Ravenwood
"As a white person, I’ve never experienced any kind of racism myself, but I have seen it happen at school. Many times, I’ve heard a white student say the n-word and all of their friends just laugh, not realizing how bad what they’re doing is. Educate students!! Teach about more black history and educate students about the things that black people go through every day. We live in a predominantly white area so it’s easy for many students to ignore the struggles poc go through, especially when they’re not being educated on the subject. Incorporate more literature by black authors into English classes. Learn about black pioneers in the science world. Black history shouldn’t stop at slavery and the civil war. Racism still exists in this country and there would be so much less of it if students learned ways to combat it in school."
"I joined the dance team in middle school because I wanted to learn contemporary and jazz. Not because I had friends on the team or anything. As the only person of color, I was treated like garbage both from the coach and fellow teammates. I was not talked to by the coach and she would never speak to my mother respectfully. Whether or not RHS has control over who coaches their teams, they should vet and ensure that they are NOT RACIST."
"1. Constant discrimination in the theater department in middle and high school. Irregardless of placing in numerous statewide acting and choral competitions, I was never given a role in school plays and musicals. When my family and I questioned the theater teachers they blatantly released a statement saying I didn’t receive a role due to not “looking the part.” As an Asian, I was deemed unacceptable to play roles that my White counterparts were given. When taking this to the vice principal, no action was taken.
2. Incorrect information about religion in world cultures social studies class
3. Math teacher making fun of Asian names in textbooks
1. Either pick plays/musicals with diverse casts and characters or be willing to pick student of various racial backgrounds for plays with roles that lack diversity
2. Ensure wrong information is not be disseminated in social studies classes and ensure that the textbooks selected aren’t ethnocentric/Eurocentric. Offer AP world history if AP euro history is offered.
3. Have teachers go through training on internal bias and learn that microaggressions are NOT ok"
"I remember times where I had to go and talk to teachers and I would get treated differently for no good reason. I would also try and ask for help but I wouldn’t receive any and I would watch a white student go up and ask the same question and they would get help. I think the schools should ask honest questions to their employees and see their answers about different racial scenarios. I think they should also be watched secretly and see if they have different interactions with their students."
"I'm white, and my closest friend at the time was Black. We were hanging out in the halls during lunch, goofing off as usual. A kid in our grade was singing some rap song (I can't remember for the life of me) but it constantly said the n-word and he said it too in the song. When I confronted him about it, he couldn't understand that what he was saying was wrong. I tried to explain it to him, but my black friend stopped me. I can't remember the next words that he said exactly, but it was something on the lines of "white people made up the n-word so they have a right to say it." my friend didn't want me to say anything to the faculty because she didn't want to make a big deal of it, but I think it should have been made into a big deal. I don't want any more kids to be like that kid, . These kids need to have the same/similar consequences given as college kids who do stuff like that. America was practically founded on racism, and there needs to be a change in our government, police, doctors, education, and overall concept. Racism needs to end."
"I had a great experience. I felt like my race had nothing to do with how I was treated and that race really didn’t play any role in how I was able to interact with others. Keep doing the multicultural assembly! Race and ethnicity are something that make us different but in a beautiful way. I think we should see everyone as equals but respect individual backgrounds and cultures. I always really enjoyed that assembly."
"As a member and officer of the Ravenwood Gender and Sexuality alliance, it is common to have fellow members bring up incidents of verbal, physical, and virtual harassment. Many students do not feel safe going to administration members out of fear of being outed, and administration members have a history of inaction when presented with information about discrimination against LGBTQ+ students as it is. Queer students within the WCS community do not feel that the district values them. The administration does not have any kind of education on gender identity or sexuality, which is unsurprising considering their inability to even teach effective heterosexual sexual education. I have personally reached out to administration members when our informational posters for the GSA are defiled with derogatory slang and hateful political mantras, and they have done nothing. They don’t value queer students enough to find and punish students who openly hate against us, and that attitude is common whenever students speak up against racial discrimination as well. The WCS community cannot continue to turn a blind eye to discrimination. If the administration fails to act effectively, students will be taking action.
