For the sake of children’s safety, adults must tone down the rhetoric

Any parent will testify that kids never stop listening to what the adults in their lives are saying. Sure, when we speak directly to them, they pretend not to hear a single word. But when adults are talking amongst themselves or discussing the latest news or politics, young people have a remarkable ability to capture almost every word.

Now, a Washington Post analysis of FBI crime data has shown that the Republican Party’s ongoing culture wars and the conversations and rhetoric of adults surrounding them are having a negative impact on children’s safety at school.

The analysis found increased rates of bullying and hate crimes against LGBTQ students in K-12 schools in states that recently passed ANTI-LGBTQ legislation.

However, the analysis’s implications go far beyond LGBTQ students and indicate that the GOP’S wars on immigration, critical race theory, women and so-called “woke” ideology could have grave implications for young people from a wide variety of backgrounds.

According to The Washington Post, the number of hate crimes on K-12 campuses has more than quadrupled in recent years. Importantly, the largest increases occurred in states that recently passed ANTI-LGBTQ legislation.

The level of violence is also increasing, with the number of hate incidents deemed serious enough to be reported to police more than doubling nationwide between 2015 and 2022. Again, the increases are higher in states that restrict the rights of sexual and gender minorities or limit the ability of school staff to discuss issues of gender and sexuality.

The findings confirm earlier reporting by The Post in February 2020 which found that, “Since (Donald) Trump’s rise to the nation’s highest office, his inflammatory language — often condemned as racist and xenophobic — has seeped into schools across America.”

The article went on to say that “kids as young as 6 (are) mimicking the president’s insults and the cruel way he delivers them. … At least three-quarters of the attacks were directed at kids who are Hispanic, Black or Muslim.”

Specific examples included middle-schoolers in Tennessee who linked arms to create a wall and refused to let nonwhite students enter the school. Teenagers in another state directed chants about “banning Muslims” at a classmate wearing a hijab.

Those findings echoed the results of a 2016 survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center, in which K-12 educators described more than 2,500 “specific incidents of bigotry and harassment that can be directly traced to election rhetoric.”

In short, the constant stream of vitriol aimed toward marginalized communities by politicians effectively trains our kids to believe that some of their classmates are less deserving of human dignity than others. Laws prohibiting discussion of controversial topics in schools create a culture of silence and fear that leaves those assumptions unchallenged.

The end result is that teens are increasingly in distress, with calls to youth crisis hotlines exploding in recent years.

At the Trevor Project, a national organization aimed at LGBTQ youth crisis intervention and suicide prevention, calls, texts and online chats more than doubled from 2022 to 2023.

One recent example was 16-year-old Nex Benedict, a nonbinary teen from Oklahoma who, on Feb. 7, was beaten up by three classmates in a school bathroom.

The assault wasn’t deadly, but it reinforced the messages of Oklahoma’s superintendent for education, Ryan Walters, who has engaged in an aggressive campaign against what he describes as “radical gender theory” that is “dangerous” to girls in Oklahoma.

It seems to us that Walters’ rhetoric is what’s dangerous.

The day after the incident in the bathroom, Nex killed themself, a tragic and senseless death of a teenage child, cut short by a society that repeatedly told them they weren’t valued.

If right-wing extremists don’t stop their hateful and dehumanizing rhetoric, Nex won’t be the last teenager to end their life, or have it ended for them.

Lance Preston, the founder and executive director of the Rainbow Youth project, a nonprofit that offers counseling for LGBTQ youth, told The Washington Post that young people are calling the Rainbow Youth hotline and saying things like, “My government hates me,” “My school hates me” and “They don’t want me to exist.”

Think about that for a moment.

GOP lawmakers claim to promote ideals of patriotism and love of country, but their actions teach young people that their government hates them and doesn’t want them to exist.

It’s not a coincidence that anti-black racism is on the rise while states are banning instruction and discussion on the legacy and impact of slavery and Jim Crow.

It’s not a coincidence that antisemitism is on the rise while Trump is openly courting antisemites like Nick Fuentes and saying marchers chanting “Jews will not replace us” are “very fine people.”

It’s not a coincidence that Anti-latino sentiment is increasing as the GOP amplifies the “great replacement theory” and racist tropes about immigrants as murderers and drug dealers.

Nor is it a coincidence that sexual assault hotlines have reported call volume doubling since the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade opened the floodgates to accusing women — those seeking access to life-saving health care or in vitro fertilization, or who are survivors of rape and incest — of being murderers.

Our kids hear the hateful vitriol being used by powerful leaders on a global stage. They listen to our rhetoric and, as The Post’s analysis of the FBI’S data shows, they internalize it and act upon it.

Adult discrimination turns quite directly into violence committed by our kids against our kids.

When will we, the supposed adults in the room, stand up and say enough is enough? Discrimination, violence and hate have no place in our society.

When will we demand that our elected leaders take responsibility for their role in the bullying, suffering and death of students like Nex Benedict?

When will we stop pretending that violent nationalism is akin to patriotism?

It is already too late to undo the rhetoric of the past eight years. But every minute we wait is another minute in which that rhetoric goes unchallenged in the minds of our children, making our schools less safe for everyone.