Outraged Black Parents Hold the School Board’s Feet to the Fire After Learning Their Sons Faced Relentless Racist Bullying at California Elementary School

A Black mom says she feels a California college district has finished little to handle the a number of cases of racist taunts and bullying her two younger sons confronted at an elementary college they have been just lately enrolled in.

Daphne Hawkins, the mom of a 6-year-old and 9-year-old boy, spoke to Atlanta Black Star concerning the incidents that came about a couple of months after the household moved to the suburb of Redlands, California, in August 2024 and enrolled their sons in Mariposa Elementary Faculty.

In December, Hawkins stated she was wanting by way of her first-grader’s college assignments when she discovered a coloring task that includes a blackface caricature.

Her son instructed her that his instructor taught the category about Christmas in Denmark and the Dutch illustration of Santa Claus generally known as “Sinterklaas.”

Within the folktale, Sinterklaas is usually accompanied by a helper generally known as “Black Pete,” who offers good children sweets and naughty children coal. The character is depicted in blackface with an afro wig and crimson lips, and each Christmas vacation, white Dutch residents will sport these options as a fancy dress whereas giving out sweets to kids throughout vacation parades and festivities.

The folktale has confronted condemnation internationally lately for the character’s racist and stereotypical illustration of Black individuals.

Hawkins stated her son was instructed to paint within the Black Pete caricature on the task. In response, she and her husband assigned him a lesson on Christmas in Ghana, and he delivered a teacher-approved presentation to his classmates that uncovered them to vacation celebrations in one other a part of the world.

However initially of the spring semester, Hawkins discovered her 9-year-old son, who’s the one Black pupil in his class, started encountering discriminatory habits from his classmates.

In January, a classmate handed him a be aware saying, “Your pores and skin is as black as your future.” The principal met with the offending pupil and his mother and father, however when Hawkins requested a gathering with the classmate’s mother and father, she stated the principal suggested in opposition to it.

Three weeks later, he complimented one among his classmates on her humorousness, saying she ought to be in a comedy present. That classmate responded, “You ought to be in a comedy present since you seem like a black African monkey.”

The college responded promptly to the incident by contacting Hawkins and her husband. The couple then met with the principal and the college district’s DEI coordinator, who promised to begin conducting coaching for all college students and workers members.

Nevertheless, the district workers who led the coaching classes solely taught the scholars concerning the significance of kindness, with no particular language on racism or what discriminatory habits appears to be like like and the way to keep away from it.

In accordance with state training knowledge, Mariposa has 435 college students enrolled, 45.3 p.c of whom are white, 31.5 p.c are Latino, 10.1 p.c are Asian, and just one.6 p.c are Black.

Annoyed by the college’s inadequate responses, the Hawkinses began a social media marketing campaign to inform mother and father within the college neighborhood concerning the racist incidents, arguing that the district was failing its mission to arrange “college students to turn into productive individuals in a various, multi-cultural, democratic society.”

Mother and father have been inspired to ship letters to the college district demanding anti-racism coaching for school and college students and an investigation into the incidents.

The Hawkins obtained practically 300 letters of help, together with from the native and state NAACP, state Sen. Eloise Gomez Reyes, and different civil organizations. In addition they obtained dozens of calls from mother and father of scholars of coloration who talked concerning the racist experiences their kids suffered at different colleges within the district.

Greater than 150 individuals confirmed up at a March 11 board assembly to help the Hawkinses, who have been outspoken to board members concerning the discrimination.

“Our kids deserve higher, and, let’s be clear, these aren’t simply phrases, these are assaults on our youngsters’s dignity and their identification,” Daphne Hawkins instructed board members.

“We moved right here as a result of we thought it was protected. We thought our neighborhood was protected. We thought the neighborhood was protected and that our youngsters would have a greater alternative in life. We didn’t notice we might get right here and so they must draw blackface characters,” Channing Hawkins stated.

Daphne Hawkins stated that the college board pledged to learn and reinstate a 2020 decision declaring racism a public well being disaster that the district adopted following the homicide of George Floyd. Board members skipped the studying on the March 11 board assembly however promised the household they might replace the decision’s language, then learn it at their March 21 assembly.

Hawkins confirmed up at that assembly and found the decision wasn’t on the agenda.

With the need to impact transformational change throughout the district, the household has demanded a full investigation into these racist incidents with transparency and accountability, correct allocation of funding to handle the wants of Black college students within the Redlands Unified Faculty District, necessary, zero-tolerance, anti-racism coaching for all workers and college students, a district-wide reporting and accountability system to trace how racist incidents are dealt with, and a strategic plan on addressing racism within the district by the top of 2025.

Faculty board members have pledged to conduct ongoing racial and cultural sensitivity coaching and lift pupil consciousness.

“I’m not right here saying that that’s sufficient. What I’m right here saying is that we aren’t going to tolerate this type of habits, and we did take fast motion once we have been conscious of it,” Superintendent Juan Cabral stated earlier this month. “The underside line is that it’s not OK for our youngsters to take part in any form of hate speech or make one another really feel in any approach lower than, and we’re going to do all the pieces that we are able to to show them that it’s not OK and that they should act higher.”

To date, Hawkins stated the district has launched an investigation and provided non-obligatory coaching for college kids and workers members.

Nevertheless, these incidents have but to cease.

Earlier this month, a second-grade pupil requested Hawkins’ 6-year-old son if he ate canine poop as a result of his pores and skin was the colour of canine poop.

The Hawkinses stated the discrimination and the college’s restricted actions are sufficient to make the household take into account withdrawing their sons from the district.

“I don’t really feel like Redlands SD is provided to serve communities of coloration, specifically Black children,” Daphne Hawkins instructed Atlanta Black Star. “I don’t really feel like they’ve the issues or conviction to help kids of coloration.”