Aisha Staggers.
(Opinion) — Last year, an employee at my child’s school made national news as the result of a video in which she is seen in a grocery store spewing racial slurs and spitting on another shopper. The employee was a white woman; her target was a black man. She resigned before the school district could take action, but the damage was done.
The resignation did little to ease racial anxiety among black and brown students at Hamden High School. My daughter was particularly disturbed and like her peers wanted the school to do more.
She and her friends felt there was a lot of tension bubbling just beneath the surface that wasn’t going to go away and that the problem was bigger than just the one incident.
After a series of conversations between students and faculty along with some discussions facilitated by the Anti-Defamation League, plans to organize an event for Hamden High freshmen formed.
“Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens,” is how the resulting “Names Can Really Hurt Us” assembly began at Hamden High School Monday morning.
The facilitator set the tone by establishing the event as a “brave space” and encouraged students to get their “Ruby Bridges on,” and conjure up the courage to be heard much in the way 6‑year-old Ruby Bridges did to segregationists in the early years of the Civil Rights Movement.
Once students learned the R.O.P.E.S. (Respect, Openness, Participation, Escuchar, Safety), the facilitator cautioned students that it was time to get comfortable being uncomfortable — something that even adults struggle to do
Before introducing a student panel, the facilitator told his own experience about observing bullying and.how he poorly handled it as a “bystander” and encouraged students to do better because damage is long-term. The experiences of the student panel varied. There was a girl who spoke of playing football on the boys team and being stereotyped because she was Asian. A Jewish girl discussed facing antisemitism at school and finding antisemitic, racist and homophobic social media posts by other students. My own child spoke of the incident last year. A student talked about being a bully and how that realization felt and wanting to be better.
It wasn’t until the open mic portion of the assembly that I truly understood the weight of what our children are feeling and what they are dealing with.
During the open mic portion, some students described being bullied because of their weight, physical features, and home life. In a few cases, those who were the bullies stepped up to apologize for the hurt they may have caused other students.
There was also the revelation that in certain cases, the bullied individuals would retaliate and become bullies themselves, echoing the refrain repeated throughout the assembly that “hurt people, hurt people.”
I thought about how we face the harsh realities of being adults for so long that we forget those in between years, 11 – 19, are really hard. Especially when the locus of control is not our own. They don’t have control over their changing bodies, their own destinies. And they have complicated emotions they haven’t figured out. All of this can leave one feeling emotionally chaotic.
Being adults, we know that trying times are temporary, but that is because we have the experiences to prove it. In the case of children, it feels like their hardship is never ending because that is all they know at that time. Their experiences are limited and shaped by the adults in their lives.
For about an hour, I listened to story after story and realized that essentially, what I was doing is what is needed. We owe it to our children to be better listeners. I know my presence at that event would not have been possible had I not taken care to listen when my daughter said a racist tirade by a member of her school’s faculty made her feel less safe at school.
Remember: Knowledge talks, wisdom listens. It’s time we get comfortable with being uncomfortable. It’s time we have the courage to get our Ruby Bridges on and protect our children because at the end of the day no matter how grownup teenagers look or act, they are still just children and many are hurting everyday in silence.
I don’t know how many students were healed Monday by just being heard, but I know that healing took place and we have to do more of that for our children so schools can be safe spaces once again.