by Shanice Duncan, MS

The death of 15-year-old Javits Frimpong should force a conversation across Black communities, including the Caribbean diaspora, about bullying, belonging, and the prejudice we sometimes direct toward one another.

A child should not have to surrender his identity to be accepted, and no family should have to wonder whether seeking a better life has placed their child in danger.

According to ABC7 New York, Frimpong was fatally shot on his way to school in the Bronx on 29 October 2026. His father said his son had been bullied and that students involved had recently been suspended. He had brought Javits from Ghana about a year earlier, hoping for a better life. The reported bullying stays his father’s account, and a connection to the shooting has not been established. Neither has a xenophobic motive. Still, the family’s account raises a painful question that many African and Caribbean families recognise: What happens when children are made to feel they do not belong?[1]

Javits Frimpong. Source: Instagram.com

As a Brooklynite born in the 1980s to Caribbean immigrant parents, I grew up within the xenophobic underbelly of the American inner city. My father is from Grenada; my mother is from Union Island in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Being an American citizen by birth did not protect me from epithets such as “coconut” and “banana boat” because my speech carried a Caribbean tone and accent.

A child’s language begins at home. Naturally, children often sound like the people who raise them. Yet at 10, attending an all-Black, Caribbean-founded private school in East Flatbush, I experienced an identity-based slur from a child who looked like me but made it clear that I was not the kind of American he was.

That moment taught me that sharing a skin colour does not guarantee acceptance. If your parents were different, you were different. Your accent, your food, or the place your family came from could become a reason to ridicule you. For a child born here, being treated as foreign can make even home feel conditional.

Others have stories like mine, and worse. Xenophobia is too often left out of conversations about what Caribbean immigrants and their children face in America. Combined with financial pressure, exhausting work schedules, and responsibilities to relatives here and abroad, it can deepen the strain on families. What is one to do when the place they call home keeps telling them they do not belong?

Research gives part of this experience a measurable shape. A study of 8,201 Black 8th-, 9th-, and 11th-grade students in the 2022 Minnesota Student Survey found that 29.5% reported race-related bullying. Among students of Nigerian origin, the figure was 40%. These are Minnesota findings, not national estimates, or a measurement of Caribbean students specifically. But they reinforce the need to recognise differences within Black children’s experiences rather than assume those experiences are identical.[2]

National evidence also shows how identity becomes a target. In 2021–22, among US students ages 12 to 18 who reported bullying during school, 13% believed it was related to their race and 9% to their ethnic origin. Among Black students who were bullied, 26% believed race was a factor. These are students’ reported perceptions, not a separate national measure of xenophobia. Still, they show why we must ask not only whether a child is being bullied, but what part of that child’s identity is being attacked.[5]

In Brooklyn, the case of 12-year-old Romy Vilsaint also brought allegations of bullying into public view. His family alleged that he had been repeatedly bullied, punched, and neglected by his school. In June 2021, however, the medical examiner ruled that he died of natural causes: peptic ulcer disease and a Helicobacter pylori infection. His death cannot accurately be presented as a confirmed death caused by bullying. The family’s allegations and the medical finding must both be represented honestly.[3]

The Caribbean must examine itself, too. Racism, xenophobia, and bullying do not stop at the American border. We cannot demand dignity abroad while excusing humiliation within our own communities. Whether the target is an immigrant child in New York or a child on a neighbouring island, difference must not become permission for cruelty.

The problem is documented in the countries my parents call home. Grenada’s 2008 school health survey found that 27.2% of students aged 13 to 15 reported bullying in the previous 30 days. A study published in the West Indian Medical Journal in 2012, using 2007 surveys of 6,780 students in the Cayman Islands, St Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago, found that approximately one-quarter reported bullying in the previous month. Bullied students were significantly more likely to report mental health difficulties. These older findings document a longstanding problem, not today’s rates.[6, 7]

Xenophobia is documented here, too. A June 2021 R4V Caribbean education report named xenophobia and school bullying among the challenges facing Venezuelan migrant and refugee children, including classroom bullying reported in Aruba. In Trinidad and Tobago, the International Organisation for Migration’s 2021 survey of 1,376 Venezuelan adults found that 51% felt discriminated against because of their nationality. The adult survey is not a school bullying rate, but it shows that the hostility children encounter can exist in the wider community.[8, 9]

Racism also demands an honest accounting. In its 2023 findings on the Dominican Republic, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child expressed grave concern about racial discrimination against Haitians and Dominicans of Haitian descent, as well as school bullying of migrant children. It called for action against racism and xenophobia, particularly affecting children of Haitian descent.[10] Being born in a country does not necessarily protect a child from being treated as an outsider. I know that feeling. We cannot demand belonging for our children abroad while tolerating prejudice against another family’s children at home.

I see the habits of domination and humiliation in the longer shadow of slavery, oppression, and imprisonment. We repeat those habits whenever we believe someone else’s clear difference gives us the right to torment, control or harm them. Poverty and barriers to education can intensify hardship, but neither excuses hatred.

