Bullying Statistics

Questions and Answers about the Epidemic of Bullying of Asian American Students in Public Schools


I have written several posts about the unaddressed bullying of my Asian American daughter (who excels academically and athletically) at her former school. After some brief research, I soon learned that my daughter’s mistreatment was not unusual for Asian American students attending American public schools. In response to this bullying epidemic and other issues facing the Asian American community, President Obama established the AAPI Initiative to seek redress for these issues.(See http://www.whitehouse.gov/aapi.

The article linked below contains numerous resources of assistance to one seeking information on bullying of Asian students.

http://www.askhelpbox.com/when-students-especially-asians-get-bullied-it-is-mostly-verbal-name-calling-or-physical-attack

 

 

 

More Kathy Groob: Disappointing Kentucky Culture of Intolerance for Asian Americans–Apparently my Daughter isn’t the ONLY Kentucky Student Subjected to Racial/Ethnic Slurs


http://www.kentucky.com/2014/08/19/3387373_vincent-cao-too-many-believe-that.html?sp=/99/349/&rh=1

 

When I made complaints to coaches and administrators at my daughter’s former school system about the stream of racial slurs made to my daughter (“chink”, “slant eyes”, “nigger lover”, and ” Commie”, to name a few), none of my complaints were taken seriously and no investigations initiated as required by Federal law. My wife did receive a call, though, after one of my complaints, from an assistant basketball coach and wife of the athletic director, questioning my sanity and “instructing” my wife that,”There is no racism going on at this school system.” And to make sure my wife received the message, the coach/AD’s wife asked a rhetorical question, “You understand what I am saying don’t you?”

It wasn’t until the Asian American Legal Defense and a Education Fund  (AALDF), an outstanding civil rights group out of New York City, became involved (and their complaints were ignored for weeks until the Kentucky Department of Education (KDE) was contacted and KDE specifically directed the school’s superintendent to conduct an immediate investigation into my and AALDEF’s complaints). Many weeks passed before the school district even made contact with AALDEF, and to this day continues to delay or block any attempt at resolving the issues, though investigations are ongoing with the U.S. Department of Education and Kentucky Commission on Human Rights.

It did not take long after the school board hired an attorney to begin a smear tactic against my daughter and me, which in a small town got back to me fairly quickly-comments such as: I was only trying to line my pockets with the school district’s limited budget because I am an attorney and that’s what attorneys do. I was going to sue all of the parents individually for the slurs “allegedly made by their children”. I wanted to destroy the name of the school district. Blah. Blah Blah. [In truth, I DID NOT FILE THE COMPLAINTS with the Department of Education and Department of Justice. AALDEF filed in their own name on behalf of my daughter after their many attempts to enter into negotiations with the school district were ignored or not taken seriously. Additionally, I was captain of my football team there, still use my number76 in my Twitter handle (terryclarke76) and gmail email address (terryclarke76@gmail.com) and my late father and two of my close cousins are in the high school’s Hall of Fame. In short, I had no interest in destroying the school’s reputation. In fact, as incredible as it appears, those associated with the school have openly questioned my motives that I was concerned with improving the climate of cultural tolerance in the schools within the school district though I am on my city’s Commission on Human Rights, and consciously made the choice not to sue the school for money damages.]

 

Why is still PC to make racist comments about Asian Americans?

  

The site linked below is a story a television station (WDRB) in Louisville filmed and posted in an article on its website. The sports reporter, Eric Crawford (who has an outstanding reputation as a national basketball reporter) came with a camera man and interviewed my daughter and me for hours after driving 3 hours to my home in the extreme Northeastern part of Kentucky where it touches Ohio and West Virginia. We only consented to two more interviews, one with an Asian American reporter I have always admired, who was the former host of NPR’s All Things Considered, and Mellisa Issacson of ESPN who wanted to seek my daughter’s opinion on bullying in the locker room of girls sports teams as the Richie Incognito–Jonathan Martin saga was unfolding. We turned down countless other interview requests because neither my daughter nor I wanted to bring attention to ourselves.  A link to Ms. Issacson’s story on ESPNW story is also included below the link to WDRB’s Eric Crawford’s story.

http://www.wdrb.com/story/22755109/crawford-kentucky-girl-claims-racial-harrassment-in-russel-independent-schools

http://espn.go.com/espnw/news-commentary/article/9965221/espnw-wake-incognito-martin-incident-bullying-issue-female-athletes

 This is the same school system which was placed on probation for openly cheating during the State’s regional Governor’s Cup competition. This is the same system whose supporters claimed that this school district was too “culturely sophisticated” for their students to ever utter a racial slur, not a single one, though my daughter was the only minority on her basketball team and it was her teammates who admitted they hated my daughter. Bear in mind the link at the beginning of this post was from an Asian American living in Kentucky’a second largest city (Lexington) and much more culturely diverse than my daughter’s former essentially all-white school located in the Appalachian area of the State (the hillbilly part). Despite the school district’s representatives claims that all of its schools “embraced diversity”, this school system has the reputation in the area as one of arrogance and intolerance. When the state’s ruling body on academic competitions issued a lifetime ban to the high school’s academic team coach from ever coaching in, or even attending, academic contests, the media asked the school’s principal if the cheater would be fired. The principal’s response, “Heck no. He made ONE mistake and they Pete Rose’d him.”

http://www.wsaz.com/news/headlines/40234312.html?device=tablet

 

“The Gooks of Hazard”

 

 

So . . . Does anyone actually find the Appalacian school district’s position credible that racial slurs against Asian American DO NOT OCCUR at their rural school when those slurs occur daily in the halls of the schools in the State’s urban areas?

