Racism in Schools, Anti-racism Policy, and CRT

Racism in Schools, Anti-racist policy, and CRT Transcript

I’m Danielle Ford, former Trustee of the Clark County School District. Joining me are social justice warriors and co founders of no Racism in schools, Akiko Cooks and Jshauntae Marshall. They are both badass women and 2 of my absolute favorite people. 

In this episode we discuss: the horrific racist targeting that happened to their children at school, which then led to: them organizing the community and launching a movement, me going viral for being racist, the creation of a district-wide anti-racism policy, and ultimately our friendship. 

We also talk about racism in general, why most people are so uncomfortable talking about it, and what needs to happen to make systemic change not only within schools but throughout society. 

Really quick before we get started: the production of Unraveling Education is made possible by donations and sponsorships. To support the continuation of these important conversations, visit UnravelingEducation.com/sponsor where you’ll find several simple ways to contribute. Everything helps and is appreciated.

Now on to the discussion about racism in schools…

This is Akiko and Jshauntae, and I wanted to take a second and explain to everybody how the three of us met. I think it’s a very interesting story, a very funny story to me in hindsight, but it is definitely a unique story of how we connected and became friends and have done really good work together. 

In the last episode of Unraveling Education, the last Storytime episode, I went through the first six months on the board, and then I kind of bypassed right through April. I had said, “I’m not going to go too much into April and what happened, but we’re going to do a separate episode about it”. And that is this episode right now. 

I did touch base on the fact that I made a misspeak. I mixed up some words and I ended up going viral for being racist, nationally. So that was super fun. But the story behind it, I think is really important to to share and get out there, and there’s a lot of context. So I kind of wanted to explain what happened with that. 

There had been a bunch of instances of racism going on in the district. As early as February I was already bringing up things about disproportionality, trying to explain the amount of kids that were being expelled and suspended and how it was like for every one white student, there’d be like five black or brown students on that expulsion list. The board was not really listening. 

Then March comes and we had a really bad instance of racism in one of our schools that we’ll talk about in a few minutes. That is what brought the whole community out to the board meetings. 

People weren’t really paying attention to what I was saying before then, and I was a new trustee. I was navigating how board meetings even work, how to get agenda items on, I was trying to figure it all out. 

That meeting was super long, right? You guys killed it with getting people involved. There was every single news camera there. I didn’t know at the time, but there was no way the Board of Trustees was going to approve a policy. They kept on circling around it and kept on saying “Oh, we have to do better.” And then we had another trustee saying things like, “Yeah, it’s really important to make sure that hate isn’t happening at schools. But we also have to protect kids from crosswalks and all these things”.

I was getting really frazzled. I was trying to explain that it was two different topics of school safety, and I made a misspeak. Now, let me ask you guys a question. Did you ever go back and watch the the actual meeting? 

Yes I did. 

What about you, Jai? 

I did. 

How long has it been since you did that? 

It’s been a couple of years for me. 

All right. We’re going to do that right now together. 

Okay. Ah. 

It’s like the difference between telling someone about a car accident and actually watching it happen. So we’re going to take a second and just watch this go down. It’s very cringey, but we’re going to do it. Okay…

I’m concerned about this conversation that we’re having right now, becoming generalized around safety. It’s two different conversations. We need to have a separate protocol when it is race-based. There’s two different problems that we’re experiencing right now. One is our lack of safety protocols. And the other one is the safety of colored students in general. These are two different conversations. There’s a a clear problem with our culture. It’s it’s the culture of the country. 

(shouting from crowd. Interrupts) 

I am so sorry for saying that. Ummmm I am so sorry for saying that. I meant black students. You’re right. No, you’re absolutely right. And I… I know I do… I know that I have a lot of implicit bias, and I am working on that for myself as well. What I meant to say was students of color, black students. I completely apologize.

Anything she said at this point is null and void and means nothing to us. I mean nothing. You’re showing your true colors. 

Okay. I apologize, but I do want to say that I am working on my own implicit bias, so I totally respect…

You shouldn’t be on that dais.

Okay. So let me just say really quick that not only did I misspeak, but then I misspoke about my misspeak. I don’t even know what was happening in my brain at that point. I was trying to explain what I was saying, but it wasn’t actually implicit bias. It was cultural insensitivity. And this was coming from like… I had already done so much training and whatnot before even joining the board on implicit bias. I fully understood the differences. I just like my brain… I don’t even know… shut off and I got all jumbled. I have no idea what I was even trying to do. 

On top of that, I laugh when things are bad. And so, in my brain, with all this going on, I’m like, “Just keep smiling. just keep smiling and let everybody know you’re a nice person” or whatever. Looking back,  that is so terrible, just so cringe. 

I’m going to share one more thing because then by the time I left the meeting it had already aired on like 5 news channels. So what happened is everybody got up, left the meeting, the news cameras went with everybody and started interviewing people. We finished the meeting at that same time. I actually said later on, “Hey, I just want to apologize again. You know, I have ADHD. Sometimes I mix up words. It’s my responsibility to not do that. And sometimes what we say can hurt people. And I apologize for that.” Of course, the news doesn’t report on that or anything. 

And I didn’t even know that I said it. You can see Linda Cavazos lean over. She’s like, “Trustee Ford, you can’t say ‘colored’. I’m like, “I know. Of course I can’t. I didn’t say that, I said Students of Color”. She goes, “No, no you didn’t. You said it.” I was like, “Oh my gosh”. 

