SPLC responds to false New York Post article

More than 10,000 teachers, counselors, administrators and others who work in schools responded to the survey, and the data indicate that the results of the election are having a profoundly negative impact on schools and students.

Last Monday, the New York Post published an article with a headline claiming that we “buried Trump-related ‘hate crimes’ against white kids.”

In our view, the Post got it wrong. 

First, the Post’s reference to “hate crimes” is inaccurate. In response to our survey, teachers reported an array of incidents involving harassment, bullying or intimidation of children. But we did not describe them as hate crimes.

Second, we did not “bury” anything.

We asked in the survey whether educators had “heard derogatory language or slurs about white students” because we were concerned about all students.   About 20 percent of the respondents answered affirmatively to the question – a statistic that we readily shared with the Post reporter.  We included in our report a number of comments from educators who answered the survey question affirmatively. Our analysis of the comments showed that the language in question almost never was actually directed at white students; more often it was expressed as disappointment and frustration with white people in general for having voted for Donald Trump. Out of approximately 10,000 comments in which educators described specific incidents at school, only 103 – or about 1 percent – involved statements that could be interpreted as anti-white. Of those, fewer than five were directed at white students.

The comments made by schoolchildren against white people paled in comparison to the acts and words used to harass or intimidate immigrants, Muslim students and African Americans, both in quality and quantity. Even so, the fact is that we did include examples of derogatory language against white people in the report; it only strengthened our findings that the election has had a generally negative impact on school climates and students – regardless of their race, ethnicity or religion.  Similarly, in a separate report we published – which compiled bias-related incidents occurring across the country in the 10 days after the election – we also included incidents targeting Trump supporters.