Racial comments at school - how to handle it

FBaby

Agree with Justme. If this constitutes racism, I have been the victim of it on an almost daily basis for the past 20 years. Just today, my boss introduced me to a VIP by 'that's the .... lady'. Funny how depending on the nationality, it is considered an insult or a compliment.

susancs

justme111 wrote: »

Interesting so many have completely disregarded the wish of a child not to mention it to school authority . Guess whether the child will mention anything like that to parents again if he finds out it has been reported.

I think that is why it is important that the parents sit the child down and explain that it is important that the matter is reported to the school, before they do so. I personally would say to my children that bullying, of all types which would include the use of abusive language (assume the **** is a swear word) is wrong and as such must be reported to the school. I would cite the recent news cases where children were bullied with words and committed suicide (e.g. 12 year old Ronin Shimizu in Dec who was called names because he was the only boy in the cheerleading team) to back up the importance that incidents are reported to stop such behaviour.

cavework

I just wonder if the children we keep advising, punishing , educating, complaining about and trying to control ,regarding bullying, racism, sexism, homophobia et al, are actually being overdosed in PC to the point where they just don't understand what is acceptable and what is not.. so don't get the message, so give up
Instead of a simple 'stop being an idiot' confirmed probably by other kids of their age we now go into a full blown autopsy, investigation of anything remotely assumed to fit into one of the above catagories .
Is it actually diluting the message we are trying to give?
Please understand I do not condone any of these but all kids will test any rules and regulations imposed by adults..
The people they really pay attention to are friends and people of their own age group

geerex

fivetide wrote: »

Controversial here but this sounds more like the other kid is simply a bully. The fact his victim happens to be Indian is just the trait they are picking up on.


It wouldn't be any different if it was "That Fat XXXX" or "That Speccy XXXX" or even "That Ginger XXXX"


However, bullying is serious. If it is affecting your son then the school needs to deal with it and should have procedures in place to deal with bullying.


If your son isn't that bothered, has a good group of friends and thinks this is fuss over nothing then, if you trust his judgement, I would be tempted to go with it initially. Keep an eye though and maybe get a copy of the school's bullying policy to talk over with him in case it progresses. The quiet word mentioned above might be a good one too so the school keep an eye out but don't act at this stage.

Agreed. Its just a term of differentiation. Certain groups of people in this country are too quick to shout "racist" when no racism exists.
While I'm sure that the OPs child is an angel, there are always two sides to every story. I'd have a good long talk with the child before you try to get another child marked out as a racist.

Lily-Rose_3

lulu_92 wrote: »

I had a handful of racist comments throughout my school life and I wish that the school had done more about it.

Then again, these are the same people who made a website dedicated to how they hate me and how I should be dead. The school did nothing about that either.

lulu_92 wrote: »

Thanks, was about 8 years ago, before all of this crackdown on cyber-bullying. My head of year even said that he couldn't do anything about it, even though the people posting were dumb enough to use their full names! :eek::eek::eek:

I was bullied for about 4 of the 5 years I was at secondary school. My attendance dropped and my mum was ringing the school or coming in at least once a week to sort it out and they did nothing to. Schools are meant to make children feel safe and too many of them end up being scared of going out of fear of bullying, etc.

Holy chuff Lulu! :eek:

I have to agree that *some* schools do very little when bullying is taking place, because they don't want THEIR precious school to be seen as 'having a bullying problem.' They will try and keep it in-house, and will often try and make out that the child being bullied is as responsible as the people bullying them, and will often get the victim together with the bullies to try and talk it out!

The victim will often be offered in-house counselling too, to help them deal with the bullies. They often end up making the victim feel that THEY are the one to blame for being bullied. One teacher at the school actually said to the mother of my daughter's friend who was bullied (for having glasses and braces and being short,) that she is a target for bullying so there's not much they can do to stop people having a go at her. Charming.

She also had 3 of the bullies making up a facebook page called 'Shelly* Must Die Ugly ****' with death vicious comments and death threats! her mother did screen prints and everything for evidence, and all the head said was 'well we don't know what Shelly has been doing first do we?' You couldn't make it up. It finally stopped when Shelly's mother went to the police. They took it more seriously and went to the parents of all 7 children involved AND they went to the school, and really went to town on them for doing so little about the bullying.

