The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights released a fact sheet on how it protects students from discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics. As it reads in part:

“Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin against students of any religion, such as students who are Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, or Buddhist, when the discrimination, for example, involves:

• racial, ethnic, or ancestral slurs or stereotypes;
• how a student looks, including skin color, physical features, or style of dress that reflects both ethnic and religious traditions; and
• a foreign accent; a foreign name, including names commonly associated with particular shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics; or speaking a foreign language.

Because Title VI does not protect students from discrimination based only on religion, such as a school’s denial of a student’s request to miss class for a religious holiday, OCR refers complaints of discrimination based exclusively on religion to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), which has jurisdiction on this issue.”

Additional information regarding how the Office for Civil Rights protects students from discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry and ethnic characteristics may be found here.