Republican Values - Hate And Bullying

Please excuse my language, but stories like this just plain piss me off. The Republicans in Alabama had to prove they were even more hateful and bigoted than the folks in other states, so a few weeks ago they passed an anti-immigrant law that was even more restrictive than the one passed by Arizona. The law in Alabama went further by including schools. It mandated that the state's schools collect information about students who may be undocumented.

They did this in spite of the fact that the United States Supreme Court has dictated that schools may not discriminate by denying an education to any child -- even children who may not be in the country illegally. Evidently, Alabama has decided that although they can't deny an education to these kids they can certainly single them out for harassment and bullying -- and that's exactly what they have done.

One of the first things the new and incredibly stupid law did was convince the school's bullies that it is now open season on kids that look Hispanic, and they have jumped to take advantage of that. It has been reported that bullying by young racial bigots has increased in the schools and Hispanic students are being harassed by their classmates. That would be bad enough, but it looks like teachers are joining the harassing of these poor children.


The beautiful young girl in the picture above is the daughter of Birmingham cab driver Cineo Gonzales. She was born in the United States (and her family are also U.S. citizens). But that did not prevent her teacher from singling her out and giving her a pamphlet in Spanish designed for undocumented aliens. Her father, rightfully angered at this, went to the school and wanted to know why his daughter had been singled out in such a fashion. The principal told him that all the students "who look like they aren't from here" are given the pamphlet.

It was a clear case of racial profiling -- and to make it worse, it was the racial profiling of children. How dare these bigots pick on young children! Do they really think they can pick out an American just by looking at someone? That's been an impossible task since the founding of this country. As a nation of immigrants, this country is made up of people from all corners of the world. American citizens come in a myriad of colors and nationalities, and NOBODY can pick out an American citizen just by looking at them (especially using the color of their skin as a guide).

Personally, I think both the teacher and the principal should be fired. If they are willing to harass and racially profile children, and they really think they can determine citizenship by skin color, then they are obviously not smart enough to be teaching our children -- because a lot of those kids are going to be smarter than they are.

But it's not just the Republicans in Alabama who think that the harassment and bullying of school children is a good thing. The Republicans in the Michigan State Senate agree with that concept also. In responding to the recent deaths of school children because of bullying (especially homosexual youths), the Michigan legislature decided to pass a law that would outlaw bullying in schools. That sounds great doesn't it? And it was until some Republican senators put a provision in the bill that makes it meaningless.

That provision carved out an exception for religious bullying. Now all a bully has to do is proclaim that his/her religion forces them to harass or bully their gay/lesbian classmates and it'll be OK. What the hell! Around 85% of the people in this country claim to be a part of some kind of religion. Does that mean that mean that 85% of students now have the senate-given right to bully their peers?

That provision destroys the whole purpose of the bullying law. The law is named after a 14 year-old who killed himself in 2002 because of bullying, and now that child's father is understandably furious. He wanted a law that would protect children like his son -- not a feel good law that actually justifies bullying.

What kind of country have we become, when it is OK to harass, bully, and racially profile school children? Are these the values that Republicans so proudly proclaim as American values? We should be ashamed that Americans actually put these kinds of people into elected office and positions of authority. Now we need to weed them out.