ARTICLE CONTINUATION

Bullying:

Continued from cover grade students to students asking him why “did he tell the principal”, Mr. Smith’s son who once loved learning, no longer desires to attend school.

Mr. Smith is frustrated about the lack of action the school and district has taken to address these racially traumatic school incidents. For our San Diego Voice and Viewpoint readers, here is a partial excerpt of Mr. Smith’s account of his frustration and the School-Based Racial Battle Fatigue (Smith, 2007; Hamilton, 2021) he and his son are both experiencing in the District and at the school:

“If things happen like this, it frustrates me to no end because my child is eleven and I’ve had him since he was 1-years old with me, everything he’s learned. He’s the kindest, most gentlest child on this planet. I think everybody has that opinion of their child at some point, but I can say that with all genuineness, he is,” Smith said.

“So, for him to experience somebody pulling his hair because he looks different or send him cartoon memes with a Black spear guy or write pig and say you’re a pig and you ride pigs for a living or make comments and walk around with the Black power sign - with fist up - and then say, ‘It’s Black History Month, but, oh, it’s also monkey month!’, that pisses me off and I’m frustrated, Smith continued.

“My son tested as a gifted child at the other school we came from. I came up here so he

Itinerary:

Continued from cover racist Jim Crow laws existed on the books and discrimination was customary across the United States, particularly in the South. could get better. But what I’m seeing is not better and they’re failing my child. He was the number two child in the school and now he’s just mediocre and he’s just getting kicked to the side, like it doesn’t matter. But it matters to me. It matters to me and that’s why I’m standing here before you right now. I’m severely disappointed. I don’t know what you guys plan on doing, but there needs to be a plan of action for this to change. I can’t promise that he’ll be here but there’s going to be other Black children [and families] who are going to be coming through here that want the same thing that I wanted for mine. I appreciate you guys taking my time. Thank you,” he said, finishing his address to the Poway board.

Black History Month has been recognized by every American president since 1976 when President Gerald Ford first celebrated it. Today, Americans of all races participate in Black History Month celebrations, which educate people from all backgrounds about the history of Black Americans and their contributions to the United States.

President Joe Biden, in his 2023 Black History Month proclamation, encouraged all “public officials, educators, librarians, and all the people of the United States” to mark the occasion of Black History month with relevant programs.

“Black Americans’ struggles for freedom, equal treatment, and the right to vote; for equal opportunities in education, housing, and the workplace; for economic opportunity, equal justice, and political representation; and so much more have reformed our democracy far beyond its founding,” Biden said. “Black Americans have made a way not only for themselves but also have helped build a highway for millions of women, immigrants, other historically marginalized communities, and all Americans to more fully experience the benefits of our society.”

The CLBC was founded in 1967 to represent the legislative concerns of Black Californians. The organization has been fundamental in providing political influence for the support of racial and gender equality and promoting justice for poor and disenfranchised communities across California.

Mr. Smith was greeted with a round of thunderous applause and a welcoming handshake from one Black parent who stated she’s experienced Anti-Black racism for over twenty years in PUSD. For one to hear Mr. Smith’s profound testimony is beyond hurtful, considering that he himself is a graduate of Morse High School and grew up in Southeastern San Diego.

Like countless other Black parents, including his own brother Rashad Griffin whose children attended schools in Scripps Ranch, Mr. Smith wants nothing more than for his child to be safe at school while he learns and attempts to gain from the meritocracy that’s promised through education. However, for

Black children, this promise does not hold merit, especially when the racism that Nene and Ekene Okolo, former students from PUSD who created the instagram account, Black in PUSD, worked so hard to dismantle still pervasively exists.

While it’s worth mentioning that the principal of Meadowbrook Middle School is Black and could have perhaps handled this situation differently, when it comes to systemic racism in education, both strategic and longterm actions and solutions are evident, as demonstrated in PUSD, in order to dismantle the hate that stems from not only students but educators as well.

Mr. Smith relayed to the assembled crowd in Poway last Thursday that his child was also called the n-word by peers, including older 7th and 8th graders and bi-racial White-andBlack and White-and-Filipino POC students. In addition, he said that his son was also targeted by teachers, which may be one of the reasons his grades have dropped. According to Mr. Smith, a parent, experienced discrimination when he came up to the school and one of the secretaries who happens to be Asian stated, “You’re a big guy.”

