By Lucia Cheng, Des Moines Register
Max Tet just won a two-month-long youth soccer tournament. But he couldn’t celebrate his win like a typical kid. Between games, a player on a different team harassed him with xenophobic insults.
“He told me I’m an illegal immigrant, even though I was born in America,” Max said in a Facebook video posted by his mother. “He said Trump was gonna get me and send me back to where I used to live. I was born in America, I don’t live anywhere else.”
His mother, Mtee Tet, who shared the video, wrote in a later post that her intent in sharing wasn’t to create controversy, but to remind people of how their words and actions can affect each other, especially children.
“He [Max] was left carrying the weight of what was said to him and dealing with hurt that no child should experience,” Mtee Tet wrote.
The video went viral on Facebook, with more than one million views and 24,000 likes. CBS News picked up the video and reshared it with a voiceover.
Commenters expressed frustration over the bullying Max faced, especially because another child was racially harassing him. Many wrote about their disapproval of similar national rhetoric spilling over into local communities.
But despite the anger, people also offered their support and asked how they could help. The team’s sponsor, restaurant Either/Or, commented that the video was “absolutely heartbreaking” and said it would work on ways to let Max know that his community supports him.
“The division and hate we see in our country are clearly reaching our children, and that is heartbreaking. We all need to do better,” Mtee Tet wrote.
The facility that hosted the tournament is investigating the comments, she said in a Facebook post.
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