The scale of violence against children across the wider region is devastating. In January 2026, UNICEF and the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO) reported that 53,318 children and adolescents were victims of homicide in Latin America and the Caribbean between 2015 and 2022. The organisations also reported that one in four adolescents aged 13 to 17 experiences bullying at school. These regional figures cover Latin America as well as the Caribbean; they are not Caribbean-only statistics, and the homicide total does not identify bullying as the cause. They do make clear how urgently prevention and protection are needed.[4]

Our youth in both regions must understand that they cannot carry forward the destructive behaviours they inherit or see rewarded around them. They must be part of the change. But adults cannot place that responsibility on children while refusing to examine what we teach them.

It starts at home. What conversations do we have with our children about bullying? Do we teach respect for themselves and others, accountability, and consequences? Do they hear us mock another person’s accent, nationality, or background? Are their home and social environments teaching empathy, or giving hatred room to grow? Do they understand that an act of violence can have consequences no apology can undo?

Our children are often praised for their manners and educational achievement. Neither means enough if cruelty is tolerated at the core of their moral development. Academic success cannot be the only measure of how well we are raising them.

My work in tutoring, human capital management, and community outreach has made me attentive to how people learn, how they are treated, and whether they feel they belong. Those concerns begin long before a person enters the workforce. A child’s sense of dignity deserves the same attention we give to their grades and future career.

Starting at home does not mean ending there. Schools must take reports seriously, communicate with families, and follow through on protection. Communities must stop dismissing humiliation as harmless teasing. Consequences should interrupt harmful behaviour before another child is injured, not arrive only after a tragedy.

If the culture does not change, the conversations do not happen, and meaningful consequences do not follow, we will keep failing our children. Xenophobia can exist among people of the same race, but different national or ethnic backgrounds; racism and other prejudices can overlap with it. We cannot afford to reproduce the systems that have already done us harm while trying to move beyond survival and close gaps in wealth, education, and health.

We must clean up our own house. Teaching grace, mental self-care, empathy, and kindness does not require wealth. It requires us to notice what we model and what we allow. We cannot become so weighed down by our circumstances that we forget we are setting examples for children. We shape their minds and influence their decisions. When we fail to teach and protect them, we fail them.

Shanice J Duncan, MS, is a Brooklyn-based HR consultant, published writer, poet, and community organiser of Grenadian and Vincentian heritage. She brings more than 15 years of experience in Caribbean cultural production and community organising, alongside expertise in human resources, tutoring, youth development, behavioral health, and direct support. She is Principal Consultant at SD Consult Services NY and Cultural Operations Coordinator at NCD Productions. She holds an MS in Human Capital Management from NYU and a BS in Psychology, cum laude, from the College of Staten Island, CUNY. She is pursuing two professional credentials and an added graduate degree. Her writing examines identity, belonging, and the well-being of young people.

Sources

[1] ABC7 New York. Bronx community mourns slain 15-year-old student Javits Frimpong. 31 October 2026. https://abc7ny.com/post/bronx-community-mourns-slain-15-year-old-student-javits-frimpong/20000687/

[2] Journal of Racial and Ethnic Health Disparities. Discrimination and Mental Health in an Ethnically Diverse Sample of Black Youth. 2025; 2022 Minnesota Student Survey analysis. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41331405/

[3] ABC7 New York. Autopsy: NYC boy who died after alleged punch passed from natural causes. 9 June 2021. https://abc7ny.com/post/brooklyn-boy-dead-bullying-romy-vilsaint-punched-after-school/10766851/

[4] UNICEF and PAHO. Violence against children persists in Latin America and the Caribbean. 26 January 2026. https://www.unicef.org/lac/en/press-releases/violence-against-children-adolescents-persists-latin-america-caribbean

[5] National Center for Education Statistics. Student Bullying. Updated July 2024. School year 2021–22; section on perceived relationship of bullying to personal characteristics. Read source 5

[6] World Health Organisation. Global School-based Student Health Survey. Grenada 2008 Fact Sheet, p. 2. Results for students aged 13–15 years. Read source 6

[7] Abdirahman HA, Bah TT, Shrestha HL, Jacobsen KH. Bullying, Mental Health, and Parental Involvement among Adolescents in the Caribbean. West Indian Medical Journal. 2012;61(5):504–508. Analysis of 2007 survey data. Read source 7

[8] R4V. Education Sector Background Notes? Caribbean. June 2021, pp. 1 and 3. Hosted by UNHCR. Read source 8

[9] International Organisation for Migration. IOM’s DTM 2021: 77% of migrant respondents fully vaxxed. 14 March 2022. Summary of the 2021 Trinidad and Tobago survey; nationality-based discrimination finding. Read source 9

[10] United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child. Concluding observations on the sixth periodic report of the Dominican Republic. CRC/C/DOM/CO/6. 18 October 2023, paragraphs 15–16. Read source 10

Additional background source supplied by the author: Black Health, When Your Child Is Bullied for Being African or Caribbean? The Minnesota statistics above are cited directly to the underlying study. https://www.blackhealth.org/articles/bullying-african-caribbean-immigrant-students/

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