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Bullying in California: In Some School Districts, Black Students Are Being Targeted by Their Latino Peers
by CBM NEWSWIRENovember 2, 2023
By Edward Henderson | California Black Media
(CBM) – On Feb. 16, 2022, a Black student in the Santa Barbara Unified School District was assaulted by Latino students. His attackers called him the n-word and kneeled on his neck while repeatedly, chanting the name “George Floyd.” A district-wide acknowledgment of the hate crime was not sent out until Feb. 22, of that year.
Despite the psychological trauma this student experienced, the school did little to provide him with mental health support. This is in spite of Assembly Bill (AB) 1145, the Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act, a state law that provides specific instructions for schools to follow in such incidents.
Connie Alexander-Boaitey, President of the Santa Barbara branch of the NAACP, says against African Americans are often minimized in her city due to their representation as the smallest demographic group.
“Oh, there’s “not that many,’” Alexander-Boaitey says, referring to a common response when hate crimes are reported or when people complain about racism. “But ‘not that many’ are still being harmed.
Alexander-Boaitey was speaking during a news briefing hosted by Ethnic Media Services on Oct. 27 on school bullying. She was joined on the panel by Becky L. Monroe, the Deputy Director of Strategic Initiatives and External Affairs at the California Civil Rights Department (CRD); Dashka Slater, an award-winning journalist and author who has written books about children who are victims of bullying; Mina Fedor, a young AAPI activist who was honored by President Biden for her efforts to address racism, Xenophobia, and hate in her community; and Barbra Risling, another young activist and member of the Hoopa Valley Tribe as well as a Descendant of the Karuk and Yurok Tribes.
Alexander-Boaitey says the hate crimes and hate incidents, including bullying and cyberbullying, affecting children are all connected to “generational pain” for Black Americans.
Among schoolchildren, “It’s the pervasive calling of the n-word to Black, African American students by young Latino students,” she said. “It’s every day. Its weekly.”
Another Black family in Santa Barbara now walks their child to school to protect her from bullying classmates. And one has pulled their daughter out of the school system completely, opting for home schooling.
To address the problem, the Santa Barbara Unified School District commissioned a survey titled “2023 Anti-Blackness and Racial Climate Assessment and Analysis” that proposed a set of recommendations for addressing the problem.
The hate incidents targeting African American children are not confined to Santa Barbara but are increasing across California, according to the NAACP. These incidents, often involving physical violence and verbal abuse, are more frequent as Black families relocate to predominantly Latino neighborhoods.
In Santa Barbara, African Americans make up only 2% of the population but they account for the most victims of bullying and hate crimes in the area. At 47.5%, Latinos make up the majority of Santa Barbara’s population followed by Whites at 43.5%. According to the local NAACP branch, most of the perpetrators of the bullying and hate crimes are Latino children.
Alexander-Boaitey says she believes the hate incidents are rooted in historic racism and connected to a general desire to make Black people invisible.
“That somehow or another in an effort to move towards more White-facing or White upstanding, one group has said this group doesn’t need to be here so we can be more approximate to what is White. That’s what’s really happening in our schools,” says Alexander-Boaitey.
