Institutional racism plagues St. Cloud schools
As an engaged resident and educator, I am concerned about the commitment by the school board and superintendent to the district’s core values – excellence, learning, leadership, partnership, respect
Somalis are under attack in St. Cloud because of their race, their religion and their immigration/refugee status. With the recent influx of many Somali students, the St. Cloud public schools are facing a clash of cultures.
In the 1990s, Somalis began to trickle into the city, and now they are probably the largest black ethnic group, surpassing the number of black Americans. Like black Americans, they also experience intense racial and cultural animus.
As compared with the white population, Somalis are sharply different in four categories: race (white European vs. black African), religion (Christian vs. Muslim), citizenship (American vs. refugee/immigrant), and culture (Eurocentric vs. Afro-Islamic.)
This is a very volatile social mix.
Troubled history
The Somali community continues to suffer numerous attacks at various levels and in all areas of social life, including schools, stores, workplaces, housing and the media.
In St. Cloud, the first Somali mosque and center was vandalized in 2002. Hateful flyers against the Prophet Mohammed have been posted. There was a speakout at the City Council chambers in 2009. Protests against discrimination of Somali students at Apollo High School took place in 2010.
Furthermore, Somalis have been stigmatized as terrorists, pirates, religious fanatics and bad neighbors. This historical background will help us understand the major systemic issues of the protest rally by Somali students March 18 at Technical High School.
In May 2004, students, parents and members of the community gathered to discuss several incidents that were racially motivated at Tech. The school’s then-principal Roger Ziemann said the fights were between Somali students and others at school and off campus. The fights grew out of frustration. Somali kids were tired of being told to go back where they came from.
St. Cloud police were called to Tech or the area 69 times in 2002 as compared with 128 times for all of 2003. They had been called to Apollo High School or nearby 71 times in 2002 and 138 times in 2003.
But these racial incidents are merely symptoms of institutional racism in the St. Cloud public school system, a system that
operates on white cultural norms, which are reinforced by a white standard code of student conduct. The rules are enforced in a racially biased way to exclude many black youth from the public school system.
Educators would benefit from the painful realization that black youth are socialized in an oppressive society, and that dismantling prejudicial beliefs and actions is key to dealing with conflicts that result in suspensions, which feeds the pipeline to juvenile detention centers and prisons.
Key issue
As an engaged community member and educator, I am concerned about the commitment by the school board and superintendent to the district’s five core values — excellence, learning, leadership, partnership and respect.
Where is the in-depth strategic thinking? It is one thing to request and retain more teachers and counselors of color, but what is being done to teach cultural competence to current teachers? How can the school system be transformed to prepare students for the profound changes in cultural diversity?
The basic issue Somali students and the Somali community are calling attention to is the systemic and continuous failure of the district’s administration and board to seriously address the toxic anti-Somali climate and institutional racism – racial patterns that result from policies, rules and prejudice.
There are administrators and staff members and some board members who still do not seem to grasp the significance of the social transformation of their school system, as demonstrated by the recurring conflicts between Somali and non-Somali students and the high suspension rate of black students.
Pushing out blacks
The district’s failure to properly educate our youth has dire consequences.
One measure of the failure is the exceedingly high suspension rate of black students. Minnesota Department of Education data showed the district suspended 1,125 students in the 2013-14 school year, a 59.6 percent year-over-year increase. For all black students, the increase was 107 percent.
American society tends to stigmatize black youth as young criminals, and as part of that society, many educators perceive them as disruptive, disrespectful and prone toward violence. They believe these traits are endemic to black youth, who are subsequently regarded as inherently pathological.
Suspensions rip the fabric of relationships among students, caregivers and educators, resulting in distrust and compromising future interactions. They cause distrust at the level of family-school relationships that hinders schools’ ability to educate students.
Educators who lack cultural knowledge can misinterpret black youth behavior as maladaptive or disordered. The misattribution of negative labels to normative black youth behaviors fosters an environment wherein black youth identities are criminalized and punished.
Instead of denying that systemic racial problems exist, the board and administrators must act on the legitimate grievances of the Somali community and develop a strategic plan based on genuine diversity and social justice, and dedicated to systemically advocating, building and maintaining respectful, collaborative and reciprocal relationships.
This is the opinion of Luke Tripp, a professor in the Department of Ethnic and Women’s Studies at St. Cloud State University.