Also, I kept talking because I didn’t realize that I said it and that people were mad at me. There were so many people, you can’t see from that perspective, but there were so many people in the meeting the whole time, like walking in and out. Groups of people leaving, coming back. So when everybody got up and walked out, I didn’t even realize it was me that caused that. 

So now we’re going to go ahead and do one more screen share, and then we’ll chat about this. 

A Clark County School District board meeting that hoped to calm racial tension surrounding a Northwest Valley high school does the opposite. Parents leaving a CCCSD trustee meeting meant to address school safety and communication after one of the trustees used a racially insensitive word to describe students. 13 Action News reporter Austin Carter is live outside the school district’s education center, where sparks were flying during that meeting. Many parents didn’t even stick around for the rest of it. 

They sure didn’t, Beth and Dana. Good morning. Well, parents, they are certainly upset. That meeting was meant to address threats targeting black students at Arborview High School. But parents, they weren’t having it, some of them even walking out after a board of trustees member had this to say about African-American students. 

There’s two different problems that we’re experiencing right now. One is our lack of safety protocols, and the other one is the safety of colored students in general. 

That was CCSD Trustee Danielle Ford. Immediately after that statement, parents started heading for the door. It’s not until Ford turns off her mic, and a fellow trustee clues her in that she appears aware of her slip-up. We caught up with one  of those parents, Akiko Cooks, whose child was targeted in one of those threatening Instagram posts, and says she believes Ford’s statement was telling of how unaware the district really is. 

If the trustee is referring to us as colored- it’s 2019. If the trustee is referring to us as colored, then that’s going to trickle down. I’m wondering if this is how they speak behind closed doors. 

And Ford did apologize several times afterward in that meeting, saying that she meant to say “people of color”. Meantime, those two students who were arrested, the students at Arborview High, who were behind those racist posts, well they were heading back into a Clark County courtroom this morning. Reporting live, Austin Carter, 13 Action News, Elevating Las Vegas.

Okay, a few reasons why I wanted to share that. I’ve literally never even shared that story to like my audience or anything… Go ahead…

(crying)

Sorry, you guys, I’m so sorry. This is why I didn’t want to talk about this. I’m so sorry. 

It’s not you. We haven’t seen all of the news all of the videos and stuff that was happening during that time. And so when you go back and you watch it and you recant everything that was happening. We had not dealt with that. We have not dealt with the trauma that we experienced during that time, I don’t think. We  just moved past it. I don’t know about Akiko but I’ve never even seen that news clipping. I just don’t think people really understand how bad it was at that time. You know what I mean?

You know, I told you guys before, I know it’s going to be traumatic. I didn’t want to follow up with talking about this with me, like joking about the misspeak.

And it just shows if this is happening to you, how many other mothers is it happening to? You know, you just happened to be two or- nine, of the mothers that did something about it and like gotten publicity and are known for it. But this is something that happens to women, black women, black parents all the time. So thank you for feeling comfortable enough to express your emotions like that. 

 I think we thought that healing would come with the policy work and the accountability. And it’s a small piece of it. 

We never had time to just sit and and actually heal and restore back to who we were pre-March 19th, 2019. I don’t think we ever watched any of our videos or the interviews or anything together. As we’re watching it, I remember everything playing out exactly how it played out. And I also remember the feeling of you going viral nationally before the incident itself went viral nationally was like a gut punch. I remember all of those thoughts and all of those emotions then. And then it just came back. 

I never thought about that. That makes a lot of sense. Like “they care that this woman said this, but they don’t care about what happened to my kid”. 

I mean, did they care? Or just sensationalize it? 

 Yeah. And I think it was also a gut punch when we found out that you weren’t white. Like wait and she still said it?

(Laughing)

You’re like, “That girls needs double training”. 

But I think much like today, right? You have a specific part of the story that you’re in… the policy. It’s been very few times that people just want to hear the entire story and want to really dig into how we felt that our kids were the victims in the beginning. Once we found out what was happening, we shielded our kids. Our kids were probably more protected. They had Fort Knox around them. And we threw ourselves in front of the target. You see what I’m saying? And so then we became the target. 

And carrying that for two years, actually we’re almost five years in, so carrying that for almost five years, it’s a story that no one really wants to hear. 

 Well that is what I wanted to hear. Are you okay with sharing the story? We’ve been talking about what happened, but ee haven’t really shared exactly what happened to get to the point of that meeting. Is that something that you mind sharing right now? 

I’m good with it. As long as you’re good with the tears.

 I want to hear the whole backstory, the why? This is why I wanted you on here. Because, again, the people that follow me and have for five years, a lot of people in Las Vegas, they know what happened as far as the news media stuff, but they don’t necessarily know why, because I never really spoke about it or explained it. It never really made sense to do that. 

I thought it would feel like I was like defending myself or something when I was like, “No, this is totally normal. Their reactions were normal.” None of us were wrong necessarily, maybe we didn’t know the whole context or whatever. But I completely understood. I was never offended. Even when the news stuff came out and you’re like, asking me to resign or whatever, it totally made sense why you would say that. 

So I want you to explain what got us to that point. What happened to your kids and the other seven children to even cause the community to show up to two different meetings. There was the first one everybody came to, and then there was another one where you thought that there might be some action taken. And that was when I made my misspeak. So can you explain the whole thing? Take your time in your own words, whatever you’re comfortable with. 

I saw this Instagram page titled ‘Arbor View Niggers”. And what I saw was nine pictures of nine black boys, and each picture contained a threat saying, “I’m going to go Columbine part two, but only killing the niggers”. I’m saying each picture had a different threat. I’m just saying some of the threats that were there. “I have a 50 caliber machine gun, and they’re going to get it good”. “I can just smell them. It infuriates me. They’re all over my school.” These are some of the things that were being said on the page itself. 

