Black students and staff harassed at Sacramento-area schools. What should districts do?

A teacher’s hurtful use of a racial slur in class conversation.

Students pulling a Black teenager’s braids and harassing her on social media.

Graffiti with anti-Black slurs on the walls at three Sacramento-area schools.

Those incidents, coming one after another since June 2021, have Sacramento-area students and parents asking what’s being done to prevent more offensive, anti-Black remarks from surfacing in schools.

The Sacramento City Unified School District, where four of the incidents took place, has hired a community liaison to investigate some of the offensive actions. The Folsom Cordova Unified School District, meanwhile, is trying to mend fences after the other incident.

Parents and students want something more: An accounting for why the incidents keep happening and clear consequences for misconduct.

The answers are complicated, however, because some of the incidents occurred in what students regard as teasing, not necessarily intentional cruelty.

School students have shown a desire to “go viral” at the expense of the mental and emotional well-being of their peers through racist rhetoric some label as ‘jokes,’ students said.

Jada Lawson, a sophomore student at C.K. McClatchy High School, said making friends was “really hard” for a lot of Black students. Many would make fun of themselves to seem lighthearted and friendly.

She thought of that tendency when the school announced that a Black student last month wrote graffiti alluding to the segregation era, scrawling the words “colored” and “white” over a water fountain at the school.

Lawson said she was “not really surprised”and this behavior from all students is “normal.”

“Usually if we make fun of ourselves or make racist jokes about ourselves it usually gravitates people toward us and think it’s OK to be racist with us,” said Lawson.

She said some Black students allow it because it’s their “source of making friends”.

Students, parents and community leaders say they’re confronting a culture in which racial slurs are common, and some believe it’s OK to use them because they are prevalent in the Black community.

But despite how the words are used in the Black community, they’re unacceptable on campus because “the n-word and other slurs” are regarded as derogatory, demeaning hate speech, the community leaders said.

Lawson said that students have to do better because they define campus culture, but added that administrators need to take the issue seriously.

Sacramento leaders want to protect students

The recent run of racial incidents disrupting Sacramento-area schools began in June 2021 when a middle school teacher was recorded at Kit Carson Prep Academy discussing a racial slur with students. She has since been dismissed from the school district.

In November, the Sacramento City Unified School District opened an investigation after a racial slur was written five times on West Campus High School buildings. Vice Principal Elysse Versher, who is Black, believed the vandalism was directed at her.

In January 2022, a Black female freshman student at Folsom High School told The Bee she had been constantly bullied and harassed since October. Her parents pulled her out of school

Recently two more vandalism, hate-speech incidents occurred on the C.K McClatchy campus and at Abraham Lincoln Elementary School.

For Black community leaders, accountability means addressing the issue of racism in the school on a case-by-case basis and providing appropriate disciplinary measures.

Berry Accius, founder of the nonprofit Voice of the Youth said Black people have to get together and hold people accountable for change. He said racist attacks on Black people are “swept under the rug” by the district and zero-tolerance policies need to be adopted to protect the individuals targeted by hate.

“You can have conversations but it has to lead to something tangible,” said Accius. “You need policies in place and protections in place for Black people.”

Lorreen Pryor, president and CEO of the Black Youth Leadership Project, said racism and its impact “isn’t taken seriously” throughout the school districts and adults should be held to the highest standard since they are in authoritative positions.

She said “attitude reflects leadership”.

“You had a student who was allegedly Black and they thought this was a joke because racism is not taken seriously,” said Pryor referring to the C.K. McClatchy incident.

Darryl White of the Black Parallel School Board said there’s a difference between trying to be funny and racism. He said the district has to be able to distinguish between the two. He doesn’t believe in reverse racism.

“Number one, I don’t think that an African American trying to do something funny is demonstrating a level of racism,” said White. “The point that we really have to pay attention to; because an African American this time was caught, doesn’t absolve all other white folks committing the same kind of a racial nature. We can’t fall down that rabbit hole”

What a parent wants

Fayzah Mughal, a parent of a former Abraham Lincoln Elementary School student, told The Bee in an email that Black families do not feel “valued” or “protected”.

She said the recent issues throughout the Sacramento school districts — including Abraham Lincoln — are a reflection of the leadership and the lack of policies towards anti-Black racism.

“If an act of hate is done with such specificity toward the Black community, why can they not show the Black community support with an equal amount of specificity?” Mughal’s email read. “We need healing and that starts with acknowledgment, but then it also needs to be backed up with action.”.

She said she will no longer watch as incident after incident of anti-Black racism is “generalized and brushed aside” by the Sacramento school district in their statements of support.

District looks for solutions to anti-Black racism

Mark Harris, longtime Sacramento attorney, was brought in as a liaison with the Sacramento Unified School District to provide independent consultation and resolutions for events such as the racial incidents the district has experienced.

The district acknowledges the dismay that racial tension causes and continues to search for solutions.

“We’re partially responsible for not making sure she knows how atrocious that whole Jim Crow era was,” said Harris, referring to the vandalized fountain at McClatchy High School.

With the issues that exist in Sacramento schools, Harris said instead of “finger-pointing” everyone, as a community, needs to come together and take an honest evaluation of their role, including administrators, teachers, parents, and students.

This story was originally published March 1, 2022 at 3:00 AM.