed to taking a “colorblind viewpoint.”

Armah stressed that this is not a “one-town problem.” As the mother of two young girls, she said hate speech and bias have touched even her own family.

“We’ve moved schools because of the daily microaggressions and the impact in watching my own little, little bright star dim for my oldest child,” Armah said. “So this is something that’s very, very important to me.”

In testimony submitted to the committee, Kate Dias, the president of the Connecticut Education Association, said that teachers “witness hate speech at local board of education meetings, on playgrounds and little league fields, and increasingly in school communities.”

“Educators see the impact on their students manifested in stress, anxiety, withdrawal, aggression, self-harm, and unrealized potential,” Dias said.

Last school year, the number of bullying incidents recorded by the Connecticut State Department of Education rose more than 30% from the previous year, surpassing pre-pandemic levels.

At the public hearing, leaders in Connecticut’s Jewish community said that reports of antisemitic and Islamophobic hate crimes and speech directed towards students have increased exponentially since the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel.

Residents and experts who testified in favor of the task force said that bias incidents often go unreported. They said that currently, most districts record hate speech and bias as bullying. Many stressed the importance of distinguishing behavior that specifically targets protected groups.

Those who spoke and submitted testimony said that too often school districts do not do enough to prevent, address or stop these episodes of hate.

Melissa Combs, a mother and school climate advocate, said her youngest child “was relentlessly targeted throughout middle school.”

“He went from being a straight A student to C’s and D’s. His mental health declined and he was eventually diagnosed with depression anxiety and emotional onset ADHD. Fear-based absences self-harm and suicidal ideation became daily concerns as a result of the hate speech and the school’s unwillingness to create a safe learning environment for my child and others like him,” Combs said.

Now, at a new school that actively executes and adheres to its safe school climate policies, Combs said her child is thriving.

“No parents should have to try to go through what we did to find a school where my kids would learn,” Combs said. “No one should.”

Combs said the creation of a task force “is a step in the right direction.”

At the public hearing, Rep. Sarah Keitt said that although there are statutes in place to protect students from this behavior, she said that “it’s important that we all come together around this issue.”

“For people asking why we’re doing this task force, I think you just drove it home,” Keitt said after Combs’ testimony. “We need to find out who’s doing what and what’s working and where we need to do more.”