In late February, as I scrolled through a group chat with classmates, I came across a text making a joke about the n-word. There were a slew of responses laughing at the idea of white students using the n-word casually. I wish I could say this was the first time this had happened, but it wasn’t.

I am in a magnet program which, as many magnet programs are, is majority white and Asian. Such a serious lack of diversity means that many of my peers, most of whom have been in gifted programs since late elementary school, have never been surrounded by underrepresented minority peers. The issue is only amplified when these gifted programs are put in low-performing and high underrepresented minority population schools, creating the narrative that the white and Asian students are there to “save the school.”

This leads to a lack of sensitivity. These students tell racist jokes, develop biases, and use the n-word with no one challenging them. Some of them even have the decency to try and ask for an “n-word pass” (as if one Black person allowing you to say it gives you the license to use it whenever and wherever). Other non-Black students who see the problem tend to ignore it as it’s “not their fight.”

No one is born using the n-word casually or making fun of people based on their race. That behavior is learned and reinforced by a lack of action.

Fed up with years of giving people “the look” and diplomatically telling people to stop saying racial slurs, I pulled out all of the race history and know-how I had acquired from having two academics in my house and attempted to educate my peers as to why they, especially as white and Asian students in a magnet program, should not use the n-word.

I was expecting an apology or just the slightest bit of guilt, but I was met with the exact opposite. They defended it.

Apparently it is racist for me, a Black woman, to tell my white and Asian classmates that they could not use the n-word but that other Black people could. They failed to understand that a word used to dehumanize, delegitimize, and belittle an entire racial group may not be an appropriate greeting for a friend or way to refer to someone. They could not grasp that changing the letters (replacing g’s with b’s or using a soft r) did not change the meaning, but just made it easier to get away with. They could not understand that Black people using the n-word is an act of reclamation and not a license for others to use it. They claimed that if you use racial slurs as a joke, it was just a joke, and I should “just get over it.”

Realizing this avenue had been exhausted, I reported the students to the STOP Tipline, a Google Form that allows students to report incidents to the school administration and counselors. I attached screenshots of the text messages and even left an email to be contacted.

They never responded.

The only school official who addressed the report was our program director, who sent an email condemning the behavior and talked to the offending students in her office. When I asked what the school could do, she said that because they didn’t directly call me the n-word, there was nothing more to be done.

Anyone in high school knows that an email and a “talking-to” does not deter any behavior. In fact, it only elevates the behavior. The students in question made fun of the tipline in a group chat called “KKK”. They called me “angry and confrontational,” which may be the biggest Black girl stereotype out there. They even hyped each other up for how they would shut down the “accusations.”

Accusations? I wondered why I even reported it in the first place.

Macie, a high school student in Berea, had a similar experience when students in a group chat called her the n-word on multiple occasions. “My school has never taken racial issues seriously,” she said. “I’ve spent countless hours crying in the office begging for change only to end up back in the same position two weeks later.”

These incidents are not isolated: they are the result of systems and structures of inequity. They are caused not just by malice, but an ignorance of the history of race in this country and its impact on its citizens. Unlike the non-Black students who boasted using the n-word and its derivatives, my parents were in the first generation to go to the same schools as their white counterparts and live out of poverty. My dad was in the first generation in his family to go to college and my mom the first to be able to choose her major.

In this day and age where there are so many options and so many freedoms, it is easy to wonder why Black people and other groups of color don’t just work harder to advance socially. The answer is that they can’t work any harder when there are systems in place in this country that make it statistically harder for me to go to a good school or to graduate high school. These systems require my parents to sit my brother down and coach him on what to do when he sees a police officer. These systems lead to the murders of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and so many more, and the subsequent failure to bring them justice.

While I appreciate the texts in “solidarity” and the repeated attempts of students and schools to say they are “not racist,” I need them to know that that isn’t enough. Racism, to paraphrase Ibram X. Kendi, is denying the existence of racial inequities in this country. To be anti-racist, we have to believe that no racial group is inherently inferior, but that our systems are causing a dissproportionate number of racial minorities to experience these disparities. Being an anti-racist requires action: calling out the behavior, learning and unlearning, accepting imperfection. No one can entirely get rid of their biases, but progress comes from people stepping up. Not neutrality, not being a bystander, but being vulnerable, knowledge-seeking, and equity-chasing. It is not acceptable to simply “not be a racist.”

And our schools have a responsibility to teach their students the principles of anti-racism and co-liberation. They have a responsibility to promote upstanders and not bystanders. They have a responsibility to help students unlearn the biases they grow up with and learn how to appreciate diversity, promote inclusion, and seek equity in the systems they are in.

But our schools do the opposite. Through the overreliance on standardized tests, discriminatory discipline, inequitable districting, and a lack of representation in advanced classes, our schools advance the narrative of race-based inferiority instead of combating it. We continue to whitewash history, fail to hire a representative teaching body, and perpetuate the lack of inclusion by not requiring teachers and administrators to undergo regular diversity, inclusion, and equity training.

This inattention has dire consequences. Incidents like what happened to me and what happened to Macie also happens to other minority students around the country. When the place where you spend 35 hours a week is reinforcing the idea that you are not as capable as your peers because of your race, you start to internalize it. Students who benefit from their “whiteness” (which doesn’t just include white students) learn that they are inherently smarter or destined for greater things.

Those students who used, and continue to use, the n-word and its derivatives never learned that that wasn’t okay. No student had called out their behavior. No teacher had taught them the unfiltered history of this country. No administrator had ever taken meaningful action to teach these students why using racial slurs is not acceptable.

Education is a powerful tool for good and bad. Our schools need to reexamine their curriculum, policies, and practices to see how they can promote racial equity within their buildings. They need to have hard conversations with their students about their privilege and how students can become not “not racists,” but anti-racists.

Zoë Jenkins is a rising high school senior in Lexington, Kentucky. If you want to hear more about her experience as a Black student in gifted programs, you can watch her TEDxYouth Highlands talk at this link (start at 4:32:10). She is also the founder of DICCE, an organization creating curriculum and training materials for Gen Zers in diversity, inclusion, equity, and anti-racism.

The opinions expressed on the Forum represent the individual students to whom they are attributed. They do not reflect the official position or opinion of the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence or the Student Voice Team. Read about our policies.

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