The fight for racial justice is a personal one.
As a mother of two Asian American/Pacific Islander American ( AAPI) and African American (Black) young women, the 2021 incidents of racial violence makes me fearful for their safety. As a Black woman growing up in Oakland, my friends and I had all been given “the talk” by our parents-which taught us the rules of how to navigate this world while being Black. It is 2021 and I find that I have to use those very same lessons when explaining the rise in hate violence against the AAPI and Black communities to a new generation of children. Not only has this rise of violence hit home in a very personal way, but as the Superintendent of the AIMS K-12 College Prep Charter School in Oakland where our student population is more than 35% AAPI,and 29% Black I have an entire school community to think about. Everyday since this pandemic began, I have thought about how we as an educational institution can use our resources to best help our students (and their families) navigate this confusing and scary time. Our families have been subjected to stereotypes that are harmful and untrue-but this is nothing new.
Throughout history, the anti-AAPI and Anti-Black bias and stereotypes in the United States have always come from specific streams. First, the belief that these people of color needed to be controlled for the safety of the European American (White) citizenry. Let’s start with 1704, the year when slave patrols made it legal to capture and kill people of color, specifically Black people, or 1882, when Congress passed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act which prohibited the immigration of Chinese Laborers. The fear for safety showed up as the belief that the AAPI community were disease carriers, which has been elevated this past year with the narrative (wrongly) of them being the carriers of the COVID 19 virus.
In addition, the belief that the Black community is violent or prone to crime is a belief that has led to unequal sentencing and fatal treatment by police officers. The history runs deep with the economic anxieties about competition for jobs from people of color, which was evidenced in the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre where 1,000 Whites burned down homes and businesses, killing more than 300 Blacks as well as the 1930 attack by 500 Whites on Filipino farmworkers in Watsonville, California where homes were burned and Filipinos dragged from their homes and beaten. These inequalities continued with the Japanese Internment in the United States during World War II when over 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry were relocated and incarcerated in the western interior of the country, most of whom lived on the Pacific Coast. In addition the 400 years of chattle slavery of Blacks still casts a shadow on where Blacks are allowed to live and work in large numbers. The “model minority” AAPI stereotype is often used to denigrate Blacks and Latinos while silencing AAPI concerns.
It is vital that we understand the history of racism against the AAPI American community in order to create an educated strategy as we look towards the future. We firmly believe that our school community is a place that serves as a source of information and we believe our actions need to go beyond merely celebrating diversity in our schools. We cannot remain silent, we must continue our conversations about race, including examining our practices and removing obstacles that contribute to systemic inequities. Our school has worked to create and implement an anti-racist curriculum. We all must come together in one voice, unified and focused on confronting bias and racism by showing the compassion, empathy, and humanity that each and everyone of us deserves.
As I look at my AAPI and Black young women, I feel the urgency to get it right in changing the narrative we have been living with for so long. Our children deserve to be judged for who they are, not who society believes they are. As the chief executive of our district, I am proud to be part of a school community that has banded together to implement anti-racist activities in our schools. This is just a first step in teaching our kids at a young age to understand and celebrate different cultures while setting the stage for talking about racism in a meaningful way. Our children deserve the opportunity to thrive and succeed!
Our children collectively deserve to live freely and without fear from the ravages of false narratives that perpetuate misconceptions. We owe it to our children, our community, and our country.
Maya Woods
Superintendent, AIMS K-12 College Prep Charter District
AIMS is a college preparatory charter school program founded in Oakland in 1996. Their mission at AIMS is to cultivate a community of diverse learners who achieve academic excellence. Our commitment to high expectations is attendance, academic achievement, and character development results in our students being prepared for lifelong success.
