How Republican Anti-Immigrant Rhetoric Led to a Boy Spitting in My Daughter's Face At School

When there is no accountability, things just keep getting worse

Image by Walter Rhein

This event happened last year. I’ll have to go through my archives, but I think this is the first of 3 articles I wrote before the issue was more or less “resolved.”

However, something like this will never be truly resolved until we return to a society that shows a little bit of respect for human dignity. Every day the BS we have to put up with is absolutely sickening. You’re not allowed to get in front of a room and say Conservatives and Republicans are racist for chanting “Build the Wall,” even though it’s the truth. Even worse, when they chant their hate language it leads to violence against the innocent.

Every. Damn. Time.

But our churches are silent on this too. In fact, they often SUPPORT those chants and vote for the candidates who lead them. The only criticisms I see are when people say, “Don’t call people ‘racist’ because it hurts their feelings.”

To hell with that.

I call it like I see it and at this point I’ve become highly resistant to gaslighting. My daughter knows the boys in her class who are Trump supporters because they proudly wear their “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirts. I told the principal he had to send those kids home and he said he couldn’t because there is no profanity in that phrase.

“If a kid gives you the middle finger, do you know what profanity that signifies? Are you okay with that behavior?”

When I have them cornered they always go silent.

My wife is an immigrant. My children are mixed race. Although as a white male I am not harassed, it infuriates me to see the way that racism is normalized in this country and directed at my innocent wife and children.

I see a lot of passive people out there who, because racism doesn’t affect them directly, tend to adopt an attitude of indifference. It’s important that everyone knows that unless you are actively and deliberately anti-racism, you are a racism enabler.

We all have to embrace the positive tension that comes from the pursuit of justice. There is going to be tension in our society one way or another. You never placate a bully by letting him do what he wants. You always have to make him stop, or he’ll just keep doing worse and worse.

The account

I. Am. Livid.

For those of you about to tell me that I need to move, I realize your heart is in the right place. But answer me this: Move where? Where can I go where the cancer of disrespect and aggression that has infected the United States will not reach me?

Abroad?

Do you really think the United States doesn’t have influence on what happens abroad? Do you really think that there is anywhere you can go, anywhere in the world, where some entitled American won’t come up and spit in your child’s face? They don’t like you because of the color of your skin or the person that you love or the language that you speak, and they always feel they have the right to unprovoked aggression because they know there will never be consequences for the aggressors.

This is America.

No, fleeing is not the answer. Besides many people lack the resources to flee. But I’m not going to sit on my hands, harbor my strength, and allow entitled bigots to spit in the faces of innocent children.

It may not be in the news so much anymore, but we’re still in a pandemic. Under normal circumstances, spitting in somebody’s face would be considered an unacceptable physical aggression. In an era of potentially lethal communicable diseases, spitting in somebody’s face should be considered criminal.

What happened?

Are we at the point now where something as simple as Spanish class is enough to trigger the entitled people in our society? Does a brainwashed boy who has been listening to his heroes chant, “Build the wall!” become enraged at the simple idea that a language besides English should be a topic of study in public school?

Radical groups are already banning history in the form of legislation directed at critical race theory (CRT). Are boys who sit in Spanish class fuming at the suggestion that non-English speakers deserve the same respect and dignity as any other human being? Is that what’s going on?

My family is an immigrant family. We speak Spanish in our home. Everybody in my family is fluent in Spanish.

Of course, there’s no special consideration for my daughter at the local school district when it comes to her advanced abilities. We have IEPs for kids who are struggling. That is as it should be since education is a human right. However, why don’t we have IEPs for exceptional children?

Why does my daughter, who probably has a better grasp of Spanish than the teacher, have to sit through basic lessons? Why can’t she be considered an assistant? Why can’t her skills be utilized to help the other kids? Why does she essentially have to sit there being bored and have her time wasted?

Yesterday my daughter received a perfect score on her test. Her reward was that some boy in the class, whom she had never talked to before, marched over and spit in her face.

That’s America for you. This is the result of all the hatred that’s been directed at immigrants for the last decade (and more). I warned you this was going to happen. Sooner or later, somebody’s going to spit on your child too.

I know the name of the boy who did it, but I’m guessing I’d face stiffer consequences for revealing it than he’s going to face for spitting in my daughter’s face.

It’s my impression that America always offers more protections for aggressors than the innocent people they attack. I’m not the only one who has this impression.

How I found out

I found out this happened because my daughter told me. Actually, she told my wife and my wife told me. She said she knew it was going to make me upset.

Imagine that, my daughter was trying to protect me from this. What’s the social programming responsible for that response? Already she knows that when she’s the target of aggression she’s expected to remain quiet? This is the lesson our society teaches!

Do you know what should have happened? I should have been informed by the teacher. I should have received a written report with signatures from the principal, teacher, and school resource officer. They should have informed me that the aggressor had been removed from the classroom, and they should be asking if I want to file criminal charges.