Asian American students are the most bullied ethnic group in American schools

 

Feminist Kathy Groob’s Racist tweets about Kentucky essentially having NO ASIANS is a lose-lose situation


Kathy Groob got into a Twitter war arguing that Elaine Chao, the former labor secretary and wife of Republican US Senator Mitch McConnell, can’t possibly be from Kentucky, “because she’s Asian.”

That drew a firestorm on Twitter from folks who didn’t see the relationship between being from Kentucky and being Asian. One of Ms Groob’s many Anti-Kentucky and Anti-Asian American racist tweets (all of which she later deleted from her account), appears below.

In order to present an accurate portayal, I am including links to articles posted on a Kentucky television station (WHAS), an extremely conservative blog (fireandreamitchell.com) and an Asian American blog (AsAm News) to let you determine the appropriateness of Ms. Groob’s comments regarding Asian Americans and Kentucky (1) Kentucky has no Asians, and (2) Ms. Goob continues to openly express the widely held belief, despite her very liberal views, that Asian Americans, regardless of how many generations their ancestors have been American citizens “are really never fully American.”

I realize, of course, that politics often descend into the absurd and that Ms. Goob made her racist attacks because she disapproves of U.S. Senator Mitch McConnel (R, KY) (who is married to Asian American Elaine Chao–a citizen of both Kentucky and the United States) and I realize she did make an “apology” (though her “apology” was perhaps the weakest and least effective apology in modern political history). Ms. Goob’s comments, however, fall outside any sense of human decency, and continue to depict Asian Americans, depite their legal citizenship, as forever foreign and unwanted in their country of citizenship. Make no mistake, there is no doubt, whatsover, that Ms. Goob was well aware of Ms. Chao’s citizenship (in both Kentucky and the U.S.). If she is as involved in politics and feminism on the national scene as she claims, she would certainly know that Elaine Chao was the first Asian American women to be appointed to a U.S. President’s cabinet in American history, serving as the United States Secretary of Labor from 2001 to 2009. If Ms. Chao did not possess Asian features, I can only assume she would have been thumping her chest that a female served as Secretary of Labor (a Cabinet level position) for two full terms under a Republican President–but how could she celebrate a woman in such a high level position because thw woman “did not look like an American citizen, but looked instead like a massage parlor worker whom the poor, ignorant hillbillies populating Kentucky (including me, though I have an LL.M. degree from George Washington University and even have an “Asian” daughter) would surely not allow to live in their state. I guess I should receive my notice any day to report to an interment camp with my daughter).

Since Ms. Goob has announced to the world through social media that Ms. Chao can’t possibly live in Kentucky because of her Asian features, I guess, based on her logic, my 15 year-old Asian American daughter isn’t from Kentucky either since she was adopted from the Central Asian Republic of Kazakhstan and has lived with and been a part of our Kentucky family since she was 18 months old. The good liberal, Ms. Groob, has helped perpetuate the myth that Americans with Asian features are somehow strange and different and will never be accepted as true Americans in the United States. Perhaps her point of view (which many claim is wholely within the domain of Conservative politics, though Ms. Groob has proven otherwise) is the reason that Asian teens are the most bullied racial group in the U.S. and also have the highest suicide rate.

I care very deeply about this subject of Asians being viewed and treated differently because the issue directly affects my ethnic Kaazakh daughter (both an Asian and Kentucky citizen, though in Ms. Groob’s world the two categories cannot co-exist). I also care because my Asian Kentucky citizen daughter was bullied (racially harassed and retaliated against) at her previous school based on her ethnicity, national origin, race and religion) while the school system at every level displayed an incredible deliberate indifference with regard to my many comlaints of her mistreatment. When people like Ms. Kroob spew their hatred on a national stage, there is a trickle down effect reminding all of white America that American citizens with Asian features are “not really” Americans and there is no need to allow them the same courtesy and conditions to which white people feel priviliged.

http://www.fireandreamitchell.com/2014/08/02/feminist-kathy-groob-tweets-deletes-racist-crack-against-asians/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FireAndreaMitchell+%28Fire+Andrea+Mitchell%21+Exposing+Liberal+bias+cause+the+MSM+doesn%27t+have+to.%29

http://www.whas11.com/community/blogs/political-blog/After-she-is-Asian-tweets-about-McConnells-wife-Dems-rebuke-operative-269676631.html

http://www.asamnews.com/2014/08/04/whas-democratic-operatives-tweet-about-elaine-chao-draws-rebuke/

 

 

 

 

 

Slowly, but surely, the law recognizes bullying for what it is.


The article from the Education Law firm referenced below provides a very concise, but accurate picture of the general state of the law regarding bullying, as it now exists. Here's to hoping school administrators (not all of them, of course, because I've m

et some very good ones) spend more time in changing their school system's climate that tolerates (or, at times, instigates) the harassment of students from diverse cultures, and spend less time trying to protect those in their good old boy network and less time focusing on preserving the cronyism status quo. Adopting a curriculum that extolled the virtues of tolerance and the importance of diversity should be a top priority for all school administrators.

http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/bullying-slowly-but-surely-the-law-rec-74663/

 

 

Bully describes why she “bullied” and her epiphany


Bully describes why she “bullied” and expresses remorse for her middle school actions In the link below from Upworthy–a fantastic collection of interesting videos on YouTube.

http://www.upworthy.com/she-confronted-her-bully-and-asked-one-question-now-the-bully-has-an-awesome-story-to-tell?c=upw1 

image

image