A WEEK OF POSITIVITY FOR 52,000 STARK COUNTY STUDENTS

In the film, I’m Not Racist… Am I? as introduced and explored in first of this three-part blog post series, the participants engaged in multiple workshops that address race and racism. Interpersonally, the group of students grapple with their own differences and similarities, which impact the content and emotions they share with each other. There are several moments in the film that demonstrate the clear differences in the participants’ understanding of race. In the first workshop, the students were exposed to the idea that all white people are inherently racist seeing as American society was founded on principles meant to support white people (see more on structural racism here, here, and here for further understanding). Several white students in the film became emotional during that workshop. Most students remained quiet. Following this workshop, a black student and a white student were filmed independently of each other in their own homes and discussed the workshop and what they learned with their families. The white student discussed the differences between structural racism and bigotry with her mother and struggled to identify with the principles taught in the training. The black student stated to his mother how almost everything spoken in that workshop applied to him. The student further discussed his feelings by stating how overt racism is and yet how “subliminal” it is at the same time. How can something be so in your face and yet under your feet simultaneously? I immediately reflected on the dialectic of something being so clear and yet so vague. The film continued to grapple with student differences. At the beginning of the film, one white male student discussed with his mother how he feels that all individuals, if they apply themselves wholeheartedly, have the same chance of success regardless of their skin, gender, sexuality or other demographic factors. As a white man myself, I must confess that when I was in high school, I had the same mindset. How could it be different? Especially when I was reading mythic bootstrap literature in high school classes. Sure, the harder you work the more you deserve, but that statement does not work for all Americans. I had not accounted for racial factors that inhibit the growth of others, not to mention socio-economic factors, nationalities, citizenship status, gender and age. I continued to reflect on these statements and connected them to my experience in high school in New York City. In the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement responding to the murder of George Floyd, multiple private progressive schools in New York, including the one I went to, suffered scrutiny from students and alumni who identify as black, indigenous people of color (BIPOC). Multiple Instagram accounts surfaced with the handle “BLACK AT [school name].” I read the posts in 2020, and again before writing this post, and remembered feeling horrified knowing these acts of racism, bigotry and microaggressions happened all around me. This was subliminal to me, yet overt to others.