Instead, this got swept under the rug.

“Boys will be boys.”

BS.

Now take a step back and consider this. What if it had been a student that spit in the face of a teacher, or the principal, or the school resource officer? I’m guessing that if that had happened, I’d have received a phone call within minutes. I’m guessing I would have been called in for a sit down.

But when it’s my daughter getting spit on, there’s nothing. This is the selective perception that allows evil to flourish. Unless something happens directly to a person in power, nobody cares.

Cars in the parking lot

Every day when I drop off my kids at school, I’m confronted with images of blatant aggression.

There’s this guy who thinks it’s “cute” to put a decal of a hand grenade on his window. Every single day when I turn on the television, I have to watch a news report about another group of students that was slaughtered at a school. In that context, this guy thinks it’s okay to drive up to a school with a picture of a grenade on the back of his car?

What’s wrong with you? Kids are getting murdered every day and you think this is appropriate at SCHOOL? — Image by Walter Rhein

Then there’s this vehicle with the racist “Joe and the Hoe” sticker. These are common in my community. Hoe in this context, referring to a woman of color, is appallingly racist. The word refers to the Jezebel stereotype that plantation owners used to “justify” raping their slaves. However, people will claim ignorance about this historical fact because they’ve managed to keep the harsh realities of the American slave era out of schools.

Is it important to teach children about respect or not? This sticker isn’t respectful — Image by Walter Rhein

Then there’s this guy who uses weapons of war to spell out a profanity, and also adds the racist phrase just for an additional kick in the teeth. Again, this is the kind of window decal you see in a country where children are routinely slaughtered. The profanity is written using the very images of the weapons of war that are used to murder children.

You’re near a school. What’s wrong with you? — Image by Walter Rhein

Our society is okay with this? Our society is okay with this kind of image on display a few blocks from a school?

You act like you’re surprised that kids get spit on. It seems to me that there are a lot of messages laying around that encourage people to spit on kids.

My children have been harassed since 2016

For years, ignorant men wearing red hats have been getting in the face of my wife and kids and screaming, “Build the wall!” However, our society fails to recognize that represents hate speech.

In 2021, an armed mob was allowed to attack the Capitol. The consequences have been slow in coming. We’re all told that we should “forget about it” and “move on.”

I’ve been the target of physical attacks in the past. In the heat of the moment, somebody punches you in the face and gives you a bloody nose. You’re the one who bleeds. You’re the one who is humiliated. You’re the one who is laughed at.

But then, when the time for consequences come, people start saying, “Oh, that’s in the past. Why can’t you let it go? Why do you have to insist on ruining somebody’s life?”

The result is that the innocent party is attacked twice. You suffer the initial attack, then you have to suffer the smear campaign when you try to take action to ensure the same abuse doesn’t happen again.

But you’ve got to understand that the type of person that would spit in your face isn’t sincere about his remorse. He’s not sorry he spat on you, he’s sorry he might get in trouble for it. The second the heat is turned down, he’s going to go and spit on somebody else.

The answer to aggressive people isn’t to sit back and endure their behavior. The answer is to hold them accountable. In fact, if you let them get away with it, their behavior is only going to get worse.

Look around. We’re seeing it.

It started with “We speak English in America,” then it moved on to “Build the wall!” now they’re spitting in my daughter’s face.

A year ago I was with a search party that recovered the body of a dead 11 year old girl. We need to take action at stage one because we can’t bring back the dead.

My district is considered one of the good ones

A few weeks ago I attended an event put on by the local school district. At that event, a woman mentioned that she’d recently moved up from Tennessee after the research she did indicated that our area had a good reputation as a place that was safe for members of the LGBTQ community.

That may be the case, but we still had an 11 year old girl get raped and murdered last year. A boy felt entitled to spit on my daughter. I don’t feel any impulse to go patting anyone on the back. A jailer brings you food once a day, that doesn’t make up for the abuses he allows.

I only mention this because it brings us back to my statement from the beginning of the article. Some people, whose heart is in the right place, will tell you, “You need to move.”

No.

That’s the wrong response. There are people who can’t move. There’s no place you can go. We have to stop running away. Instead, we have to stand up to the aggression. We have to make it stop.

Stop normalizing disrespectful behavior

Take down the flags. Scrape the decals off your car. Quit screaming profanities. Put an end to the racist political slogans. Put the corrupt politicians and the violent aggressors in jail.

There aren’t “extremists on both sides.” The extremists are all on the right and we have to overcome the conditioning which makes us think our only solution is to passively endure their incrementally worsening aggression.

If you observe evil and do nothing, you’re just as bad. It’s my intention to file criminal charges against the kid who spit on my daughter. This assault should not have happened.

We’ve got to stop handing power over to abusers in the form of sparing them from any consequences for their actions. Let’s hand over power to the good people who don’t attack the innocent in the first place.