I called CCSD dispatch that night. They told me that there was nothing that they could do because it didn’t happen on campus. They knew about it, but there wasn’t anything that they could do. It wasn’t their jurisdiction. That’s why I sent it to social media that night. That’s actually how I ended up boycotting Fox, because they were one of the first news outlets that I had sent it to, and they basically told me, “Oh, that’s not something we would cover. Let us know how it turns out.”

Well, the next morning the Facebook post itself had made it to Texas, so people were resharing it. So when I woke up then I had all of the news media outlets in my inbox. I was on my way up to the school and when I pulled up you could just tell that it was in a panic there. I got to the school about 7:45- 8:00 and school had already started. My purpose of sending the screenshot out was that nobody sent their kids to school. CCSD dispatch told me that there was nothing that they could do and that nobody would be notified, right? There wasn’t anything that they could do. When I got to the school. I knew, okay, people saw my Facebook post and had been resharing it, obviously because the word got out and the news had it at that point. 

I didn’t meet Jai until… So that’s another thing. Arbor view nor CCSD helped us find each other. They didn’t even know who all of the students were. We had to work to identify who the parents were of the students. And that’s where Jai and I met at Timbers. We met because people saw the posts and saw the children and were like, “Oh, that’s my friend’s son, or that’s my such-and-such’s child”. So then they started connecting us and we ended up meeting in the next couple of days. It was before the town hall. The town hall was a week after March 19th. So it had to be like within the next couple of days where we were able to all find each other and meet at Timbers to organize ourselves as the victims. 

So between meeting at this bar and showing up to the board meeting, you organized a lot of people. I mean, that was a big deal for everybody to come to two different meetings, in unison. A lot of times, like, someone’s mad about something and everyone comes up and says different things and there’s not one same message. I don’t know that you even knew at that point that you were so good at organizing. 

Well, I wasn’t an organizer in this aspect. I did community organizing and mobilizing, but not for something that had directly impacted me so much. We were able to organize around the community because Jai and I both knew people in the community, and it was such a horrendous crime. 

But we weren’t organizing people like we are now. The organizing wasn’t as intentional as it is now. We just knew that we needed to have a presence at the school board meetings. We learned in real time how the school board meetings worked. We were learning with you and there was organizing that had to happen among us. So there’s like a lot that happened before we even get to the board meeting, right? 

When we got to Timbers there was a table of women. Nobody knows each other. I didn’t take my child to school that morning because I saw it early enough to not get up and leave my house. But I immediately started calling people. So what happened is I ended up in contact with people who were at the grassroots level.. We met a lady by the name of Tammy Green. She created a Facebook group of all of the moms like a messenger group. 

Some of the parents did not want to be in the limelight at all. There was a lot of fear that had to be overcome by some of the people because it was a dangerous situation. Their husbands- the women, the moms- their husbands did not want them intricately involved. It was all about getting through the court case, being safe and going back under the rock. 

That’s when the exposure of to the lack of protocol began for us. The school system didn’t even know how to communicate to all of the families or how to get in contact. You got all these kids enrolled in the school, and the district, the school police- nobody was communicating. 

We were finding out information about court dates like the day before. It was complete chaos. I think when we were at that table, it was very telling because the truth of the matter is, there were only three of us at the time… four of us at the time that were willing to do something more than just go to court. 

You mentioned before that it got down to that many moms because everyone else was afraid or didn’t want to because they knew the repercussions that were going to come. And it’s not like you two didn’t know that or you two weren’t afraid, you just decided to act in spite of it.

Yes. People are built differently. This is not work for everyone. You definitely have to have a passion for justice and not just justice for yourself or your children. I call it heart work. To have justice for everyone’s children, and in this case, black children and children of color who were impacted by racism and not protected by a systemically racist school district.

The words that we’re told to us is that the Clark County School District, by law, still has to educate them. So we did have to fight to get them expelled. But the fight was more against the system, right? 

It wasn’t like Kevin McPartland was like, “Oh no, they can come back.” The principal was not in agreement with letting them back in the school. The district just didn’t know how they were going to educate them. So what they tried to do was move them down the street to Shadow Ridge, and Shadow Ridge denied them. They tried to send them to Desert Rose, and the principal at that school said no. So the district was trying to place them in another school, knowing what had happened. And the principals were the ones standing in solidarity. And I don’t know if it was necessarily solidarity from an anti-racist lens, as much as it was they didn’t want kids at their school that had threatened to shoot up a school.

It was a threatened school shooting. And it was based on race. 

So Akiko and I didn’t really know each other. We met and we were kind of talking, so I don’t know how she got the information, but I found out about the court date through the school. The district attorney, for the very first court date had not reached out to me. We were there on the second one. 

That’s the iconic photo that I just love of you two. 

Yes, when we were walking out of the courthouse, that second one. The first one, we found out that they went to court that very next day. 

So you go to court, you’re doing all this. We know that there were threats against your kids and these ten kids, but was there any substantiated evidence that this could have actually been an actual, real threat and something that somebody could have done? 

So there was a fight before the fight with the school district. Our first fight was with the court system, because we felt that they should have charged him with those children with hate crimes, and we felt that they should have been, or I feel I felt at the time that they should have been certified as adults, especially because five weapons were confiscated. 

At the time, the kids in the school started talking. They had been planning the school shooting for two weeks. They had reported to bus drivers. It was being discussed on school buses. 

