High school students of color are protesting racism and inequality
After racist incidents at schools in Charlottesville and the Bronx, students have taken action to make school officials address deeper inequities.
Since the civil rights movement, student protests have been a powerful driver of social change. More than 60 years later, students of color are continuing to call attention to racial injustice and inequity, fueling a growing youth movement against racism.
Alongside the Movement for Black Lives and college anti-racism movements like the 2015 University of Missouri protests, middle school and high school students in the US have become increasingly vocal about issues like police brutality, gun violence, school closings in communities of color, and racist incidents in their schools.
The latest of these protests came in March, when scandals over a racist video at a private school in New York, and online threats of violence against black and Hispanic students in Charlottesville, Virginia, drew strong reactions from students. These incidents also sparked protests that called attention to the connection between racist incidents on campus and larger patterns of racism and bias in American society.
“There cannot be any type of reconciliation without the redistribution of resources for black and brown students,” Zyahna Bryant, a community organizer, high school senior, and president of the Black Student Union at Charlottesville High School, told the Washington Post on March 25, days after a teenager had threatened an “ethnic cleansing” at the school.
In the wake of the recent school closings due to threats of White Supremacist terrorism and racial violence directly targeting Black and Brown students, the CHS BSU is calling on CCS to address ALL forms of racism with the #racialjusticewalkout
Join us tomorrow at 12 pm!
The students involved in these protests, like those involved in the protests of recent years, say their demands are straightforward: They want a school environment that better responds to the needs of students of color and addresses structural inequalities. Students of color have been making these requests for decades. They say it’s time for their schools — and schools across the country — to do the work to produce lasting and systemic change.
In Charlottesville, students say they want school leaders “to back the words up with action”
On March 25, more than 100 students at Virginia’s Charlottesville High School walked out of CONTINUE READING: High school student activists are taking a stand against racism - Vox
