Editorials

Walking the walk at Berkeley High School

CITY AFFAIRS: After racist incident, Berkeley High School Students demonstrate impressive response, and now administration must also prove dedication to fighting racism

By | Staff

When public threats of terror against black students crop up on a school computer and permeate a community, any semblance of safety in an already racially tense environment is shattered. Taking steps toward healing — the first of which ought to be expelling the student responsible — must be done thoughtfully.

The triggering and traumatizing text and images were found on a library computer Wednesday. On Thursday, when students arrived at school, trying to make sense of the senseless, seeking answers but not finding any, they came up with their own response — to march. Students walked out of the school, taking to the streets of Berkeley as they did last December for the Black Lives Matter movement.

In the wake of this act of terror, the students’ strength is braver and more necessary than ever. The fact that the walkout was a protest of not only the administration’s response but also the incident itself demonstrates students’ dedication to the fight against racism and injustice.

It is now on the administration to give its full support to the student body. The campus has already seen a repetition of racist events, the most recent of which occurred in June, when a racially charged note was published in the school’s yearbook, and in October 2014, when a school safety officer discovered a noose hanging on campus.

But the horrifying level that this incident reached demands a strong response from the administration. Berkeley’s Local Control and Accountability Plan, which details policies for the school system to meet its mission, specifically includes provisions on fostering a safe, welcoming and inclusive climate, as well as ending racial predictability by ensuring that its teaching environments are responsive to its students’ cultural needs. When the campus climate is as poor as it is now, the school must prove its commitment to ensuring the safety of all students.

The administration must create time and space for black students to discuss discrimination they experience within the Berkeley Unified School District as well as opportunities for solidarity and continued education of students, like it has already promised to do later this year.

It also must remove from campus the student responsible for such an outrageous act. Someone who thinks it is acceptable to call for lynchings and pledge allegiance to the Ku Klux Klan has no place on a campus committed to equality.

This student needs to be educated on the effects and the moral reprehensibility of his or her action, but the necessity of removing the student from the space he or she threatened with historically entrenched racial oppression overrides the student’s possible reintegration into student life. Additionally, as called for by the NAACP, the school should disclose the discipline it enacts, even if it cannot disclose the student’s identity.

The expulsion of the student alone will not fix the systemic racism that manifests in everyday high school life. This one student’s high school career cannot rectify the centuries of inequality building up to this event. But the walkout and protests proved real maturity and dedication in the youth fighting against racism.

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  • Promontorium

    Daily Cal, are you going to act like actual journalists, or are you going to tow the line of liars and outrage profiteers? I know it’s more difficult, but it will make you better journalist, better people. Call this what it is, a hoax, in a line of hoaxes. The anti-free speech movement we are seeing in Yale can be defeated. What better place to draw a line and call these people out than Cal, birth of the Free Speech Movement?

    Have the honor and honesty to dig deeper and expose these events for what they are. Denounce the anti-free speech movement.

  • laura

    Pandering ignorance on the part of the Daily Cal.

  • Cao Nima

    So when do they expose the black racist who did this?

  • http://Batmannananana.com/ Caesar Merlin

    skipping school and playing hookie = so courageous

    the world according to the daily cal.

    • Jon

      And the March on Washington and the Million Man March were just people going on vacations to Washington DC. Tahrir Square was where a bunch of people just wanted to be rowdy and camp in public space.

      I’m glad the world according to you is only in your head.

      • lspanker

        Funny how you equate a bunch of students demanding more free stuff (how much if any have these children ever paid into the tax base that supports their education in the first place?) with civil rights for black folks.

        • Pietro Gambadilegno

          They were not demanding more free stuff, and it is absurd to claim that they were.

          You may not have noticed this before, but most people don’t pay much in taxes when they are children. They make up for it after they grow up, when they become the taxpayers who support the government.

  • MattBracken

    Now that this entire incident has been exposed as another racial grievance hoax, it’s gone down the memory hole. If the perp was named Billy Bob Clampett, we’d all have seen his face 24/7 and there would be demands for his hanging. Obviously, the perp was a protected “Social Justice Warrior,” so the “act of terror” is downgraded to “Oops! Never mind!”