They looked into the background of these kids and their households and whatnot to see if there was even a possibility of them doing this. That was one of the reasons why they didn’t take it seriously. When all the threats were going into Safe Voice, the children at Arborview were calling Safe Voice sending messages, saying, “Hey, they they’re planning this:, right? 

And because those children did not have any priors, they deemed it as unsubstantiated. So it just went nowhere. The last set of complaints were sitting in an email box. You know what I mean? They didn’t give any attention to it. And so all of this was coming, coming at us all at once. It was so much information and so many details.

Oh and Arbor View stopped communicating with us because they were told to by CCPD. CCPD said, “It’s an open investigation. We will communicate with them. You don’t communicate with them.” And then we didn’t hear anything. They completely dropped the ball.

Do you think the ball dropping was accidental or is that just like what they do to just stop? 

It was on purpose. They wanted us to go away.

Long before we even got in front of the school board we were fighting. We had to demand for communication to go out. We had to demand for mental health support services to be offered to our children from the school district, at the school district’s expense. We had to demand, because everyone was saying, “We ain’t trained, we ain’t been through this. We ain’t been through that.” We had to demand for the school police to be trained on how to respond to matters like that. We had to demand for an emergency protocol. It was all of the excuses. They didn’t know what to happen, what needed to happen. 

So that’s when we gave them the “Crisis Response Model for Hate-motivated Behavior”. We sat in offices and built that whole thing. The entire Crisis Response Model for Hate-motivated Behavior is a part of the emergency response protocol, simply because they didn’t know what to do when it happened. 

Then after that they wanted to bring in the Rachel’s Challenge people, and the ADL was in there. It was a heated discussion between us in the ADL because they didn’t even want us to use the word “racism”. They didn’t want it. They didn’t want it anywhere in any of the language, any of the materials. Nothing. I had to explain to the director of the ADL at the time that if Jewish people do not have their headwear on their hair coverings, society does not automatically know that they’re Jewish. 

And they have the privilege of taking that on and off. Black people cannot remove their skin. We are black. From the time that you see us, we never have to open our mouth. That’s how that conversation got shut down. And that’s how we became intricately involved in the turnaround plan at Arborview. 

But nobody was really like, they were listening to us, but they weren’t. In order to give merit to what we were saying, people needed to know that we were impacted. Otherwise, we were just loud, angry moms. 

What a lot of people do not know is that we did reach out to a lot of organizations when everything was happening. Then a lot of people tried to hijack the story, change the narrative, and push their own agendas. We were getting calls from people we didn’t know it was coming up left and right. You know what I mean? 

The Arborview 9 was birthed because that was the easiest way for us to stay in unison and to describe to someone without a long story that we’re impacted people, and you need to listen to us. 

As everything was happening, Kevin McParlkand had the town hall meeting, which we feel is very commendable. For a while we were being told that we needed to push to have him terminated, but we decided that we were not going to push to have them terminated. Instead, we decided we were going to push for change. 

It was the resistance that he received from the parents of the other students at Arrborview and the staff. There were a lot of teachers at Arrborview High School who did not want to have discussions about anti-racism. They did not want to go through training. They did not want to have conversations about racism. They were resisting. 

Mr. McParkland put out surveys for students to tell their stories anonymously, and he was flooded with those stories. We sat in a room and we listened to those stories, and that’s where the real work began. 

The iconic picture that you’re talking about, what a lot of people don’t know, is that we came out locked hands like that because we were in court, sitting right next to the children’s parents and didn’t know. We told them we refused to sit there next to them and that they had to separate us. It was at that point that it was determined that the next time we came to court, the court meetings would be held upstairs in another courtroom so that they could have their side of the courtroom and we could have ours. 

We had to fight to be separated from supremacy. Then we had to fight at the school level to get the Confederate flags moved off the campuses were told by legal that they couldn’t ban the Confederate flags at first because it was about freedom of speech. So we had to fight. Mr. McPartland made the decision, as the principal of the school, considering the racial racial tension, to ban them from being flown in the parking lot of the school on the cars. 

It’s my that serves me right- it was because of all this that was happening, that the whole community knew was happening. Even though that school was pretty much known to have a really racist student population and area, but then more people started showing up with Confederate flags on their cars and parking them as a message. 

Yes.

The night that we had the town hall meeting at Arborview, which was exactly a week after the initial incident- Wow. That’s when Linda Young came and Chris Garvey got mad at her. Chris Garvey didn’t show up but Linda Young came just to support us and she got upset. 

While we were in the meeting, there were white men and trucks in the parking lot with Confederate flags and Confederacy type stuff. We were inside with a security patrol with us. 

It was Ken Young at the time who told his officers, “You need to get them off of the campus, because if the Nation of Islam and the Black Panther Party members come out to walk these families out and these men are on in the parking lot, there’s going to be a race riot.” And what was so eye-opening at that town hall meeting was there were parents who came, whose kids had graduated five years prior, who came to speak and say, “This has been a problem. Racism has been big here at Arborview. This was waiting to happen. You knew that this was happening and you did nothing to stop it.” 

That was one of our light bulbs of like, “Okay, there needs to be a policy in place. There’s no prevention around it and there is no accountability around it. And back to the board meeting, that’s exactly what you were saying. And then you probably had an entire board, aside from maybe two other board members, who were in agreeance with you when everybody else was like, “No, it’s not a problem”. 

Let me interject really quick. So, you’re right as far as ideals. I probably had a majority of the board who agreed with those ideals. I did not have a majority of the board who would have supported creating that policy, though. It wasn’t something that came straight from Superintendent Jara. And the majority of the board would not dare just go ahead and listen to the community and do something that the community wants. They have to get their marching orders from their master, Superintendent Jara. 

