Mother raises concerns when son is involved in school project creating 'border crossing' game called 'Deportation Time'
Middle school is a very confusing time for children. Their bodies are changing, their voices are squeaking, and they sometimes they learn what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate by what goes viral online and offends people.
Danielle Watkins, whose 12-year-old son Jake Hull is a student at Cesar Chavez Middle School in Oceanside, Calif., told the San Diego Union-Tribune that in her son’s career class, the students were split into groups to create a board game. Hull told his mother that his group’s theme was preapproved by the teacher, but he also said that the subject of the game made him uncomfortable. His group was creating a border crossing board game, calling it Deportation Time.
“He wanted to make it known he was very, very uncomfortable with this assignment to be done this way. I basically felt like I wanted to throw up because it was so disheartening to see somebody thought this was a good idea, especially given the climate of our political system today,” Watkins told local San Diego news station KGTV.
The objective of the game the group of students created is to be the first player to “cross the border to the U.S.A. and reach the American flag.” If a player lands on the space called “La migra caught you go back to checkpoint,” then the player can “deport” another player to the start of the board if the player rolls a two. La migra, Spanish for immigration, is slang for immigration police or border control. In order to win, players have to go to a “Bomb Shop” in the game to blow up the wall to cross the border.
The San Diego Union-Tribune reports that Hull and one other member of his group are white, and the other member is Hispanic. Hispanic or Latino students make up, roughly, three-quarters of the students at Cesar Chavez Middle School in the Oceanside School District. The 12-year-old said he had wanted to do a game like Mario Kart, saying that he thought Deportation Time “was racist.”
According to the Tribune, the school principal has contacted the families of the students in the group. Oceanside Superintendent Julie Vitale released the following statement, “While their intention may have been to leverage a current event, we believe it is our responsibility as educators to help them understand that the theme is potentially painful and hurtful to many people. We will be using this opportunity to help the students learn that words must be measured very carefully for unintended consequences — an important life lesson.”
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