1) Add gender identity and sexuality under the anti-discrimination clause which states that “Williamson County Schools does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, disability, genetics or age.”
2) Add preferred pronouns onto school rosters to allow genderqueer students to feel comfortable and respected within our schools.
3) Provide adequate education to Faculty and students on gender identity and sexuality to facilitate a safe and effective learning environment for queer students.
4) Educate school faculty and administration on the unfortunate dangers of a student’s queer identity being made public to family and the greater community.
5) Allow queer students to speak openly about their experiences without fear of being silenced or shamed."
"Youth In Government (year). Everyone attending the event in my grade and a couple of officers in the grades above were in this groupchat on snapchat called “YIG Slime”. There were well over 30 members in the groupchat. (Date), one of my friends in the groupchat was asking if anybody had food, i responded something like “yeah come meet me outside Blue House 2”. He responded okay. One of his friends randomly started calling me slurs “Shut up beaner nobody likes you” “Kys beaner”. I knew he didnt like me, so I just screenshotted and left the chat. Well over 30 people saw that interaction. They saw him call me slurs. They didnt do anything about it. I went to the bathroom and cried because none of my friends were standing up for me. I asked them “why wont you just stand up for me?” No response. Keep in mind all my friends are white. None of them have ever been called slurs or have had slurs used against them. If you’re white you dont understand what it’s like to be discriminated against because of your race. They were just confused as to why I was so upset. I called my teacher to tell her about what had happened. She just asked for his name. She texted him to stop. Nothing else. Then she called me and asked me to not make it a big deal. This teacher cared more about her reputation and how it was gonna look if she got mad at a member for saying racist slurs more than how the student who got called them felt about it. Nothing happened to him. He was allowed to stay, meanwhile I have friends who got kicked out for not following dress code to the T. Ravenwood High School as a whole is one of the most racist, white schools I’ve ever attended. I have heard so many stories from students and the administration wont do anything about it. It’s appalling. I hope justice gets served."
"There were two white classmates whom I have done some projects with (I had no power in choosing my groups) and knew them enough to call them classmates. They were racists even before Trump’s election. However, their behavior changed very aggressively after the election. They knew I was sitting right next to them, but yelled in class that he “will murder every asian driver since they cannot see with small eyes”. The teacher did not even say anything. He just rolled his eyes. I was personally threatened and couldn’t forget that day even today. My whole body felt cold and was scared to death. Well not to forget other small incidents including some random white dude bumping into me and looking in my eyes saying “I am going to shoot you and your family”. Ravenwood High School is full of discrimination and I demand action."
"I was one of the people who was in charge of running the cultural heritage club and assembly at Ravenwood, and I’ve had many negative experiences with this role. First off, I would like to say that I absolutely loved this club so much, and I wish that more students would become a part of it in the future because I think it’s enjoyable for everyone. It is such a strong group within the Ravenwood community.