Man, I’ll tell you what, I was so upset after my misspeak for probably probably 5 or 6 months. Just so upset. Not because of what happened. I don’t care what people thought about me. 

I literally felt so guilty. I felt like, had I said that correctly, had I argued my case correctly the right way and everybody clapped and cheered, then maybe I could have made a motion to bring the policy forward and then bring you guys in, and we’d all work together and create this policy. I felt like I just messed that up for everybody. 

I realized months later that I did not mess it up for anybody, that it was never going to happen. In fact, me getting attention to it and, you know, going national for being a racist- brought even more people towards it. 

Even though you completely did the work in the future to bring that policy forward, I don’t think that the other trustees or Superintendent Jara would have even given anybody the time of day after that meeting. They wanted that meeting to be the one that was like, they’re done with it, they listened to everybody, and now on to the next thing. 

But because it got so much attention, they were forced to listen to you in a lot of ways. Then they voted in some of the policies that I brought in, like a month before. Remember when you came to my house like a week after that or something? And I was like, showing you, I’m like, “…and these are the policies that I made, and we have to get the board to adopt these policies so that then we can force Jara to do these policies and then listen to the community. We have to write it in!” 

I honestly felt like it was my fault. But then later on, I’m like, “You know what? In hindsight, it worked out really well. Like you said, it’s is our story. We were all new. We were all learning. I made mistakes. I’m sure you made some mistakes that you would change. 

There was a quote I saw, that I had to adopt as like, my motto. And it was, “Your angels are guiding so closely to you that even your mistakes are on purpose”. And so I was like, “Okay, that’s that’s why I did that. Yeah. For sure”. 

What’s so crazy is we were watching in real time the pushback of the policy. Even the Superintendent was like, ‘Oh, no, we don’t need that. No, there’s a bullying policy. We don’t need that.” 

It was our amazing and powerful organizing around it that forced it to happen. Our transparency and us being vulnerable in lots of spaces and actually really allowing the creation of this policy to kind of take over our lives for a little while. 

But to turn around and watch the district and the superintendent take credit for it as if it was something that they believed in from jump, and they didn’t. Then to watch the superintendent name it after him. 

To watch the superintendent, in my opinion, attempt to complicate the task force with all of the different people that he put on the task force. How do you write a policy with 45 people?

And some who are known to be anti-anti-racism? 

Yes. A lot of people don’t know that and they won’t see that. They don’t yet understand that’s what happened. And to watch the district still not really give us credit for making sure that the policy had the teeth that it had. The district would not have included community members. 

Honestly, it’s Jara, because if you think of some of the people that were working directly under Jara, they probably would have supported giving you credit. They probably would have supported bringing community and I think everybody 

Maybe. But you know, it’s operational. And at the time we didn’t know it was operational. We thought we’d go before the school board and make a case. 

I remember we drafted the initial demands. The original initial demands that went to everybody included those mental health services, included the training, t addressed the school police, t addressed all these things. Then we had to backpedal and request for the anti-racism policy to be added to the agenda. Then we had to request for it to be adopted. And then we had to request… All through Covid. 

It was years. But then it got to the point, because you did such a good job, that you got everybody wanting it. You got other groups involved, you got assembly people speaking about it. My experience with it was that at the point when the district realized, “Hey, we have to adopt a policy like this”. 

Then it was like, “How do we do this differently to make sure that that all these people that we’re friends with are brought to the table, so that when this work is done everybody thinks that these are the people who did it. And we can’t let everybody know that just a small group of pissed-off women could have such an effect to cause the district to write and adopt this big policy that, if enacted correctly, would make a big difference to 380 schools”. 

That’s a big deal. So I just want you to know that me and the trustees that we’re on the board, and everybody that follows the meetings, and everybody who’s in CCSD at the department level, and all the principals, and the reporters who follow this stuff, and the community organizers- they know that you did this. Everybody knows that you did this except for the people who only hear about CCSD through the superintendent. 

They think he’s Mr. Wonderful and he gets the credit for it. But you did it. You did it by just a handful of you not sitting down, not taking no for an answer, and like you said earlier, demanding better for all students. Because by the time it went through, your kids weren’t even in CCSD anymore. 

So during this time, you got together, you organized, you said, “Let’s print shirts”. You chose a name for your organization. I want to know, why did you choose that name? And at what point did you guys become an actual organization? 

Well, the name came about- we were sitting in the office together, and it dawned on us that this is getting ready to be a thing, right? It’s going to be a long journey. I thought about the fact that the KKK was out on Las Vegas Boulevard protesting the work that we were doing in full hoods and sheets to send a message to us. That came out and went viral on Twitter and we started having a conversation. It was three of three of us. 

And the one consensus was that this ain’t the same time. We’re not in the same space, as black people. And we ain’t going to stand down. So “1865’ was thrown out. 

It is symbolic to the year that slavery was abolished and we were considered free. That’s a huge moment in time. It was symbolic that we would never have to give in to our oppressors again. So anytime anybody ever thought of our organization, it is tied to our freedom. That’s where it came from. 

And then, “No Racism in Schools” is just what it is. We got so much opposition about using the word “racism” that we decided to put the word in our name to make people. Some people wouldn’t even say it.

We made a conscious decision to be in-your-face with the fact that there will be no racism in our schools, period. And so that’s where the name came from. 

