School Colors

Her dad is black, and her mom is white. Classmates, she says, have asked her if they could touch her hair. "You're too white," she says they have told her. "You don’t dress black.” 

"I felt isolated," Keller-Robbins says. "And I didn't feel like I had anyone to lean on."

This year, Keller-Robbins teamed with classmate Kendall Berry to form a black student union at Wilson, located in Southwest Portland. Berry says they want the group to create a safe space for black students to share their experiences and spark dialogue with white students who may be clueless about black culture.

"It's so foreign to them that they're curious about it, but the curiosity comes off as offensive," says Berry, who is African-American. "'Oh, what is it like to be black?'"

Lincoln, Jefferson and Grant high schools in the Portland Public Schools have black student unions. But the evolution of the black student union at Wilson illustrates the challenges African-American students face at schools lacking true racial diversity.

And the numbers at Wilson are surprising: Of the 14 students who regularly attended Wilson's black student union meetings this year, nine were white.

Maddy VanSpeybroeck, who is white and will be a junior next year, joined the black student union in January because she wanted to hear about the experiences of African-American students at Wilson.

VanSpeybroeck says she's seen teachers chastise students who make prejudicial remarks, but she has never seen a teacher go on to encourage a discussion about race.

"They might say, 'Hey, don't say that,'" she says, "but they never have a conversation about why."

Those are the deeper conversations the black student union hopes to inspire.

This week, controversy continues to follow Rachel Dolezal, the former NAACP leader in Spokane who has identified as black even though her family is white. Her case demonstrates that discussions about race and cultural appropriation are rich territory, especially for young people navigating their own identities.

Since 2007, when Superintendent Carole Smith took over PPS, the district has spent more than $2.5 million training teachers and administrators to understand racial bias and its role in everything from the disproportionate punishment of black students to the low number of minority students in honors classes.

Hyung Nam, a Wilson High social studies teacher, says discussions of race are integral to his lesson plans.

"It's a major part of our reality," says Nam, who Wilson students say is one of a handful of teachers willing to tackle racial issues in class. "You'd have to work hard to avoid it."

Nam says he understands why other teachers whose subjects could include discussions of race might avoid the topic. They might feel uncomfortable broaching the subject for fear the talks could go sideways.

Nam also says it might be easier for a teacher to ignore race if he or she sees mostly white faces. "It really creates a different atmosphere," Nam says. "Non-white students are basically on the sidelines."

Only 5 percent of the 1,257 students at Wilson identify as African-American, according to PPS records, while 75 percent say they are white. Overall, 12 percent of high-school students in the district identify as black and 54 percent as white.

Berry was inspired to launch Wilson's organization after attending a party at another student's house. He took along Sekai Edwards, the president of Jefferson's black student union, who lives in North Portland.

Edwards was struck by the disregard white partygoers showed as they casually used "the n-word."

"How can you handle this?" she asked Berry. "People out here are really racist."

Berry says he'd grown so used to hearing it that he didn't notice. "I was being ignorant," Berry says. "I was so used to the rudeness, it felt normal."

Edwards urged Berry to form a black student union. About 20 to 30 students—half of whom were African-American—came to the first meeting in January. Most African-American students, however, soon stopped coming to meetings. 

"It's hard because not everyone wants the same thing," Berry says. "Some want the race talks. Others want a cool place to chill out. It's hard to have both."

What helped keep the black student union at Wilson going, Berry and Keller-Robbins say, was the participation of some members of another student group, the 12-member feminist union, made up mostly of white students.

Co-president Nina VanSpeybroeck, Maddy's twin sister, feared the attendance of her group might scare away black students. She asked the co-presidents of the black student union whether her group should stop attending meetings. They told her to keep coming.

"We needed white allies," Berry says. Keller-Robbins agrees: "It felt nice having people on your side, even if they didn't know what it is like exactly."

On April 30, the black student union tweeted a photo from a meeting, and most faces in it were white. "What can we do as a black student union," @blckwilson asked, "to get you black kids in here with us?"

The group helped sponsor the screening of a documentary, Black Girl in Suburbia, and that brought out more black students, including several Somalis.

Regardless of who attends the meetings, students say the need for greater awareness about race is profound. Posters for the black student union have been torn down, and anonymous Wilson students created a white student union on Instagram. (It's got 49 followers but no posts.)

Neither Wilson principal Brian Chatard nor vice principal Ayesha Freeman responded to WW's interview requests. Keller-Robbins and Berry, though, say Freeman encouraged them to create the club.

Kyla Jones, who is white and a co-founder and co-president of the feminist union, says Wilson students often make remarks that constitute what she calls "micro-agressions"—and that proves the need to discuss race more at the school.

“It takes a bunch of people calling wrong things out for people to listen,” Jones says. 

WWeek 2015