A California school district notorious for alleged racial incidents—including an Instagram page mocking Black students as “monkeys” and white students showing up to school in blackface and KKK garb—is at war with its Black students after they claim administrators have not done enough to address years of racial intimidation.
On Monday, Fresno Unified Board Trustee Keshia Thomas held a press conference to address alleged racial harassment plaguing Black students at Bullard High School, according to The Fresno Bee.
“We have a history in the working place, as well with our Black students, of not being equitable. And now, we have a Ku Klux Klan issue because so many things have been ignored,” Thomas said in a video of the conference compiled by the Bee. “There are and have been countless acts of racial intimidation, not only by Bullard High School students, but some other schools as well. The administration at Fresno Unified School District have been complacent in covering up some of these instances of racial intimidation.”
ADVERTISEMENT
Bullard High School student Elana Henderson, a member of the school’s Black Student Union, said in the video,”Walking into Bullard’s campus today, [I] felt as if none of the teachers really cared about my feelings.”
She asked other Black students standing with her if teachers or school staff offered them any emotional assistance in the aftermath of racist incidents.
When the group of students shook their heads, Henderson told the crowd, “That’s exactly how it feels to be a student at Bullard High School.”
Thomas said the district needs to get a special committee to study the schools’ racist culture and set up systems to eliminate white supremacy.
The news conference came after students across the district protested Friday against a photo that surfaced last week of a student posing in the school’s weight room wearing something that resembled a Klansman hood, local outlet Your Central Valley reported.
In an attempt to show solidarity with Black students, Bullard High School posted images of the protest on the school’s Facebook page. However, community members said the post was “performative” and did little to combat racism.
“Instead of the children enjoying their [high school] experience and engaged in other productive extracurricular activities after school, they must protest at their own school about the flagrant practices of racism on campus,” a Facebook user wrote.
“What is the administration doing to support these students? All I’ve seen is staff making excuses [and] gaslighting,” another community member commented under the post. “These posts are not a form of support; they are performative nonsense.”
Fresno school district officials said they were conducting an investigation into the origin of the photo and that disciplinary measures would be taken, according to ABC30 Fresno.
However, the school district has been under fire before for other alleged racial incidents.
Earlier this month, an Instagram page titled “BHS Blacks” and captioned “Send in monkeys” was discovered. Photos were displayed mocking Black students at Bullard and comparing them with archaic racist images.
Ebony Knox told The Daily Beast in a Facebook message that her 16-year-old son, who has a learning disability, was featured on the Instagram page without his knowledge.
“I asked the principal at Bullard High…not to speak to my son about his pictures being on social media,” Knox said. “But the principal ignored what I said to him personally and …talk[ed] to my son about the situation even though my son didn't know about it. So, he went through depression.”
In 2019, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a discrimination complaint against the district for allegedly failing to respond to a white student who wore blackface in a school video, ABC30 Fresno reported.
Jada Burton, a Black alumna who graduated from Bullard in 2021, told The Daily Beast she always experienced racial tension while in school—from slurs to being physically assaulted. She also alleged that the school’s step team, a predominantly Black group she joined, was consistently sidelined in favor of the majority-white cheer squad.
“This group was constantly being mistreated,” she said. “It was a constant battle between the cheer and the stomp group, especially since it was formed right after the [blackface] incident.”
Burton claimed the student who was filmed in blackface was a member of the cheer squad.
Neither Bullard High School nor Fresno Unified School District returned The Daily Beast’s requests for comments.
“It shouldn’t be on students to take charge, educate, call out racism, and enforce policies that have been made in our favor,” Rayven Few, a student at Edison High and a member of its Black Student Union told the crowd at Monday’s press conference, in the video provided by the Bee. “However, we will hold you accountable.”
“It’s heartbreaking to see what our kids have to go through,” Thomas said towards the end of the conference. “This is 31 years after I graduated that the kids are still experiencing the same hurtful, harmful things.”