We became an actual organization within about a month of everything happening. That first month, we were just so inundated with everything else that was going on. We were just reactive. We were just responding and doing what we needed to do. We didn’t have time to sit and think. We just went right into action.

We started as a campaign and initially, we identified what we wanted to do. So it was like steps that were happening. We didn’t always know the steps in the order that they should have been in, but there were steps that were happening. 

We had also identified that it would probably be harder to get funding. It will probably be harder to get support across the board from specific individuals and organizations, because we are speaking directly to racism in schools. 

We knew what risk we were taking when we named it No Racism in Schools, but we said we were naming it exactly what we meant.

What is the issue with people not wanting to hear the word racism? 

It makes people uncomfortable. It’s an uncomfortable conversation for people to have. Especially when they may not identify as racist. Like, “I’m not racist. I have black friends”. But are you anti-racist? Not being racist and being anti-racist are two very different things. 

People get uncomfortable with talking about racism and talking about how racism has impacted our country and the citizens of of this country, and who is responsible for that?

My personal opinion, or observation, is that a lot of the people who might get offended by the term racist, or they don’t want to hear it, they’re going to be uncomfortable by it, I’ve kind of noticed that they use the word wrong. 

There’s a difference between being racist and being prejudice. Everyone’s kind of racist, and all the “ists”. When something has an “ist”, it’s not personal, necessarily. If it’s an “ist”, it means it’s systemic. And if you’re racist, it means that whether you do it on purpose or not, you are being an active part of racism continuing on. 

So like you said, you’re either against it or for it. For the average person who hasn’t dove deep into this topic, I could see why they might be offended by it. Because sometimes people interchange “racism” with “prejudice”. 

They’re saying, “I don’t dislike black people, or people of color, or gay people, or females” or whatever. But if you are contributing to something that is keeping these marginalized groups disproportionate in any way, then you are, in fact, acting in a “ist” way. 

When my kids were younger, they did the talent show every year- and they still bring us up- I was totally sexist. I was like the stage mom with their magic act. I had my son be the magician and my daughter be the assistant. That is sexist as hell.

So no, I’m not like against women, obviously. And that was something I didn’t think about. I just kind of like assumed, like she would be cute here and he’d be cute here. So, there could be times when you don’t know that you’re thinking or acting in a way that is either perpetuating stereotypes or making an assumption based on stuff you’ve seen in the media or whatever it is. And to to be part of that- I was being sexist. I was acting in a sexist way by doing that. 

So my question is what is the difference between racist and prejudice? Or is there a different term for it? Also, people hear the word “bias” and they hear things like, “Check your bias”, and they take offense to that, when in actuality it’s like, “Hey, we should be checking our biases”. 

I might have biases towards, say, young mothers. I was a young mother. So, if I get an application for something and it’s a young mother, I might think, “You know what? She reminds me of myself. I should give her a chance.” That would be me not checking my biases, right? 

In the same way, say a white man gets a couple resumes across his desk and he sees Tom Jones or whatever. And there’s also Tyrone. He might not dislike people name Tyrone, but still think, “Hey, you know, this kid Tom Jones here reminds me of myself. I was pulling it up from my bootstraps and maybe I should give him a chance”. That somebody who’s contributing to a racist system since we know that disproportionally white resumes- white names- get hired more or just given an interview. 

I don’t know if I’m explaining it correctly, but you being the experts, can you talk a little bit about racism versus prejudice versus bias versus, all the terms. And how people should behave, or how we should be thinking, to be part of the solution with this stuff.

I think that the first part of the solution is people taking it upon themselves to understand the terminology. That’s the first step. My dad always tells me, “Define the word, know the definition, and then you’ll know what you’re talking about.” Define the word, right. 

So racism is something that is systemic. It’s also a construct. 

Racism was something that was made to oppress non-white people. So we’re going to create these races of people. And then if you create these races of people and then you make this race more superior. 

Even Italians were not considered white at some point. So then you have the “isms” coming in.

So, I don’t believe that black people can be racist because we don’t hold power. We are not in a position to systemically oppress anyone, right? We don’t have the money. We don’t have the land. We don’t have control over legislation. We cannot systemically oppress anyone. We are years behind catching up to the average white family when we’re talking about wealth. 

But, can we have bias? Absolutely. Can we be prejudice? Absolutely. Anti-Blackness lives within the black community, just like anti-Blackness lives within the Brown community. Jai and I were just talking about our bias when we heard about this murder-suicide that happened up here in the Northwest. We immediately thought it was a white man. Immediately.

So we had that conversation. Here’s the difference: the three of us are not uncomfortable with talking about, “I needed to check myself on this.”

We’re interested in thinking about how we think. 

Right. We will even go back just like we’re talking about it now. Like, “Oh, shoot. Let me check myself on that, because that’s not okay”. Within the black community, the black community has specific biases about people in the black community.

You’ve told me so much about that. It’s fascinating..

 Whether it’s classism: like you look at someone and you assume that they don’t have this or don’t have that, or because they dress a certain type of way that they are almost beneath you, that they’re different. “Oh, they don’t know about these certain types of things”. So understanding the terminology is very important because you can’t do the work until you actually understand it, until you actually understand what it is that you are working to undo. 

Now, black people and people of color, we can’t undo racism. We don’t have the power. We’re continually fighting to get equal treatment or to get equal access to things. But we can’t undo racism.

What she said was pivotal in our ask with the district. We said we wanted to eradicate racism in education, one classroom at a time. That’s our mission. It was all about understanding that people are racist, but they cannot act upon their racist beliefs and values inside of an educational setting. 

