The impacts of racism are all too real for Florida’s students
The introduction of the “Stop WOKE Act,” or HB 7, on Individual Freedoms would have us ignore or deny the existence of present-day racism and its impacts. However, racism continues to rear its ugly head toward youth in our Florida communities.
Students in Jacksonville reported being called racial slurs by a teacher and assaulted by classmates. An Orange County principal participated in and supported staff in making racial slurs against students. There were teens in Yulee who posted racial slurs, students in Martin County who took a picture spelling out a racial slur and many more incidents like these.
It is abundantly clear that racism is alive and well in Florida’s schools and among our youth.
As school-based mental health providers, we are acutely aware of the chronic mental health concerns that accompany episodes of racism for marginalized youth, including a 25% greater likelihood to experience mental health difficulties, as well as exponential growth in suicidal risk. Black youth also were significantly more likely to lose caregivers during the pandemic, a trauma that will have long-lasting impact permeating all aspects of a child’s wellbeing.
School segregation, disproportionate school funding policies and resource allocation are on an upward trend. Schools attended predominately by Black youth tend to also be those where the majority of students are low-income and economically marginalized. Given that schools are funded by property taxes, this means that Black youth are also attending schools that are dramatically under-resourced and underfunded, relative to schools attended by primarily white youth.
During the pandemic, Black students experienced greater instructional loss due to a lack of access to the technology and resources needed to access instruction during quarantine. Relatedly, we continue to see a gap of 30 percentage points between Black and white students in reading growth. Lower rates of literacy mean decreased opportunity, furthering the cycle of marginalization and oppression.
As community members, neighbors and humans, all of us should care about addressing the suffering of our neighbors and the youth in our communities no matter how uncomfortable the truths of racism are. Turning our cheek does nothing to remedy the systemic, underlying policies and processes that continue to place members of color in our community in harm’s way. Doing so will ultimately harm us all.
It is time for us to call upon our representatives to represent all members of our communities, which begins with a continued acknowledgment of the harms caused by racism and exploration – beginning with ourselves – of how we can all contribute to righting these wrongs. The only way for us to do this is to engage in conversations about the existence of racism, where it comes from, why it persists, how it impacts us all and how we can begin to dismantle it, to disentangle it and extract it from our public institutions and practices.
This begins with our youth, who are learning about citizenship and being contributing members of society who help propel us forward in progress for all.
Angela Mann is the president of the Florida Association of School Psychologists.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Dr. Angela Mann: Impacts of racism are real for Florida’s students
