Nolensville
"An SRO officer thought I was stealing food from a school lunch line even though I wasn’t stealing. He made a ginormous deal about it, and it made me feel extremely uncomfortable because the entire cafeteria was looking directly at me and I felt dead. I had done nothing wrong and I bought everything I had. (The school should) get in touch with the officer and tell him to check cameras because he didn’t check once."
"I am a biracial 16 year old girl, who was adopted by 2 white parents, and that has always made it so I experience racism wherever I go, but especially in high school. I was taking a lifetime wellness course and had always had problems with the coaches. They were rude to me specifically and made my time in their class miserable. In October, I injured my hip flexor and was on crutches, therefore making me unable to participate in PE. I was sitting outside on the track alone while the rest of my period walked around. Coach began to start a simple conversation with me, just making small talk. Immediately following my comment of where my parents were from which is Chicago, he said "oh, so you must be from the ghetto, right?". In that moment, I didn't react. I simply laughed at him, and moved on to a new topic of discussion. The thoughts that ran through my head were "do I look ghetto? do I sound ghetto?" but then they quickly changed to "that was racist, if I was white would he have asked me that?". I reported him to my counselor, but nothing was done, which didn't surprise me. I was never able to move on from that comment made by Coach . It was rude, it was wrong, and above all, it was racist."
"Every day the n-word is said constantly by many people despite only a few black students at our school. And the teachers hear the students saying this you can tell because they always look over when they hear it but continue walking. They never address or discipline anyone but spend time worrying about petty mistakes people make and send them to detention for it. Since I have attended schools in Williamson county I have rarely ever been taught in depth about black history in class but have rather glossed over the massive amount of black history and important events. I have had racist teachers say racist phrases and flat out show hatred for black students in their class. If you ever try to stand up to racist remarks you’re painted as the “angry black person” who’s always loud or you get yelled at for causing problems. I have been made fun of, teased, and ridiculed in an environment where I’m supposed to feel safe for years now and I’m tired of it.
(They need to) Actually pay attention and listen to students who come forward with their experiences with racism. Imagine not only going to a school filled with racist students but when you try to speak to adults they’re either racist too, or don’t care. They need to take action and take privileges away from people who bully and torment others for the color of their skin."
"This isn't a story. But there is very little racial diversity in the Nolensville High faculty/staff. Also, PLEASE stop teaching kids "We were the last to join the Confederacy, and the first to leave." It's not an excuse. And you're belittling the history and suffering of BIPOC people by trying to make TN's "limited" (it's not) participation something noble.
Hire a more diverse staff, and fix the history curriculum, or at least monitor how teachers are teaching it (ESPECIALLY at the elementary school level). Also, the version of history we're taught is incredibly white-washed."
"I attend nolensville high school and I attended mill creek middle school, and I’ve heard so many racist white kids say the N word so many times sometimes I would hear them say “what up my n-word” and they would say that it isn’t offensive they just don’t care and think that the N-word isn’t offensive. IT IS OFFENSIVE!! I may not be black but I stand with the black community and I will NEVER stop standing with them. And there are so many people on social media that aren’t black and say the N-word repeatedly or even say “I hate n-word with the hard R” I get so embarrassed that I go to school with people like this so if Williamson county doesn’t fix their “Great system” then they are just showing that they only like the whites and not the blacks, Arabs, Hispanics, and other races. And not only do blacks in Williamson county experience racism, I’m Arab and I used to get asked by people who I thought were my friends “Hey don’t you have a bomb with you” or “wait wait aren’t all Egyptians Muslim” or “you look like you would be apart of isis” or “Your a terrorist” or “what are you doing this weekend are you gonna go bomb places” or “you were the reason for 9/11”. I used to go home and cry and think why do people hate me this isn’t fair. I would never tell my parents because I didn’t want them to know about this. I was in middle school when kids started telling me these things. I started to hate who I was and I would wish that I was white so I wouldn’t get bullied.
(They need to do) Anything that could end racism in Williamson county because honestly it’s crap and it seems that you guys don’t care about your diverse students and only want whites, which is honestly embarrassing for you guys so I really hope y’all come up with a plan bc if y’all wanna keep being known as the racist county go ahead and keep doing what your doing. Peace out ✌🏻"
"In orchestra, my friend (a white female) and I (a brown, middle eastern female) we’re going around asking our classmates, as a joke, if we fought who would win. Everyone answered my friend because she is a lot taller and stronger. My friend posed the question to our teacher (a white male). He answered that I would win because I am middle eastern, making the assumption that people from the Middle East are aggressive. Although this is a micro aggression, over time the build up of them are ostracizing.
Give diversity training and have a system to report racist incidents."
"I have had several classmates tell me to speak English while I am speaking Arabic with my arab friends.
Make a complaint system for racism that takes micro aggressions seriously. Make the kids take a course, like sex Ed, that is like diversity training."
"Someone came up to me and said you stink bc of your race people your race are poor and smell bad"
"My freshman year of high school, I was sexually assaulted by a guy that I had thought was my friend. I reported it to an assistant principal that I trusted at the time. She proceeded to tell me that because I was pretty and “exotic”, there was no point in taking action because it was going to continue to happen to me for the rest of my life. After that, I tried to let it go, but I was scared because I didn’t want the sexual abuse to continue. Later that week, some of my close guy friends heard him talking about me around school saying that he was going to rape me and they reported it too (still no action from the administration). Due to the administration dismissing it, most people at my school think that I made everything up for attention except for a few of my friends. This kind of thing should never happen to anyone again and I know for a fact that this wasn’t the first time something like this has happened in WilCo."
"I came out via text on a GroupMe for a school group. Someone took a screenshot of my message, and shared it on their Snapchat with the message "stfu, nobody cares." I only mentioned it to one teacher, who said there wasn't much they could do, so I didn't push it. My mom wanted to talk to the administrators, but I knew nothing would come of it based on experiences my friends had had. I knew I was someone who could handle it, but I worry about someone doing something similar to a queer kid with mental health issues, anxiety, suicidal tendencies or tendencies to self harm.
Each year we have the SAME presentation about sexting. How about a presentation on being an anti-racist school? Or normalizing queer folks and LGBTQ+ people?"