So we weren’t even trying to say, “You can’t be racist”. Everybody has the right to do what they want to do, whether we like it or not. We’re not trying to take anybody’s freedom of speech either. We are saying there’s one safe space that we’re gonna stand on. It’s a school. 

What we’re essentially doing is requiring not just the school district, but the community to deem a school a safe place for real. That’s the part that’s not understood. And that’s why what Akiko is saying is so integral to the work that we do. 

When I think of racism, like when you say it’s not okay in a school environment, I’m thinking of the ones who are not prejudiced, but who are unwilling to do the thinking-work that it would take to consider different kids and different cultures. 

Even if we did… let’s say just, magic wand racism’s gone, everybody has the same belief system. Okay. Well, now there’s still the effects of racism that have happened over the past hundreds of years. 

Which is a whole other conversation with reparations and things like that. But it’s like, even if it was gone quick fix, it’s still gonna exist because of, you know- areas, demographics, the prison system, the pipeline to prison and just all these things. So it’s like… I don’t even know what I’m trying to say. 

So with racism and systemic racism becoming obsolete, then all of those systems go away. There is no school-to-prison pipeline, there is no mass incarceration, there is no red-lining.

But there’s still history, communities living the way they do. How do you fix it from there?

It’s not going to be an easy fix because we’re talking years of it. We’re talking 400 or 500 years.

My opinion honestly, and this is kind of where I hope to take the show later on is that I believe that people know that. I think that people, even the people that are denying that racism exists, it’s because they know it does. They know that if everybody understood that, then there’s going to be so much more work that has to get done, and then they might lose things.

They’re all dying off. That generation of old white men and old white women, who are coming off of the backs of their grandparents owning slaves and plantations, they’re dying off. 

Yeah, you’re right. The newer generation doesn’t care as much and are willing to share the wealth, and change the rules, and change the playing field, it seems like.

I mean, I’m not saying that those generations that are dying off did not have children and teach their children that way. But there are so many of those children who are like, “No, absolutely not”. 

I know of someone’s husband that I’m really close to who has sat down and told me the story of his parents. He doesn’t even talk to them anymore. Raging racists. Hillbilly, raging racists. He has cut off all communication with them because his thought system, his beliefs, are different. I spend time with these people at their home. There’s a generation that’s coming up of people who are like, “Yeah, no, absolutely not”. 

I work with someone who was a Nazi, who was a white supremacist, Shannon Foley Martinez. She will tell you, “I was hateful, I was a racist, I was a violent racist. And I committed violent crimes to black people and people of color”. And her work now today is to eradicate racism. That is how she walks and talks and lives her life. 

One, they’re dying off. Two, there’s going to be continual work on the education level as far as teaching about what history looks like. 

A friend of mine went to Germany and we were talking about how Germany does not not-talk about the Holocaust. They actually have museums up everywhere. They talk about it. They refuse to repeat what happened. So they’re not trying to act like it didn’t happen. And ban books. And do what they’re trying to do in America.

It is going to be continual work in education. That’s why our radical educators are so important, because they are the ones who will be teaching this in classrooms. In a perfect world, those who don’t want to do it will take their kids out and homeschool them, but they will be the minority. 

The thing it goes back to those keywords. They can’t “act” upon it. The moment you give life to it and take action on whatever your beliefs are, be it physical, mental, verbal, emotional, whatever, you continue to give life to it. 

At the end of the day, we’re not condoning people being racist or supremacist. That’s not okay. We’re not condoning black people being prejudiced. You know what I’m saying? What we’re saying is you can’t act upon that. Especially not to oppress people and to keep them from being able to accomplish things that they have the freedom and the liberty or are supposed to have the freedom and the liberty to accomplish.

One of the biggest problems that we have had in this process of writing a policy is with one of our greatest adversaries, Power to Parent. The key members of that organization try to minimize our experiences as black people, or erase them altogether.

Some members feel that they’re not racist and have stated in conversation with us, “Oh, I’m not racist. I have a black child.” That don’t mean you aint racist. The harm comes in minimizing. 

Nobody is trying to make white people pay for what their ancestors did. What we’re simply saying- which is why the book-banning is a no-go, that’s why the CRT conversations are a no-go. 

CRT is not even a conversation in elementary, middle, and high school. That’s why we don’t entertain it because that’s it’s not something that’s taught at a grade level in which we’re focused on. Although our work transcends into institutions of higher learning, our focus as it pertains to CCSD is in a setting that does not have CRT at all. 

The reality of it is that the policy work deals with curriculum because we will not tolerate the erasure of true history. Their issue is that they feel that teaching with fidelity looks like blame. 

Teaching it with full fidelity is the exact opposite of that. It is not blaming anybody. It is saying this happened. They don’t want to take ownership that racism truly exists. Yet members of their organization and organizations who they align themselves with, like Moms for Liberty, stand up at board meetings…

We have videos during the “Write the Policy” campaign where they’re throwing up “Heil Hitler” signs in the board meeting. Where they’re antagonizing by coming in with Confederate flags and doing this. How can you say, “I’m not racist?” And yet every action, again, the key word being “act” upon, right? Every action that you take aligns and supports that you feel in some way, shape, form, or fashion that you are superior to me. 

Most recently, Moms for Liberty, who used to be called something else, who’s also connected to Power to Parent decided to make a bold statement about black children being the problem in CCSD. That they come from single parent homes. 

We’ll be talking a lot more about this in future episodes, by the way. 

