BY BRITTNY MEJIASTAFF WRITER
(LA TIMES) On a rainy day during her sophomore year of high school, as Aissata Ba studied in the library, a photo popped into her phone.
It showed a beheading by Islamic State militants, along with a caption in red letters: “Go back to your country.”
Ba reported the incident. Administrators never tracked down the person who sent it.
It was not the first time she’d been the focus of hatred, the 20-year-old said, betraying no emotion as she recounted such incidents, sitting next to her parents in their Southern California home. A copy of the Quran lay prominently on the coffee table.
There was the boy in sixth grade who would say “allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is great,” and throw his backpack near her, pretending it was a bomb. And the time in eighth-grade math class when a boy turned to her and asked how she could “be part of a religion of terrorists.”
Asked when they thought such incidents became common, the Ba family didn’t hesitate.
