Statement From The Berkeley Unified School District On Injustice

Press release from Berkeley Public Schools:

June 5, 2020

We deeply feel the injustice of the recent killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, and Breonna Taylor. Their names are joined with the names of far too many other African American citizens whose lives have been stolen by the blind hatred of racism.

African Americans experience oppression in many ways, and justice comes too often from their own advocacy. Every day Black people experience racism in multiple forms, from the signals about social hierarchies to policies and practices that prevent access in areas like jobs, housing, medical care, legal representation, the vote, and healthy food.

The Black community, communities of color, our city, and our nation are in pain due to the ongoing racism that exists as a daily experience of African Americans. Black people killed at the hands of law enforcement, of whom George Floyd is only the most recent and publicized example, is unacceptable and unbearable.

Protests taking place here in the Bay Area and around the nation reflect anger and outrage of injustice. Most protestors intend to demonstrate peacefully and expect their voices to be heard. To focus more on the disruptors and damage is only a symptom of a much larger issue, and should not be used as the narrative to distract from the injustice that people of color face. We need solutions and a cure to heal our people.

We are proud of and support our students’ activism and insight, and their viewing themselves and acting as change agents. We see this in student protests, our Black Student Union and Black Studies Department, and the intense desire of our young people to serve as effective allies to their African American classmates. BUSD has a history of elevating student voices as a part of our educational mission. We aspire to listen to and learn from the voices of our African American students.

We at Berkeley Unified must recognize the role of our own schools and structures in perpetuating this reality.

We will not be silent. We are committed to values and actions which recognize and help end the impact of racism in society and our schools. We recognize that this moment calls for action to eliminate the impact of racism in American policing, and that every institution, including BUSD, must engage in critical reflection about its own ongoing issues with racialized outcomes.

Those of us who are not Black – and especially White people – can commit to do a few things personally to take steps forward:

• Not be silent.
• Commit to ongoing self-reflection about anti-Blackness through reading, listening, and courageous conversations with other non-Black people. This recent piece entitled Call It What It Is: Anti-Blackness in the New York Times by kihana miraya ross is a powerful explanation of this phenomenon.
• Show solidarity with the Black community through activism, donations, and by deliberately elevating Black voices. The Black Lives Matter website has many ways to get involved.
• Become informed about systemic racism. Ta-Nahesi Coates’ excellent article in The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations” describes how a long series of deliberately racist decisions have led to the current conditions in our society.
• Learn about the idea of anti-racism and what we can do to change our actions and the institutions we are engaged with. The road to racialized outcomes in our schools and other institutions is made of many small acts that do harm to our African American children, families, and colleagues; and White people’s ability to see, avoid, and challenge these behaviors is important. Ibram X. Kende’s book How to Be An Anti-Racist is an excellent place to start.
• Talk to our children about racism and the need to end it. For white families, ideas about how to do this are many, and a good place to start is this NPR interview with Jennifer Harvey.

For Black families, we recognize that this is a period of deep pain. Some resources that center on healing and care for Black families include:

• Berkeley’s own Healthy Black Families offers a variety of programs for Black women, including shared experiences with cooking, counseling, and community.
• Connect with Black advocates who write about issues of physical and mental wellbeing. This article, 13 Black Women In Wellness Share What Wellness & Self Care Means To Them, includes links to Instagram accounts of many Black women who write about these topics.
• Visit Ashay by the Bay’s Children’s summer reading collection, with a rich selection of books by and for Black children.
• This beautiful resource from Teaching Tolerance called Beyond the Golden Rule speaks to the parents of children many ages about how to develop healthy and affirming views about racial identity.
• Share your story. Write to the Superintendent and School Board members with your family’s story. We can be reached at superintendent@berkeley.net and schoolboard@berkeley.net. We’ll compile these stories to send out to all our district staff.

Black Lives Matter. We stand with our African American students and their families to end racism and build a community that lives in freedom and is committed to justice.

This press release was produced by Berkeley Public Schools. The views expressed here are the author’s own.