The policy is necessary because it touches on staffing and human resource protocols. It touches on personal interactions. It touches on curriculum. It touches on all different facets of where once we get past “You can’t call me a nigger”, Or “You can’t say racial slurs to me without consequence”- because that’s really what that part is about. It’s about consequence and accountability, right? 

Those other components of the anti-racism policy deal with literally undergirding the system and placing the foundation in the system that builds an intolerance for it systemically. 

The policy says you cannot continue to have a majority of your education staff, professionally licensed staff, sit as white people and not give attention to it. While your positions of help and support staff are majority BIPOC and people of color, and not give attention to that. 

In other words, most of your teachers and licensed administrators are white, and most of your paraprofessionals and people that are keeping the grounds and doing the manual work are black. So systemically, you still have us in position beneath you. 

What you said at the beginning, it’s like, “We’re not blaming you. This is how it is. There’s more white people in these positions. There’s more people of color in these positions. No one’s saying it’s your fault or you did this on purpose.” However you want to be seen, you want to be acknowledged. Acknowledge the experience. 

“And what are you doing to undo it? Right? What are you doing to undo? The racism, the systemic racism that is happening. What are you doing in power to undo it?” 

Right. “What are you doing to understand it, even if it’s difficult? What are you doing? What are you trying? Who are you bringing in to the table to ensure that you’re doing the right things?” 

You know, it really comes down to like, who are your thinkers and who are your not-thinkers? In my opinion, every person who actively wants to fight against racism or any “isms” are your critical thinkers. 

They’re the people who read books for fun. Are the people who are like, do puzzles for fun. They’re fine being wrong. They’re fine with like realizing they weren’t good at this before and now they are.

Again, in my personal opinion, because I’ve been fascinated by this, the people who just full-on refuse to accept that racism is a thing, that any “ism” is a thing, are your like, “Entertain me. I just want to be entertained by nonsense” and are not your critical thinkers. 

It’s like, “Why are we so offended by asking people just to think. Just to think about something and consider someone else’s perspective? That’s all. That’s all it’s going to take for us all to get on the same page and move forward. 

Then as we’re talking about the anti-racism policy, talking about the way administrators have been able to carry out racist practices with discipline with their students and get away with it. The way teachers are able to discipline students from a racially motivated lens and get away with it. Before, students really didn’t have the power to call it out. Now they do.

Yep. You’re right. Because of the work that you did.

Before the policy, they’d say, “You’re racist”. Like “This is how you’re treating me or this is what you are doing to me because I am black. Because I am brown.” They would say that and it would go unheard and nothing would happen. Well now, as soon as they say it, it has to be investigated. 

Jai and I are there with the families that can get to us to say, “this is what this child said”, and it will be investigated, thoroughly and properly. Just because you are a teacher does not mean that you are obsolete from being held accountable or facing consequences for your racially motivated behaviors. 

Let me go ahead and ask you… I know that you do so much work for the kids in the district, for the staff in the district, and that you’re always going into schools. You just have so many things going on. But for somebody who doesn’t know that everything you do. 

Where can people learn more about you and learn more about no racism in schools. And then if somebody wanted to either help you or make a contribution or support you, what could they do? 

If you want to get involved, you can start on our website NoRacismInSchools.org We have one donation link active right now, which is our PayPal.me/NRIS1865. 

You can contact us through our website, send us a message. In 2024 will be opening up for more volunteers and more of a structure. We’re definitely moving into a sustainability stage. Over this next year is really critical that we are fundraising in order for us to continue to do this work full scale the way we are now. 

Even though the policy is in place, we are still in the accountability stage. I actually think we’re getting ready to go into the review stage, because we put it into the policy that the policy is reviewed every 2 or 3 years. So it’s time for the policy to be reviewed to see where any changes need to be made, any things need to be updated, and to look at the data overall for the past two years. 

In order to continue to be able to do that, you know… we’re the organization of the community. We are accountable to the community. We do not get money from the school district, we are their accountability partners. We hold them accountable and correct them when they are wrong, but we are loyal to our community. 

I just want to say to both of you, Thank you for the work you’re doing. It’s amazing. I personally know from what I saw behind the scenes and what I see you doing every day, that you have made a huge impact on the people in Clark County and in the schools. So, I thank you for that. And I’m very grateful that despite how we met, that we met, and I consider both of you two of my favorite people, and I’m just honestly honored to be your friend. 

I believe that we’re still at the beginning of our stories, all three of us, and that one day in 10 years, 20 years, we’ll be looking back at this interview like, “Hey, remember when we hadn’t done these things yet?” 

You are just powerhouses, and I am just consistently amazed by everything that you push through and how you push through adversity and you continue to turn every negative thing that gets thrown at you into a positive, and benefit the entire community. So thank you. 

You’re welcome. Thank you for doing this work. We are proud sponsors of your show and we support you and hopefully other districts will look at us and say, “Hey, how can we bring you guys in to create an anti-racism policy?” You, as a former trustee, understanding how the school board works and what that looks like and us as the professionals, especially with writing an anti-racism policy. I can’t I don’t remember off the top of my head how many districts in the country actually have one.

Only a handful.

Yeah, so they they can call us. They can call the three of us. We’ll go in.  

Well, you know what? I didn’t think about that, but I will join you. I’m in. I mean. call these two for sure, but, you know, I’ll go too. I got nothing better to do. Let’s go.

Thank you, ladies, I really appreciate you taking the time to be here. I adore you and have a great rest of your day, okay? 

Thank you. 

Well, that was quite a conversation. Racism in schools and racism in general is not an easy thing to discuss, but it’s important that we all do. 

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Racism in Schools, Anti-Racism Policy, and CRT