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South Philly students and community organizers want school district officials to take responsibility for the oversight that, they say, caused recent attacks.
By Nalea J. Ko, Reporter
Published January 11, 2010
It has been over a month since the racial attacks erupted at South Philadelphia High School, but students and community leaders said school district officials are refusing to take accountability for the incidents.
Asian Pacific American community organizers said the tension between students began about a year ago when five to six Asian Pacific American students were chased into a subway station and allegedly assaulted. Students reached out for help, according to organizers. They described routine harassment at school: milk being thrown at them in the cafeteria, kids assaulting them in the cafeteria and bathrooms, money being stolen from them in the bathrooms, and more.
Requests to install security cameras and hire a bilingual security officer were made after that incident, said APA community leaders. It was not until after the highly publicized Dec. 3 attacks, they said, that those requests were addressed.
On Dec. 3 about 30 APA students were attacked again throughout the day and after school. Seven students required hospital treatment. Ten students — four APA and six African American — were suspended.
Unsatisfied with the school district officials’ handling of the situation, about 50 APA students boycotted school for about a week. They took to the streets holding signs that read, “Grown-Ups Let Us Down,” and “It’s Not a Question of Who Beat Whom, But Who Let it Happen.” Philadelphia Schools Supt. Arlene Ackerman said at a Jan. 7 meeting that the blame game needed to stop and explained that the incidents could be gang-related, which was never suggested before.
The continued lack of accountability is not helping to heal wounds, said community leaders.
“Our concern is if you are not sharing an analysis that adult failure to act or negligence was leading to this situation, how are you going to make a place safer?” explained Ellen Somekawa, executive director of Asian Americans United, or AAU. “If you’re going to deny it or try to sweep it under the rug, how are you going to actually work to fix it?”
Following the Dec. 3 incident, students created a list of security and “climate” demands for district school officials, intended to help foster a safe learning environment. More security cameras and security officers have since been installed at the school. But some students said they still feel uncomfortable there.
“The school district has addressed some issues of student concerns but not all,” wrote Michelle Nguyen, Boat People SOS (BPSOS) national media specialist, in an e-mail to the Pacific Citizen. “During the boycott, the students had put together a list of demands for the school district, and those demands ought to be seriously considered.”
She said it is important for the school district to ensure security personnel respond to harassment claims and that school officials are knowledgeable of the cultural needs of immigrant students.
The school district did not respond to requests for a comment.
South Philly High Erupts
About 70 percent of South Philly High students are African Americans, 6 percent White, 18 percent Asian American and 5 percent Latino. Reports to the local media by Latino students suggest that not only APA students were targeted.
The tension, which stems from about a year ago, erupted in violence throughout the school day and after school. Students trolled the school hallways, said community leaders, looking for APA students to attack. Crowds of attackers waited outside after school as APA students were told to leave campus by officials, said community organizers.
A crowd of predominately African American students attacked about 30 APA students. Community leaders said it is not important who attack whom, but who allowed the attacks to occur.
“That’s a composition of the school,” Somekawa said. “What we’ve been at pains to talk about is that we are saying that these are racial attacks, but we’re really focusing on the fact that they are racial attacks because they’re targeting Asian immigrant students. We’re not saying they are racial attacks because the attackers were African Americans.”
Others agree with Somekawa.
“I think it’s more complicated than black on Asian,” said Kay Kyungsun Yu, chairwoman of the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations (PCHR). She is a member of the 50-person Task Force For Racial and Cultural Harmony, which is implementing the SPIRIT program at the high school. The aim of the program is to end violence and racism at school.
“Again, I’m not going to speak to the specifics of what happened on Dec. 3. … I believe that racial tensions certainly exists and exacerbated the situation, but the potential for violence to happen can occur in any context,” she added.
To address lingering concerns about the climate at South Philadelphia High, PCHR officials will hold about 11 public hearings throughout the year beginning Jan. 28. The hearings are planned to help “address intergroup violence” at Philadelphia public schools.
For some APA students at South Philadelphia High School, the tension is still palpable. Some said they feel a little safer at school with the newly installed security cameras and officers. They added that hostility in the cafeteria still exists where other students are cutting in front of others in lunch lines without school officials intervening.
Despite remaining concerns, there is an important lesson, students said, to be learned from the eruption of violence that occurred Dec. 3.
“The incidents have made me [understand] how irresponsible and powerless the authorized people at my school and in the school district are,” said 17-year-old Duong-Nghe Ly, who is Vietnamese American. “What they've done is just to refuse the responsibilities toward all the problems that have existed in the school district for so many years.”
“Most importantly, they all have made me as well as the others realize that, if we had not stood up and fought for what we believe in, our school would not have been like how it is now, and the next generations of immigrant students may have had to suffer [from] what we had gone through for years.”
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