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Community Forum on Institutional Racism: Adult Leaders Answer to Students

13323_386579311418_386563546418_4846139_6589992_nOn Thursday July 8th, the room was buzzing with the voices of about 70 youth, parents, activists and leaders from King County. All convened to share culture and to confront adult community leaders about how the effects of institutional racism affect young people’s education and quality of life.

It was hosted by a group called Youth Undoing Institutional Racism (YUIR). YUIR is a youth-centered, youth-run initiative started out of the Seattle Young Peoples Project (SYPP) back in 1999. YUIR meets weekly to empower youth with tools, support, resources and experience to organize for social change. Read up about YUIR here at their website.

If you have a chance to attend there next event, you should. It was rad. After opening with traditional Samoan dances and some spoken word, young people got down to business by posing challenging questions to some of Seattle’s top community leaders. Here’s the list of adults on the panel:

Glen Harris from the mayor’s Race and Social Justice Initiative

Julie Nelson from the Seattle Office of Civil Rights

Nick Metz, Deputy Chief of the Seattle Police Department

Larry Evans, a legislative aid for Larry Gossett

Sili Savusa from the Highline School Board

Questions posed by young people were deep and direct. Questions like “why do schools not teach the histories of People of Color as much as they teach white history? Why do police mistreat communities of color? Why does immigration status bar students from getting financial aid for college? Why is our prison systems spending money to lock people up, but not rehabilitate? Why aren’t teachers evaluated on their understanding of racism? Who keeps police accountable to communities of color? And on and on, like that. Great questions all around!

The answers were honest, too. Nick Metz acknowledged our city’s history of racial division. Julie Nelson said squarely “We need cultural competency training all over this city.” We heard alarming statistics about King County’s prison system—King County is 5.8% black, however 45% of incarcerated youth are black. AND, in the last 10 years incarceration rates have been cut in half but the racial disparity continues to GROW.  We heard about changing the ways schools communicate with parents and families. Most paperwork sent home is only in English, which is a huge burden for parents and families where English is a second language.

At the end, all the community leaders present committed to meeting back with YUIR at least 4 times a year in the future to further the conversation (Metz said he wanted to meet more frequently).

As YUIR’s button pins declare, it was a brilliant night of “Speaking Truth to Power.” This group of young folks and their mentors engaging issues of racism in schools and juvenile justice (pointing out the history of linkage between these two institutions) was powerful!!

For a full review of the Q and A’s, check it out here.

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