Area women report hate speech, groping after election

At a Wichita convenience store the morning after the presidential election, a white man approached an African-American woman and said: “You better watch out, (slur), because we’re coming after you and your kind,” the woman’s father says.

That same morning, another woman says, a man groped her outside a suburban convenience store. He told her that if Donald Trump could grab women, he could, too, the woman says.

That same day after the election, a Muslim woman says, she was wearing a hijab as she shopped in her favorite Wichita store when a woman stepped close to her.

“Bye,” the woman said to the Muslim woman, waving her hand. “You need to go home … pack up and leave.”

Officials have confirmed there have been incidents at two Wichita public schools and at a private school in which students acted inappropriately in reacting to the presidential election.

The people who spoke to The Eagle about the incidents involving the three women asked that the women not be identified because they are concerned for their safety or privacy.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says on its website that it has collected 701 reports of “hateful incidents of harassment” nationwide between Nov. 9, the day after the election, and Nov. 16.

‘Better watch out’

The father of the young African-American woman said she first texted him about a “horrible experience” at a Wichita convenience store the morning after the election. She recounted that a white middle-aged man approached her in the store downtown and made the “we’re coming after you” remark. And that wasn’t the end of it, the father said.

A white woman, with a 10- to 11-year-old girl, joined in, the father said. She turned to the African-American woman and said: “Yeah, that’s right, don’t get too comfortable. The (racial slur) is out. We’re taking back America.”

After the experience, the daughter told the father, while sobbing: “I wish I could hide the fact that I’m a minority.”

‘He grabbed me’

A little after 7 a.m. the day after the election, a 54-year-old woman stopped for coffee at a convenience store in a suburb of Wichita. And this is what happened, she says.

A large man, probably in his 50s, maybe 325 pounds, 6-foot-4, stood by a car on the edge of the sidewalk outside the store. She is small, about 5-foot-4, 125 pounds. As she walked by him, she said, “He grabbed me by my breast.”

She pushed back, and “he lost balance and fell down.”

“I was terrified,” she said.

Still, she couldn’t help looking down at him and asking. “What gave you the right to do that?”

She said he replied something like: “If a man like Donald Trump can do whatever he wants to women and still get elected president, it must be OK.” The man said a lot of women voted for Trump, and he said it was time for men to take their “rightful place in society.”

The woman said she met with police the next day and filed a police report.

‘Just go home’

The day after the election, a Muslim woman was wearing a hijab and shopping at her favorite Wichita store. She says she heard someone say, “Bye.”

It came from a woman who moved close to her. The woman waved her hand as if to say, “Bye.”

“I said, ‘What do you mean by that?’ – in a state of shock.”

“You need to go home,” the woman replied. “Just go home, pack up, and leave.”

“And then I looked her … in the eye and said, ‘I’m not going home because this is home. I’m not going away,’ ” the Muslim woman said.

The Muslim woman said she is an American citizen and has lived in the United States for more than 20 years.

Racial comments at school

There have been incidents at schools as well. The mother of a Wichita sixth-grader who is African-American said her daughter was the target of two racially charged comments at school in recent weeks.

A few days before the election, the mother said, her daughter was walking down the school hallway and heard a white boy say, “Black lives don’t matter. Vote Trump.”

The day after the election, the girl was in class toward the end of the school day and heard a classmate whisper, “White power.”

“I understand kids are going to repeat what their parents say. They’re entitled to their opinion. But the ‘Black lives don’t matter thing’ upset me,” the mother said. “To me, those are hate words.”

The mother said she reported the incident to school officials. Susan Arensman, spokeswoman for the Wichita district, said students “received disciplinary action” in that case and one other at a different middle school.

The mother of the middle-school student said she expected tense moments at schools following the election. She said she hopes school leaders deal with incidents swiftly and make clear that hateful comments won’t be tolerated.

‘So disappointing’

Around Veterans Day, Rob Knapp, president of Kapaun Mount Carmel High School, wrote a letter to students’ families.

“It is somewhat ironic that this week our nation has experienced a dramatic change in political power through an electoral process that has been defended for over two centuries by those whom we celebrated yesterday. And yet, the results of this electoral process have manifested discord and division throughout the land.

“What makes this week so disappointing is that the students of Kapaun Mt. Carmel Catholic High School are witness to behaviors and attitudes that countermand our mission to educate and form the total person in the image of Jesus Christ. Caught up in the ‘spirit’ of the week, our own community, students and adults alike, has struggled to see the image of Jesus Christ in each other.”

Amy Pavlacka, spokeswoman for the Catholic Diocese of Wichita, said she wasn’t clear on the details of what happened at Kapaun that prompted Knapp’s letter. Knapp did not want to comment, she said.

“From what I understand, there are no names of students involved or specific incidents that any students could be held accountable (for),” Pavlacka said.

“Mr. Knapp just thought this would be a good teaching moment,” she said. “The purpose of the letter was to use the situation about what’s going on nationally and use it as a teaching opportunity.”

Leaders in the Catholic Diocese have instructed school officials to be vigilant about reporting any incidents of bullying or racial tension and to “suspend if necessary,” Pavlacka said.

“This is not something that will be tolerated at all,” she said.

Limits of speech

There is a constitutional right to say even the most offensive things. But an expression can become a crime, Sedgwick County District Attorney Marc Bennett said, when it includes a specific threat of violence and would tend to put a person in fear of immediate physical harm.

Some key questions, Bennett said, are: Did the person saying it mean to be taken seriously? What is the context?

“Because every set of facts is different,” he said. “It’s the context in which those words are said.”

Sociologist’s view

Ron Matson, Wichita State University sociologist and dean of the Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, says a climate of incivility following the election is to be expected. With the election outcome, some people now feel free to express themselves in ways that might not be respectful, Matson said.

“Civility has a very thin veneer,” he said. When the veneer gets scratched, “all heck can break loose.”

People are going to act in abusive or inhumane ways, but other people can’t just be bystanders, said Matson, who has spent years studying sexual assault and bullying in schools.

“We have to stand up for our anonymous friends … who are being attacked or abused or dealt with in a harsh and inhumane way. We can’t be passive. We can’t just watch. We have to take on a much more active posture.”

When a bystander stands up to abuse, Matson said, it “can shift the balance of power instantly in that situation.”

“Does that increase your risk a little? Yes.”

But if people don’t intervene, Matson said, it lets the abuse continue.

This story was originally published November 22, 2016 at 6:23 PM with the headline "Area women report hate speech, groping after election."