Black Leaders Demand Action From SFUSD Following Recent Racist Incidents

Following recent incidents of students using racial slurs and other anti-Black language at local schools, community leaders are calling for SFUSD officials to take immediate action.

The San Francisco NAACP, Coleman Youth Advocates, students, parents, and other members of the Black community held a press conference Wednesday calling on San Francisco Unified School District leaders to do more to address racist language targeting Black students. As KQED reports, Reverend Amos C. Brown said the use of the N-word has become a recurring problem at SFUSD schools, from elementary schools through high school.

“District schools have been attempting to push this epidemic under the rug,” said Brown in a news release. “We need action now from the leadership of this district to put an end to hateful speech before it leads to violence.”

The latest incident occurred September 4 at Lincoln High School in the Sunset District, where a Black student was called the N-word by an Asian American student during a passing period, according to the NAACP and Coleman Advocates for Youth Justice. Rachel Jones, the organization’s Youth Justice director, said a physical altercation followed. According to KQED, video of the incident shows a student being shoved in a hallway.

Jones said the student had also used the slur the previous year, when classmates asked administrators to intervene but felt they did not receive adequate support. She said the physical response was unacceptable, while noting that racial slurs can also cause significant harm to students.

Following the incident, Lincoln administrators sent families an email acknowledging “multiple instances of hate speech” on campus and stating that there was no place at the school for discriminatory, hateful, or demeaning language, per KQED.

SFUSD said district leaders were meeting with the families involved, as well as community stakeholders including the NAACP. The district said it was using restorative practices to support students directly affected by the incident, while also providing resources to the broader Lincoln community.

Brown criticized SFUSD’s response to the September 4 incident, saying the district had been too slow to act and that the letter sent to Lincoln families was too general, as KQED reports. He also questioned whether the school had taken any disciplinary action.

“This is not an isolated incident,” said Yolanda Williams, vice president of the NAACP San Francisco branch. “Every Black child that enters the San Francisco Unified School District deserves respect, they deserve to be safe and they deserve to be in an educational environment that is free from racial hostility.”

The incident came days after SFUSD announced that Lowell High School’s varsity baseball coaching staff had been removed and that the team would forfeit three games next spring following an investigation into racial taunting during a junior varsity championship game against Lincoln last season, as SFist reported previously. The coaches have been on leave since May, when reports surfaced that alleged race-based taunting by Lowell varsity players had occurred while they were present.

KQED reports that the NAACP and Coleman Advocates are calling for greater accountability when racist language and behavior occur on SFUSD campuses. Virginia Marshall of the NAACP also called on Superintendent Maria Su to make clear to principals and assistant superintendents that the N-word is never acceptable in district schools.

The NAACP has a long history of challenging SFUSD over racial discrimination. In 1979, the San Francisco chapter reportedly sued the district, alleging racial discrimination and segregated schools. The case resulted in a consent decree requiring SFUSD to work toward academic equity for African American and Latino students and eliminate racial and ethnic segregation in its schools and programs.

Marshall said the current concerns have brought that history back into focus.

“During that time, under the consent decree of the early years, African American students thrived in SFUSD,” Marshall said, per KQED. “We fear that we are at that threshold again — we should not have to sue the school district for our children to thrive.”

Tensions between Black and Asian American students at Lincoln also stretch back decades. In 1995, a fight involving roughly 100 Asian American and Black students drew dozens of police officers to the school, while another large brawl involving students of different races took place in 2007.

Lincoln High’s student body is 61% Asian, 7% White, 5.5% African American, 4% Filipino, 3% Unknown, 4% Two or more, 1% American Indian, and 1% Native Hawaiian.

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