Shortly after, the attitude towards bullying/bullies changed completely. There were all sorts of codes of conduct, and a zero tolerance attitude! Shelly went through a lot, but it ended up with things changing because of her mother's actions, because the school now take bullying seriously, and actually expelled 6 or 7 bullies in the last 2 years that she and my daughter were there!

Re the OP. If you feel your child is having their lives made miserable by other children for ANY reason, then talk to the school, and if they do nothing, then go to the education authority. No child should be made to feel so bad that they don't want to go to school. As a few posters have said though, I am not sure if someone saying 'that Indian lad' is 'racism,' but if it is making him feel bad, maybe he could ask a teacher to have a word with the people saying it.

*Shelly is not her real name.

purpleshoes_2

Some schools do tackle bullying, my mum is a teacher and if there's an incident of bullying in her classroom, she deals with it, she won't tolerate it.

Having said that I was bullied badly through primary school by a couple of girls I can only describe as hard nuts, both came from really difficult backgrounds and all they wanted to do was fight, nothing was done about it, it was my mum who stepped in and told one girl to back well off when she threatened to drown me the next time we were at the baths for a swimming lesson, she said it in front of other people and I was terrified enough of her to eventually tell my mum what had been going on. She never bothered me again.

purpleshoes_2

TheEquilibrium wrote: »

It was inevitable really

Son reports that a kid at school is being mean to him. When queried says lad calls him "That Indian xxxxx"

Son is 11, and mixed race, other kid and parent is known to us and they were at primary together but never friends.

School is 'good community type' white suburban.

Indian parent says just ignore it, he's just trying to wind you up and will get fed up of it if you don't react. If it starts to bother you or gets worse tell us again and we'll contact the school.

Son doesn't want school contacted, and Indian parent is afraid if it is reported physical violence may ensue and it may all escalate.

White parent kind of agrees but thinks maybe if you let people get away with this stuff it is bad for the school community, may show son as weak (and prompt more nasty stuff). Think it would be good to offer son some alternate strategies to use in this situation if ignoring it doesn't work.
1. Maybe - Tell kid you don't like it and could he stop?
2. Get mutual friend to say much the same to Kid?
3. Tell Kid you don't like it could he stop and if he doesn't kid will tell parents/report to teacher.

Or should we say to son. "We are the adults we'll sort it" and

4 Have a quiet word with parents
5. Have a quiet word with school

I should stress I don't want to blow this up out of proportion as son doesn't appear to be in any distress over it and I recognise that in the scheme of things it's small beer. I think though this will be the first of many and would like the three of us to have a strategy. By the way son is quite capable of saying mean stuff (though not racist) but he is not a fighter.

Has anyone any experience of this kind of stuff?

Personally, Id go with what the child wants in this situation. And let him know that if it does get worse, then you would strongly suggest he speaks to his class teacher.

I wouldn't speak to the child concerned or get anyone else to do it, if you do want to involve the school directly I would speak to them or get your son to speak to them, not to the child or the parents, because that could blow up in your faces if the kid then makes a complaint about you.

Lily-Rose_3

justme111 wrote: »

.. if one was bullied for being poor and wearing old clothes or of a particular religious belief or fat, do you think it would hurt less or be less wrong than doing it for race ?

Very good point indeed.

Being attacked for your race cannot be pleasant, but it is no better to be being bullied for being fat, poor, tall, short, disabled, ginger, or anything else that sets you apart from the masses in the school.

I do wonder though, if kids who are fat are even bullied for being fat now, seeing as how one third of kids are supposedly obese now?! :eek:

SuzieSue

When one of my husband's kids was bullied (not racist), he made sure they all joined a karate club and were able to defend themselves. It was the best thing he ever did for them (one of them even became a black belt and teaches it in his spare time).

purpleshoes_2

Lily-Rose wrote: »

Very good point indeed.

Being attacked for your race cannot be pleasant, but it is no better to be being bullied for being fat, poor, tall, short, disabled, ginger, or anything else that sets you apart from the masses in the school.

I do wonder though, if kids who are fat are even bullied for being fat now, seeing as how one third of kids are supposedly obese now?! :eek:

I think some bullying is labelled hate crime for a reason, it can't be nice being bullied for certain things, Ive been on the receiving end, but being bullied due to race, sexual orientation or disability in my view is horrendous, there's also a message that needs to go out to kids bullying other kids, that any bullying is wrong, but speaking as someone who will rarely if ever be bullied due to the colour of my skin I can't imagine what it feels like for anyone who is.