On November 9, 2015, Berkeley High School experienced a moral earthquake when a racist message was found on a library computer. The community reeled, desperately gleaning incomplete details from social media and hearsay.
Broken over such blatant bigotry and an educational bureaucracy that was slow to respond, BHS students, led by the Black Student Union (BSU), walked out of school the day after the message was found.
One month later, on December 9, 2015, the day on which the hateful statement threatened violence against students, the BSU and the African American Studies Department organized a day-long teach-in for the BHS community to address the incident of racism, reaffirm the goal of inclusivity, and acknowledge that racism is a critical problem even in the most liberal and ostensibly tolerant of spaces.
This year, the BSU and African American Studies Department again reclaimed December 9 as a day for community healing and education.
The event, taking place exactly a month after the November 9 walkout protesting the election of Donald Trump, is more relevant than ever.
Before the assembly, the African American studies Department and the BHS Black Student Union invited black student groups from Berkeley City College and UC Berkeley to come for lunch. During lunch, there were DJs, life performers, and free pizza for students to enjoy.
Students got to enjoy the music, and the steps of the Community Theater were covered with students clapping and dancing.
Looking to nourish hope for the future and inspire positive change, the African American Studies Department organized “Reclaiming the Day,” around a viewing of the 2014 film Finding the Gold Within, directed by Karina Epperlein.
The documentary follows a group of young black men in Akron, Ohio as they graduate high school, leave their families, begin college, and pursue their futures.
Bolstered by a local mentorship group, the men’s experiences and storytelling shed a vivid light on the reality of growing up as a man of color in the urban United States.
Naomi Washington, the head of the African American Studies Department, said the film was, “a perfect resource for educating about empathy, cultural sensitivity, and intersectionality, as well as mentoring.”
In addition to the film, Take Back the Day featured a panel discussion of five community members: Kaylah Grisby, a BHS senior; Dwayne Byndloss, an AMPS counselor; AJ Moultrie, the Communications Director of the Cal BSU; Brianna Rogers, a Cal student; and Troy Gilder, a BHS alumnus who now works at East Oakland Elementary School.
The group discussion addressed questions such as how non-black students can act as allies to support the black community on and off campus.
Grisby, a member of the BHS BSU, urged students to connect with the BSU to stay informed and educated. “We are here to help you become more aware and be more woke,” she said, “because you can’t really help something if you don’t know what the problem is.”
The panel members also shared their own paths to advocacy in the struggle against racism and spoke directly to educators about how to facilitate effective discussions and create a supportive learning environment for all students. Data from the 2014-15 school year shows that 65 percent of California educators are white, while only 75 percent of students identify as people of color.
Accordingly, in addition to diversifying the population of teachers, it is imperative that white educators take responsibility for fostering a culturally relevant and inclusive learning space.The film and the discussion spoke to the integrity of self-advocacy and self-respect both as a means for change and a strategy for succeeding in spite of institutional racism.
As Gilder said to students towards the end of the discussion, “know more about yourself than having other people tell you about yourself.