Sacramento wrestler was targeted with racist slurs. His mom demands repercussions

Saying that officials at Roseville High School and its district did not do enough to deter hate speech, the mother of a Black Inderkum High wrestler called for systemic changes and the expulsion of a student spectator who derided her son with racist slurs last week.

Natomas resident Mercedes Overby and her 16-year-old son, Omarion, said they did not hear the racist taunting at Thursday’s match in Roseville, but became aware of it the following day.

Overby was seated on the visitor’s side of the gym while the spectator was on the Roseville side during the match. Omarion, who has a 3.8 GPA, said he was intensely focused on trying to win a match that extended into triple overtime.

It was a tough loss, but on Friday, he faced something even worse. That was when Omarion and his mother learned that he had been targeted with racial slurs and derogatory stereotypes during his match. One of his teammates’ relatives had captured it on video.

“They sent the video to me, and I watched it and I was just shocked,” Omarion said. “And after that, I sent it to my mother.”

On the video, two spectators are heard, including one Roseville High student, district officials told Overby.

“They used the N-word, and they made monkey gestures,” Omarion said.

Overby said her son had never experienced racism in this way, and both remained deeply disturbed. At 6-foot-2 and 285 pounds, Omarion typically eats $300 in groceries in a week, Overby said, but now, she’s lucky if he downs a bowl or two of ramen noodles for dinner. He also hasn’t been playing video games, an evening routine for him before Friday.

“I’m hurting,” Overby said, fighting back tears. “My son is hurting. And I don’t know how to make it better but to just keep (checking in with him).”

Overby, who works as a human resources director, said she didn’t realize until after several views that they also were calling Omarion autistic. He’s not, she said, but “what does autism look like?”

Despite being chastised for racism by someone videotaping them, Overby said, the two spectators continued with their monkey mimicry and hate speech.

Roseville High School Principal Ashley Serin issued an apology and said: “Racism and discrimination, in any form, will never be tolerated or accepted on our campus.”

Roseville Joint Union High School District said the district had taken steps to address Friday’s “inappropriate action” but said they could not go into detail because of the student’s right to privacy.

Studies show racism can affect health, UC experts say

The impact of racist smears can be multi-faceted and devastating, especially for young people trained to believe they are part of a team, University of California researchers told The Sacramento Bee.

“There is acute humiliation and trauma experienced by the target of slurs, and that’s likely to be especially intense when it occurs in the context of a public event, like this where there are a lot of witnesses,” said Robert Faris, a sociology professor at UC Davis. “Then of course, now everything is recorded on phone, so the number of witnesses to this is potentially fairly close to infinite.”

These sort of attacks can shatter a teen’s sense of safety, said UCLA psychologist Vickie Mays, and administrators should be there to ensure that, if young people face it, they get the support they need to re-establish feelings of security.

“It’s not the first time students have dealt with this, unfortunately, but hopefully as a society, we can learn from this and stop this,” Inderkum athletic director Justin Reber said.

He described Omarion, a heavyweight wrestler and a right tackle on the school’s varsity teams, as “a phenomenal young man” and “a top student.”

“His response was that he wants to meet the guys who did this and shake their hand and understand why they’d do this, to get together and squash this and figure out how we can get better,” Reber said.

UCLA psychologist Vickie Mays recommended that school administrators: Work to remove the video from social media if it has been posted there. Find a way to ensure students stop sharing it. Bring in credentialed counselors to help the team and Omarion.

Roseville High School principal apologizes

Inderkum has put a lot of effort into training these wrestlers to be a team, Mays said, but what are they doing now that one of them has been targeted in the worst kind of stereotyped and derogatory way?

”He has been emotionally beaten up, and there is responsibility to also understand that the dissemination of those visuals have landed blows on him, no different than had he been beaten up,” Mays said.

Deidra Powell, executive director of the Communications and Family Engagement Department at Natomas Unified School District, said it was disheartening that Inderkum students experienced this “inappropriate behavior.”

“We have expressed our concerns to the Roseville High School administration and will provide support to our students as needed,” Powell said.

The California Interscholastic Federation, the governing body for high school sports, and its Sac-Joaquin Section have taken a hands-off approach, leaving it to the two schools to work out.

CIF said it continues to stress that schools should use its “sportsmanship toolkit” to ensure they have effective plans, prevention strategies and responses when it comes to discriminatory acts. Among them: Make announcements before and during the game to explain expectations about behavior and put school monitors in the bleachers who can intervene if fans get out of line.

Overby said she has not heard of any action taken by officials at Roseville High School or CIF that will prevent other students from experiencing what her son did.

“I’m not trying to ruin another kid’s life. I’m not,” she said, “but were they thinking about how my kid was going to be adversely affected by what they were saying?”

She said her son already is dealing with a lot in his life, things that people wouldn’t know from his performance on the mat or on the field. His father, her ex-husband, has had multiple strokes, she said, and relocated to the East Coast a little more than a year ago to live with his mother.

This was a man who never missed one of Omarion’s football or wrestling competitions, she said, and Omarion is enduring this separation when his dad’s health is at its most precarious.

CA mom demands changes that will deter racist behavior

Community advocate Berry Accius has helped many Sacramento-area Black families over the years who have encountered racism in local schools, and he’s assisting the Overbys now. This wouldn’t keep happening, he said, if there were transparency, proper education and real ramifications.

At a minimum, Overby said, she wants the expulsion of the student who targeted her son, but Accius and Overby said their aim is protecting students from racist ridicule. They demanded:

▪ A thorough investigation and report of last week’s incident by an impartial third party.

▪ Anti-racism training for students, teachers and staff.

▪ A zero-tolerance policy for racism and concrete definitions of how infractions will be addressed.

▪ Support and counseling services for targets of hate speech.

▪ A review and revision of the current curriculum to ensure it represents diverse cultures and histories accurately.

▪ Regular forums for community dialogue on issues of race and inclusion.

The impact of racist slurs and actions aren’t easily shaken off, Faris said, because no matter how the targets or witnesses respond to them, they are prone to second-guessing what they should have done.

”Longer term, when these kinds of events accumulate, there’s a really serious chronic stress effect,” Faris said. “That’s the more serious concern, and that takes a really significant psychological and physical toll.”

What Omarion said he can’t understand is why parents aren’t instilling their children with different values.

“There’s really people who just have no decency and home training,” Omarion said. “It’s so surprising that someone could just say the n-word and make those remarks and not feel any sort of way or feel like they should face no consequences.”