SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Incidents of racism at local schools have many asking about what the effects are on the community.
Youth advocate with Voice of the Youth, Tyler McClure, explained what it’s like for students who experience such events.
“A lack of safety. I feel like our students don’t feel like they have an environment where they can just be without having to worry about not feeling like they don’t belong,” McClure said.
He said everyone needs to keep in mind that segregation is in the very recent past.
“You send them back to that spot. You send them back there to 'no coloreds allowed, whites only.' So when you get that in a place where you’re supposed to be learning, what more do you have to learn about than rather than the fact that you’re not wanted in a certain environment,” McClure said.
McClure said he has experienced such racism first hand while he was a student running cross country.
“I remember being in the moment and realizing, ‘Dang, even in California, even in Sacramento, California where it seems like it would be the most diverse, even at home,’” he said.
“My question is, how are they being raised? You know, I think everything is learned behavior. A lot of things are learned behavior. What environments are they being cultivated in? What conversations are being had at home?” McClure said.
Psychoanalyst Dr. Bethany Marshall is asking the same question.
“There’s so many ways to look at this. I’m looking at it from a psychoanalytic perspective. I’m asking where are these 14-year-olds developmentally that they have to resort to racial slurs and graffiti,” Dr. Marshall said.
She said it all starts at home.
“Developmentally, they are mimicking the people most important to them, their parents,” Marshall said.
She knows some people don’t think such things can happen in diverse places like the Sacramento area but said it can sometimes make it worse.
“When we’re in a diverse community, where those we imagine are inferior are actually doing better than we are, then it creates a sense of uncertainty disease, a sense that things are ambiguous and maybe even out of our control," she said. "What are we going to try to do? We’re going to try to create certainty by pushing those people back down again. And that is the basis of prejudice.”
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