Have you suffered from racism, or seen students facing racism? Racism occurs when someone is treated differently because of their skin color or culture. It has happened to many kids in school, including me. In 5th grade, some students would call me an animal, tell other students I ate cats and dogs even though I didn’t, and tell me to go back to China. It made me feel insecure and like I didn’t belong. To decrease racism in schools, teachers and parents need to teach their students to accept and celebrate each others’ differences.
Racism takes many forms in American schools. An article from NBC states that: “At Indiana University, colleagues found black students were 54 percent less likely than white students to be recommended for gifted education programs.” And some of the personal stories from students that I found in my research were heartbreaking. According to the Des Moines Register, a Black Iowa State senior named Chrishelda Green said, “Let’s say I’m on the bus, and there’s plenty of seats around me. People would rather stand than sit next to me.” An article from NPR described how Corynne Jones in Georgia went to a Martin Luther King party, and some kids from her school showed up with darkened skin and other stereotypical things like foil in their teeth. According to NBC, one student even said, “I stopped loving myself because I realized the community did not love who I actually was.” As you can see, too many students in the United States are experiencing racism in school.
To decrease racism in school, teachers and parents should teach students to recognize and accept other students’ differences. One way to do this is to sponsor school events where people bring in music and food from their culture. In a Chalkbeats article about supporting Black boys, an Oakland school district created a class that focused on Black history and culture, and they discussed topics like how to challenge negative stereotypes about Black men. Later, researchers did a study of six of the Oakland high schools and found out that the classes on Black history and culture helped reduce dropout rates among Black boys from 8.5% to 4.9%. As we see from Human Rights Careers, “To be anti-racist, you must acknowledge differences rather than pretending they aren’t there.” If students accept other students’ differences, minority students won’t have to face racism because the racist students would have learned to accept them. From my evidence, you can now see how teachers and parents teaching their students and children to accept others’ differences can help solve racism. That way, instead of a child like me being told to “Go back to China,” we can all help each other go back to kindness.
Clearly, many students are dealing with racism. Earlier, I asked teachers and parents to teach students to recognize and accept other students’ differences. I also ask that students stand up to those being racist to other students or introduce an anti-racism Department of Mental Health with a hotline to support an end to racism in school. If we don’t stop racism, many students will feel like outsiders. When we end racism, students will never again feel like they don’t belong.
