According to a new poll released by Quinnipiac University, Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump are deadlocked less than a month before the Democratic and Republican presidential conventions. This particular poll focused on the battleground states exclusively, which are more accurate when compared to national polls, according to CBS news director of elections, Anthony Salvato.
The close numbers and this particular poll has Alfredo Sanchez worried.
Sanchez, 62, became an activist and counselor in the late 70s, Sanchez works and lives in Boyle Heights, however he travels once a week to Oxnard where he visits his sister and volunteers as a tutor to children of undocumented workers. Some of these children are U.S. citizens.
Initially, Sanchez was a substance abuse counselor working with immigrants in Oxnard, “I noticed that my clients who attended our evening program would bring their children, so we started providing snacks and free tutoring,” he explained.
Recently, while conducting a tutoring session, Sanchez noticed several children focused on an issue of the Ventura County Star with a photograph of Trump on the front page, and as they passed it around and he noticed the older children in the group were discussing their fear of Donald Trump.
One of the older kids mentioned whether Trump wins or loses, the damage he has done in regard to immigrants and race relations is irreversible.
In a recent interview, Petula Dvorak, a columnist with the Washington Post described how some of our children are learning from Trump in regard to immigrants and race relations and she believes it may take an entire generation to recover from the hateful rhetoric that Trump has aimed at immigrants, Muslims and Blacks Lives Matter protesters.
According to Dvorak, Trump’s cruel and bitter criticism is transcending the campaign trail and into the lingua franca (a language that is adopted as a common language between speakers whose native languages are different) of children at an alarming rate. “Just watch coverage from Trump rallies to hear the next phrases kids will be slinging at each other in school,” Dvorak says.
“Build the wall!” That was the chant at a high school basketball game in Indiana a few months ago, directed by kids from a majority-White school who held up Trump signs and yelled at the opposing players and fans, who were from a predominantly Latino school.
Dvorak informed OW that Trump—who was initially coined a joke during his initial announcement that he was seeking the GOP nomination—is negatively impacting race relations, and creating a culture of fear and uncertainty worldwide.
Psychological effects
Lisseth Rojas-Flores, Ph.D., an associate professor of marriage and family therapy and a licensed psychologist at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., is conducting a study funded by the Foundation for Child Development that assesses the impact of parental detention and deportation on Latino children who are U.S. citizens, and assesses patterns in the use of health and psychological services.
Rojas-Flores believes the children Sanchez observed in his tutoring class are likely suffering from fears of separation, (as a result of Trump’s threats of mass deportation of illegal immigrants) which can affect their ability to concentrate and perform in school and can lead to post-traumatic stress disorder.
An informal survey of African American pre-teens attending a summer camp at South Los Angeles Southern Baptist Church found that aside from the consensus that Trump is just “downright mean” others questioned his association with the Ku Klux Klan and some even worried if they too should be worried about the possibility of deportation back to Africa, even though they are all U.S. citizens.
According to a recent Southern Poverty Law Center survey, two-thirds of educators teaching grades K-12 reported that school children, mostly of color, are scared and stressed about their future if Trump becomes president. This anxiety resides particularly with Latino, Muslim and African American students regardless of citizenship status.
The worries stem from the Republican front-runner’s proposed anti-immigrant policies—such as building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and banning the entrance of all Muslims into the country.
Trump has also called Mexicans “rapists” and did not immediately disavow the support of former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and other White supremacists in a February interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper.
According to the survey, teachers said they have even had to console students who were crying in class because of their fears about the election. The anxiety, many teachers said, was also hindering students’ grades and ability to concentrate.
Young adult African Americans polled in the Los Angeles area said their biggest fears were, if elected, Trump would increase racism; we would live in a caged society; there would be an increased threat of war, and the United States internationally would lose its credibility.
According to Our Weekly journalist and historian Merdies Hayes, this is not the first time individuals of color have feared a Presidential candidate. In 1979 Ronald Reagan made his announcement to run for President of the United States from Neshoba County, Miss., upsetting Black America. Today according to most Republicans, Reagan is the poster child of the Grand Old Party (GOP).
Neshoba County was infamous for the murder of three Mississippi civil rights workers. The murders centered around the abduction of James Earl Chaney of Meridian, Miss., and Andrew Goodman and Michael “Mickey” Schwerner of New York City.
They had been working with the “Freedom Summer” campaign-attempting to register African Americans in the southern states to vote.
According to Craig Werner, author of “Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield and the Fall and Rise of American Soul,” by announcing his plans to run from Neshoba County, Reagan had already given Black America a preview of what was in store.
Werner describes in his book how a radio station created a community campaign locally to offset the Reagan agenda in South Los Angeles.
During the Reagan Administration, KJLH did a radio campaign to find jobs and even assist in paying individuals’ utility bills. Once a week, Bernice Dredd from the Compton Employment Agency would broadcast jobs to the African American community. The campaign was called “Survival in the Eighties” and although small, it did provide jobs for African Americans during an administration that directly impacted their communities, according to Leimert Park resident Anne Brumfield.
Brumfield, who is a retired Los Angeles county social worker, remembers Reagan’s two terms impacting every African American household in some way. “He (Reagan) discontinued the Comprehensive Employment Training Act (CETA), that provided summer jobs to almost every kid attending an inner city school. President Reagan also failed to increase federal funding to the United Negro College Fund, and cut food stamps, welfare, and Section 8 housing.
A 1992 National Institute of Health report entitled “Inner City Poverty Falling Behind: A Report on How Blacks Have Fared Under Reagan” stated that poverty exploded in the inner cities of America during the Reagan years, claiming children as its principal victims. The reason for this suffering was because programs created to aid low-income families were cut back significantly. Brumfield believes Donald Trump should be feared by minorities, the same way President Reagan was.
