When kids see their white parents engage in racism by gaslighting, whitewashing, and historical revisionism at school board meetings, they learn to propagate all that against others in school hallways.
Parents in the Park Hill School District are demanding accountability for the student or students behind a racist petition last week that they say was a call to bring back slavery.
The school district has shared few specific details about the incident, which originated at Park Hill South High School last week. Nicole Kirby, a district spokeswoman, said Tuesday that the matter is considered a “discipline incident” and therefore the amount of information the district may share is limited, including the number of students involved or the exact details of what transpired.
“We can’t talk about specifics,” Kirby said. “But we wanted to make sure that we responded and let people know that we don’t tolerate discrimination or harassment.”
Kerrie Herren, principal of Park Hill South, shared a message with the student body on Friday, in which he described the racist statements as “unacceptable.” He said “the impact of these sentiments are being felt heavily within our school.”
“We are outraged, hurt and saddened that this occurred,” Herren said in the statement. “This is not who we want to be at Park Hill South. Our differences make us stronger. We do not tolerate discrimination or harassment.”
Julie Stutterheim’s 15-year-old adopted daughter, who is Ethiopian, heard a vague announcement over the P.A. at LEAD Innovation Studio — another high school in the Park Hill school district — on Monday about the incident at Park Hill South. She was “really upset” when she learned what happened, Stutterheim said. She heard from a classmate that it was in reference to a petition about slavery.
The subject was a difficult one for her daughter to even raise, Stutterheim said.
“She said, ‘You know, you’re white, mom. So you don’t really know what this is like.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you’re right,” Stutterheim said.
“And she just wanted to know that ... something was being done.”
Kirby said there are board policies in place with defined consequences for harassment, including racial harassment, and the district is following those rules. In the days since the incident came to light, Kirby said Park Hill has been doing “a lot of listening” with parents and students.
“We’ve set up some opportunities for students and even parents to be able to share their feelings about this and to try to provide some support to them, Kirby said, adding: “This is very much evidence that we have work to do. Because we have a commitment to creating an inclusive, welcoming environment where everyone feels like they belong.”
But that's just it. Right-wing racist assholes have made it clear that they do not think Black and brown students belong in their suburban majority white school districts, they do not want them included, they want them gone for good.
You demonstrate that enough in front of your kids, the kids pick that up and decide that "a petition to bring back slavery" is fucking funny so they do it for the lulz, and they don't care who they hurt in the process.
You gaslight and whitewash enough and you get away with it, and the kids think it's okay to do that, because that's what they are taught, and they want to get away with it too.
That's what all this "backlash against Critical Race Theory in schools" is really about, white kids learning the lesson that they can intimidate and pressure educators into dropping inclusiveness efforts and letting kids get away with treating Black and brown classmates -- especially the Black ones -- as beneath them.
Everyone's learning how our system has worked for the last 400 years.
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