Black and Asian American students were often called racial slurs, while teachers and staff members ignored their complaints, the Justice Department found.
A school district in Utah ignored âserious and widespreadâ racial harassment for years, failing to respond to complaints from Black and Asian American students who were called racial slurs and physically assaulted by their peers, according to an investigation by the Justice Departmentâs Civil Rights Division.
The investigation, which focused on reports from 2015 to 2020, found more than 200 examples of racial harassment in the predominantly white Davis School District north of Salt Lake City, the Justice Department said.
Black students were disciplined more harshly and frequently than white students, the investigation found, and Black students were denied opportunities to form student groups.
Complaints about such treatment were frequently ignored or brushed off, leading the Justice Department to conclude that the district âwas deliberately indifferent to the racially hostile climate in many of its schools.â
The report was published last week as the Justice Department announced that it had reached a settlement with the district.
Under the terms of the settlement, the district agreed to create a new department to handle complaints of racial discrimination; to train its staff members to identify and respond to complaints; to teach students how to report harassment; and to offer training to students, employees and parents to help them identify and prevent racial discrimination in its schools.
âPervasive racial harassment and other forms of racial discrimination in public schools violate the Constitutionâs most basic promise of equal protection,â Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general of the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. âThis agreement will help generate the institutional change necessary to keep Black and Asian American students safe.â
The Davis School District, Utahâs second largest, has more than 72,000 students, only about 1 percent of whom are Black or Asian American. In a statement, it said that it âtakes these findings very seriously.â
âThey do not reflect the values of this community and the expectations of the district,â it said. âThe district pledges to correct these practices.â
The Justice Department began investigating the district in 2019. It found that the district had records of at least 212 reports of Black students being called a racial slur across 27 of its schools.
âPeers taunted Black students by making monkey noises at them, touching and pulling their hair without permission, repeatedly referencing slavery and lynching and telling Black students âgo pick cottonâ and âyou are my slave,ââ the department said.
In October 2019, a white elementary school student dressed up as Hitler for Halloween, giving the Nazi salute as he marched in a parade through the hallways, the department said. Staff members did not stop him or report him to the schoolâs administrators, the report said.
Sometimes, white students would demand that their Black peers give them permission to use racial slurs directed at Black people. When Black students resisted, they were âsometimes threatened or physically assaulted,â the department said.
The harassment would often happen in front of members of the districtâs predominantly white faculty and staff, but they âwould not respond or intervene in any way,â the department said.
Sometimes, Black and Asian American students were told ânot to be so sensitive,â the department said. Concluding that school employees effectively condoned the behavior, some students stopped reporting harassment and began missing school because of it, according to the report.
Some former students said that racism had persisted in the district for decades.
Jacob Low, 32, and his younger brother, Randy Low, 27, who attended schools in the district in the early 2000s, said in separate interviews on Sunday that students and teachers had repeatedly harassed them for being half Japanese.
A torrent of hate and violence against people of Asian descent around the United States began last spring, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.
In high school, Jacob Low said, an English teacher taunted him in front of other students about his Japanese heritage. Their mother called administrators numerous times, he said, and told them, âYou guys have a serious racism problem.â
But administrators and teachers either did not seem to know how to curb the harassment or did not care enough to try to address it, Randy Low said.
âAnother student used a racial slur and was not disciplined in any way, and a classroom full of other students witnessed it,â Randy Low said. âI realized, why would I bring this up to administration, to my teachers, if the only thing theyâre going to do is tell me, âYouâre OKâ?â
Tomoya Averett, 22, who graduated in 2017 from a district high school, said that a group of girls were especially brutal to her in middle school, and that they âmade it a pointâ of calling her a racial slur nearly every day.
âIâm a human who wants to be treated like another human, and itâs sad that at that age I had to ask for respect from people who should have just given it to me,â Ms. Averett, who is Black, said in an interview on Sunday. âI have nephews and nieces who are in Davis School District, and it just breaks my heart. Iâm worried about them every day.â
The acting U.S. attorney for Utah, Andrea Martinez, said in a statement that she hoped that the settlement agreement would be âthe start of a new chapter in which Black and Asian American students will attend Davis schools without fear.â
Former students said they were skeptical that real change would happen soon.
âIf you have poison in the district, and you do nothing about it, itâs going to remain,â Randy Low said. âSo I hope itâs eye-opening to the community. But honestly, it should have been eye-opening 10 years ago.â
Logging in, please wait...
0 General Document comments
0 Sentence and Paragraph comments
0 Image and Video comments
New Conversation
New Conversation
New Conversation
New Conversation
New Conversation
New Conversation
New Conversation
New Conversation
General Document Comments 0