Unsafe school environments from coast to coast underscore the severity of the 38 school-based episodes of hate and bias we tracked during the month of April.
The morning of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, I logged in to Facebook as I do most weekend mornings to see the status updates of 200 or so acquaintances. Many had posted links to news articles and patriotic photos or comments about their memory of that day in 2001. I was not prepared, however, to read a blatantly xenophobic post by someone I had gone to high school with. He called for the extermination of Islam and the strategic bombing of all countries in the Middle East.
A shooting at a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, synagogue has left 11 people dead. Although we’ve witnessed hate-fueled moments many times before, that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t talk about them when they occur. If we don’t, it means we’ve normalized them.