One of my worst experiences I had was on the day of the assembly. I approached one of the male PE coaches before the assembly and asked him if he could help me find someone. He immediately yelled at me for “interrupting his conversation” (which I didn’t) and was extremely rude and condescending to me. I was unfazed by this, but the reason this bothered me so much was because later I saw him being disruptive during one of the performances (he was whispering in another teacher’s ears and they both looked at the performers and started laughing). I later approached him, and asked him why he yelled at me for such a stupid reason, and why he was laughing during the performance. I told him that maybe he should apologize since the performers and I worked so hard on that assembly only to have him laugh and be disruptive during a performance. Later on that week, I was pulled out of class by a principal who I thought was on our side. I told him what happened, and he didn’t care at all about his disruptiveness. He wouldn’t let me call my mother to tell her what was going on, and told me that if I took my phone out of my backpack that I would get in trouble. He was absolutely demeaning and condescending, and called me “a little girl.” I pretended to be sick and left school early that day because of how angry that made me. The sponsor of the club was also on his side, and tried to make me apologize. She told me that “she didn’t expect this kind of behavior from me.” She also was the same sponsor who didn’t say anything to the teachers who refused to let their students leave class early to participate in the assembly. I now realize that I would’ve done the same thing ten times again. I’m so proud of myself for standing up for the right thing. However, what bothers me the most is that the next year, I spent so much of my own time (while being in 6 AP classes) and money on cultural heritage club, with little to no help from the administration and I had to deal with an unhelpful sponsor who constantly yelled at me. The club’s efforts went almost completely unnoticed. The principal did not thank us or anything for the work we put into the club. The school does not fund the club, and they have the audacity to condone racism during the assembly. They pretend like they care, when really they don’t. Performers constantly get laughed at and taunted during their performances, people have held confederate flags at assemblies, and people have “booed” other flags being held. They give us the bare minimum when it comes to time for the assembly, but they give a plethora of time to the football assemblies in an effort to generate revenue at football games. On top of that, during cultural heritage week, we decided to come up with various engaging activities for the students. Myself and others spent countless hours doing this only to have the posters vandalized by students and get yelled at by students for playing “music they can’t understand” during lunch. The racism, homophobia, misogyny, transphobia, etc in this school is astronomical, and clearly the administration does not give a fuck considering the fact that they STILL have not said anything about BLM.
On another note, this is completely unrelated, but apparently their government classes aren’t taught from a relatively unbiased standpoint? The teacher leans heavily to the right, and one time said that “if we go into war with Iran, we can destroy the entire country within seconds because it’s like a middle school basketball team playing a high school basketball team,” knowing good and well that I’m ethically since I mentioned it a few times. I felt SO uncomfortable because students who I thought were my friends were laughing at this remark. I didn’t even really dislike him as a person because he was actually nice at times, I just think he’s pretty ignorant. A lot of these teachers aren’t educated about racial micro- aggressions and it really shows. The teachers who are actually kind to their students, unproblematic, and extremely professional do NOT get the praise and recognition they deserve from the administration."
"I find it hard to get ready for school every day. As a dark skin black girl, I have to represent myself the best I possibly can solely because I am a dark skin black girl. Because being a dark skin black girl at Ravenwood high means having to tell the white girls at school never to touch my curly hair, it means I have to hear black guys the same shade as me talk down to me and the rest of the melanin full women of our community. I have to constantly say no to the white boys who ask for the n-word pass, I have to hear people compliment me on how well I speak and hold myself as if it’s odd that I do so well. As a dark skin black girl, I have to hear backhanded compliments like “you’re pretty... for a black girl”, I have to hear you’re not like them as if I am different from my black brothers and sisters just because we act differently, I have to worry about being called whitewashed because I don’t fit the picture they conjure in their heads. as a dark skin black girl, I have to brush off casual racism every day because I don’t want to come off “sensitive”, I sit through history class with everyone’s eyes on me when the topic of slavery is at hand, I have to control my tone with people so I don’t come off as the sassy black girl. As a dark skin black girl, I have to watch my volume when speaking on something that I am passionate about so I don’t fall into the angry black woman stereotype. On hat day I have to walk through the halls with red hats, with a slogan written in white said by a man who doesn’t support my very existence. As a dark skin black girl I know I am different, I know many see me as less than, I know that being in this school, this county, this country will never be easy. this is my story.."
"When I heard this at first, I thought he was saying something else. But after hearing it almost every day, I’m positive this was what he was saying. One of the guys would yell “hey tits” out in the hall very loudly several times. One time he and his friends turned around to look at me after he said it and laughed. At that point I knew exactly what he was saying and what he was trying to do. I was too afraid to say anything to anyone because I thought they would just brush it off or try to make me think that it wasn’t what he was saying.
Maybe they could tell people not to do that to people? But at this point, I doubt they can really make anyone less annoying and mean."