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A number of case studies and legal briefs describe very troubling incidents faced by secondary school students because of their minority religious group affiliation. The purpose of the study described in this article was to understand the lived experiences of minority religious youths who attend public schools in an area of the United States where the majority of students are affiliated with one dominant religious tradition. Semistructured focus groups were conducted with 50 adolescents (in grades 6 to 12) affiliated with religious minority groups (11 students were Jewish, 11 Muslim, 18 Catholic, and 10 Universalist Unitarian). Analysis was conducted using grounded theory methodology, and a method of constant comparative analysis was applied. The data yielded four major themes: (1) minority status, (2) precursors, (3) teacher and adult roles, and (4) perception of peer intent. Several of the incidents described by the participants were congruent with the definition of hate crime or bullying; other experiences were representative of the concept of microaggression. One of the most unanticipated findings from this study was participants’ reports of teachers as perpetrators in several incidents. Findings from this study point to the need for the implementation of strategies designed to increase religious tolerance in our increasingly diverse public schools.
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