Can educators in Poway continue to turn a color-blind eye to what is continuing to happen in their schools? Might it be time to move towards color-consciousness (for our academic readers, please see Tatum, 1999) and humanization of all students, including the rehumanization of Black children (see Legette et al., 2022)?

Please stay tuned for more information as we continue to follow this disheartening case.

HERE IS THE [REMAINING] CLBC SCHEDULE OF EVENTS CELEBRATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH:

February 17

2023 AFRICAN AMERICAN LEADERS FOR TOMORROW (AALT) APPLICATION OPENS: https://bit.ly/CLBC2023AALT

February 27

12:30 p.m.

Unsung Heroes Awards Recognition & Author Bryant Terry

LOCATION: State Capitol Assembly and Senate Floors

2 p.m. - 4 p.m.

BLACK FOOD: Stories, Art & Recipes from Across the African Diaspora Book Signing with Author / Educator / Chef Bryant Terry

LOCATION: Ella Dining Room and Bar (1131 K St., Sacramento)

This California Black Media feature was supported in whole or in part by funding provided by the State of California, administered by the California State Library.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The 2023 African-American Leaders for Tomorrow (AALT) Application

The 2023 African-American Leaders for Tomorrow (AALT) application deadline is May 12, 2023.

AALT is for 9th and 10th grade students who are interested in an on-campus, immersion experience from July 19-21 at the California State University at Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), in Los Angeles California. The program seeks to identify and help prepare the next generation to become community, business, governmental and non-profit organizational leaders in the African-American community. For more information, please email clbc.info@legislature.ca.gov.

LAWMAKERS:

Continued from cover the city’s majority-white neighborhoods. Such a move would create a separate justice system for whites in an area where whites are statistically the majority. And it would happen without a single vote from any of Jackson’s 80 percent Black residents for any of these officials.

“It makes me think of apartheid,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba said. Three of the bill’s principal backers said on the floor of the Mississippi Legislature that “public safety” was the bill’s primary goal because of worries about the crime rate in Jackson. But Newsweek reported that some legal experts said that what the Mississippi Legislature was trying to do was a way for white conservative politicians to try to hurt the Black vote in a way that hadn’t occurred since the Jim Crow era.

Many Republican lawmakers who voted for the bill live in districts being fought over by groups like the American Civil Liberties Union because they make it harder for Black people to vote. Bill Quigley, a retired law professor at Loyola University-New Orleans and a former lawyer for the NAACP Legal Fund, told Newsweek, “I am shocked by this.”

“I know of no other such legislation in judicial elections or selections in decades. This is not a step backward. This is a complete Olympic-level broad jump backward to Jim Crow era politics.”

Quigley said that this kind of system was

“the rule for decades” in the South until the Voting Rights Act passed in 1965 and formally prohibited arbitrary rules like poll taxes and literacy tests designed to prevent African Americans from voting. Experts stated that the latest proposal from the Mississippi Legislature would likely be unconstitutional because it has a clear racial bias, which is against the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

In 2020, Lumumba said he wanted to make Jackson “the most radical city on the planet” by implementing policies like a universal basic income, a reformed police department, and other progressive policies. Lumumba has been under constant scrutiny from Mississippi’s conservative establishment.

The Voting Rights Act would have helped Jackson in this case, but the U.S. Supreme Court removed many protections offered by that law. State leaders had recently been very critical of Lumumba’s government and of the city’s liberal leanings, leading to claims that the latest move is politically motivated.

Experts said the only problem is that, unlike other states, Mississippi does not have a clause in its constitution that says laws can’t target one group, which would make this more difficult for the city to challenge the law in court.

“In the absence of any evidence that this was done with a racial purpose—people don’t tend to do things for racial reasons as much as they used to—and so the courts kind of often will conclude that their hands are tied,” Fred Smith Jr., a scholar of the federal judiciary at Emory University, told Newsweek.

“It’s concerning to see from a perspective of democracy. While in some ways, it’s not as bad as declaring secession, it also is in the sense people’s taxes are being invested in a system they cannot democratically control.”