Student Viewpoint: The World is not Peaches and Cream
by Schama
Viewpoint
Schama, who has chosen to be identified by only her first name, shares her experience appealing her expulsion from her Boston high school.
The world is not peaches and cream: we need to be aware of the warfare being waged against us by the prison system and the education system. Learn to love one another and make better choices.
According to President Obama, the United States has just five percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of the world’s prisoners. As Van Jones said in Ava DuVernay’s documentary 13th, “One out of four human beings with their hands on bars, shackled, in the world, are locked up here in the land of the free.” I recently learned about the school to prison pipeline. It works like this: A student may get into a fight at school that they didn’t start, but they still get suspended. And they go to a disciplinary school for a little while, and when they come back to their old school everything is different. Nobody believes that they didn’t start the fight. Now everyone thinks they’re a bad kid, so they start acting like a bad kid. They can no longer see the future they used to see, they get into another fight and this time they get arrested. This is how the pipeline works, I could have fallen into this pipeline.
Malcolm X wrote in his Autobiography, “Any person who claims to have deep feeling for other human beings should think a long, long time before he votes to have other men kept behind bars – caged. I am not saying there shouldn’t be prisons, but there shouldn’t be bars. Behind bars, a man never reforms. He will never forget. He never will get completely over the memory of the bars.” (Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 155).
They want you to be weak, and that my friend we will never be.
On October 30th I was coming out of class; it was a regular Monday. I was talking to my friends and we were messing around as friends do. A lady walked up next to us and asked, “Where do you need to be?” It bothered me because I was where I needed to be, so I ignored her, waved her off and walked away. The next thing I know, my dean came in to my class at the end of the day. He quietly walked over, and he almost sounded depressed when he said, “Schama, can I please talk to you outside?” I was thinking he was going to tell me he found out who stole my wallet earlier that week. We went to a different classroom, and he asked me if I knew why he brought me there. “No,” I said. He told me that I had assaulted the assistant headmaster. “What!? What are you talking about!? Who?” I exclaimed. He told me her name, and I still didn’t know who it was. I told him to check the cameras. I knew I hadn’t done what he was saying, but he told me to go home.
I ended up having two hearings: a suspension hearing and then an expulsion hearing. But what I want to share is how I felt and my memories during those hearings. I remember walking to the conference room with my mom and the Dean. We walked past a white woman who looked kind of familiar. She was up against the wall as if I were a bully telling her to get out of my way. I couldn’t understand why she was so afraid and thought, “Wow, relax, I’m not an animal… I’m a human being.” During the hearing I asked who the assistant headmaster was because I still didn’t know. The Dean said I had just passed by her in the hall. And then everything started to become so clear. This woman didn’t know me; we had only a thirty second interaction. Why is she scared of me? Why am I here? I became an emotional wreck. They said that they might press charges. The School Officer came in and read a police report. I was crying; I couldn’t believe it, I started having a panic attack. The only other time I felt this way was when my grandmother had died.
When the assistant headmaster came in I should have handed her an Oscar she was so dramatic. She said that after this happened she wanted to talk to me but I ran away. But that didn’t happen, I walked away, and if she had wanted to talk to me I would have. And if she had told me I touched her, even though I didn’t think I had, I would have apologized. If she had talked to me I would have apologized, period! Later the Dean said it might have been an accident, but it still happened. I was so confused, in my head I was thinking, “she can’t press charges if I didn’t put my hands on her. If there’s no proof she can’t press charges. If this was an accident she can’t press charges. If she was upset I would have gladly apologized, why is this happening, I’m a good kid, I have good grades, I’m about to get honor roll!”
While I was suspended, I spent five days at the Barron Center – a counseling and intervention center where kids go when they are suspended for something serious – but the counselor there told me I didn’t need to be there. Later we had the expulsion hearing and they expelled me. After I was expelled I went to Community Academy. The first day, I started having a panic attack and was sent home. I went back and was okay, but the school hadn’t sent any of my work and I was frustrated. I was a junior. My work mattered, and I couldn’t do it.
I got a lawyer and appealed my expulsion. When I went to the hearing, I saw that the headmaster and the hearing officer knew each other, and I already knew my voice wasn’t going to be heard. I almost gave up. I didn’t think I could win this. Who is going to believe a child over a headmaster? No one is going to listen to me. Who is listening? My lawyer wanted to record the hearing, but the hearing officer refused. At the hearing I told my side of story. I became emotional. I said that I was a good kid, I worked hard, I am a Black queen and didn’t understand why this was happening. If I hurt anyone I’m sorry, I just want to go back to school and finish. After I presented my case, the headmaster said that he expelled me because I had become an emotional wreck and was aggressive and flailed my arms dangerously. I couldn’t believe he had said that, this didn’t make sense. What was I really being expelled for? Was he saying because I’m black and I have an “attitude” I should be expelled? I’m very blunt and everyone at school knew that. But not anymore, my school was a turnaround school, which meant 60 percent of the staff and teachers had been replaced, and everyone who knew me had left. I lost the appeal.
My lawyer and I appealed to the state. The Department of Education overturned my expulsion, ordered BPS to fix my grades and give me extra help. I’m really glad I beat my case, but this experience still really affected me. During my suspension and my expulsion, I took the time and reflected on my life and how to go about things. I knew where I wanted to go, I wanted to finish school, but I couldn’t see how I could get there. When I got to my new school I walked into my ELA class, Mr. Driscoll’s class. I noticed that his room was covered in black history and Malcolm X. At first, I thought he was just another white guy trying to be black, but then I talked to him. I wanted to figure out how to be me and he helped me. He had read my file and told me that he knew I wasn’t a bad kid, that if I needed space he would give it to me, but if I wanted to talk to someone he was there. I didn’t have to say anything to him for him to understand me and where I was coming from. And we read Malcolm X.
Malcolm’s autobiography helped me see that it wasn’t white people, it was how white people see black kids, it was about the system. “The white man is not inherently evil, but America’s racist society influences him to act evilly. The society has produced and nourished a psychology which brings out the lowest, most base part of human beings.”(Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X, 378) This is why black kids are being sent out of school and sent to prison. The system makes white people bold.
I don’t like to share my story and I don’t want sympathy, but I need to share so it doesn’t happen to others. I am sharing my story because I’m tired and I won’t keep sitting around while my sisters and brothers are getting physically and verbally abused by the system. With the help of my family and some of my new teachers, I overcame my obstacles and I am going to be a senior with almost the grades that I wanted, and I’m going to apply to college in the fall. But not everybody is like me and can bounce back the way I did. So for anybody out there that has gone through what I’ve gone through, or is going through what I went through. I just want you to know that you aren’t the only one. Forgive those who have done you wrong, keep building your future and show them how wrong they were about who you are and what you can be.