    • Strykr32

      It was stated in the comments section of this DC article: “Berkeley High student responsible for hostile image to face disciplinary action” by “laura” that the “perp” was actually Asian and that this information was conveyed to “laura” by DC reporters. The Principal and District Spokesman Mark Coplan shared that the “perp” was fifteen years old and a freshman. According to “laura” who states she is “aware of the racial dynamics at BHS” and that “Black youth at BHS are coddled and a protected class, they do not experience real discrimination,” “The kid likely suffered the all too common racial bullying at BHS aimed at freshmen.” This is the “ACTUAL not imagined discrimination” and due to “the UPSIDE DOWN administrative governance of BUSD.”
      Black on White crime including physical Hate Crime by Blacks against Whites has been a problem at Berkeley High for decades.
      http://parents.berkeley.edu/advice/teens/violence.html
      If a White/Asian kid is jumped by a group of Black thugs and willingly gives up whatever material possessions are demanded and even so is assaulted with intent to physically harm, this is a Hate Crime yet the administration never acknowledges it as such.
      It has gotten a little better since:
      1) the Black population has decreased by about 50% in the last ten years from around 40% to around 20% with Whites now outnumbering Blacks by about 2-1.
      2) After the new administration building was built around twelve years ago, it sealed off the center of the campus enabling increased security on campus and currently most of these assaults occur just off campus.
      Aside from actual Black on White crimes and Black on White hate crimes, there are daily Black on White micro aggressions. The Black kids tend to hang out on the the North side of the main classroom building, the “C” building, on the quad between it and the Berkeley Community Theater while the White students hang on the South side of the “C” building between it and the Donahue Gymnasium. The main entrance is on the North Side of the “C” building and Black students congregate on the steps when hundreds of students are attempting to enter and leave, challenging everyone to have to go around them, not even yielding for teachers; this is a Black on White micro aggression everyday, before school, between periods, before and after lunch and after school.
      If Berkeley’s citizens want to change the administrative governance of BUSD from “UPSIDE DOWN” as described by “laura,” a good start would be to go to district elections of school board members. If the districts were the same as City Council districts, this would negate the UC Berkeley student vote as a factor in school board member elections in all but one district. We would finally have a school board who would put in place effective policies to eliminate fraudulently enrolled out of district students. And it would take the district’s main focus off of an unachievable goal of equalizing achievement between students with lower and higher intelligence- the so called achievement gap- which has nothing to do with race and everything to do with the fact that the high achieving students tend to be the offspring of persons in high intelligence occupations such as UC Professors who just happen to be primarily white while the lower achieving students’ parents, primarily Black and Hispanic, are not for the most part in similar occupations that are exclusively held by those with high intelligence. The goal should be to ensure that every student achieves to his potential. We could also go to neighborhood elementary and middle schools and thereby stop cross town busing of elementary students and instead have bus service available for high school students.

  • lspanker

    Someone who thinks it is acceptable to call for lynchings and pledge allegiance to the Ku Klux Klan has no
    place on a campus committed to equality.

    Do those sentiments also apply to the TEACHER who chose to SHARE it with several students before reporting it to the school administration? If the goal of the student was to incite panic and hysteria (he obviously succeeded), the teacher aided and abetted it with his or her actions. What punishment do you propose for that person?

    • Strykr32

      It was widely reported that the incident was first noted by a parent volunteer and brought to the attention of the administration. It was not stated directly but seemed to follow that it was after this that a teacher somehow learned of it and shared it with students who were members of the Black Student Union. Is this widely reported version of events incorrect and was it actually first noted and reported by a teacher?
      The analogy has been made that the student was not exercising protected free speech but was essentially yelling fire into a crowded theater; this analogy is faulty. If anyone was in essence yelling fire into a crowded theater, it is the teacher who shared a racist message that was on one computer screen with members of the Black Student Union. Posting this message on one computer is really no different than writing on a bathroom wall except it takes far more effort to remove the writing on the wall, often accomplished by etching the message in the paint with a knife or other pointed object. So far, have never heard anyone claim that similar writing on a bathroom wall was a hate crime.

      • lspanker

        If anyone was in essence yelling fire into a crowded theater, it is the teacher who shared a racist message that was on one computer screen with members of the Black Student Union.

        Agreed, you will find no argument from me on that point.