The 2016 presidential campaign is “producing an alarming level of fear and anxiety among children of color” in classrooms nationwide, according to a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a nonprofit civil rights organization.
The report is based off responses from 2,000 teachers to an unscientific online survey created by the SPLC’s Teaching Tolerance project, the SPLC wrote in a news release.
Teachers across the U.S. “reported an increase in the bullying, harassment and intimidation of students whose races, religions or nationalities have been the verbal targets of candidates,” the release said.
Titled “The Trump Effect: The impact of the presidential campaign on our nation’s schools,” the report found that GOP front-runner Donald Trump was of particular concern to scores of teachers who cited his comments about deporting undocumented immigrants, building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, and banning all Muslims from entering the country.
Out of 5,000 total comments in the survey, more than 1,000 mentioned Trump, though the survey did not identify any of the candidates by name in its questions, the report said. In comparison, Ted Cruz,Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were named fewer than 200 times together, according to the report.
