Systematic Racism and Mistreatment of Students in Lower Income School Districts

Now that I'm twenty-four, and graduated from college, I look back on my grade school experience often. When people bring up the constant issues that their children are facing in school, it brings me back the school district that I grew up in. There are too few great educators, a handful of good teachers, and a disgusting amount of check collectors in the Dallas Independent School District (DISD). As a child in elementary school, I can't seem to come to a conclusion as to why I never told my mother what the staff was doing to us daily. I knew that the way we were talked to, treated, and sneared at was not right. I knew it was wrong when they made us sit on the black top in the sun, in the heat, and in total silence during recess.

Growing up I was very shy and reserved. I was often the victim of bullying, and even more often I was the victim of a lazy check collector, that could not be bothered to protect one six year old from another one. I was in love with learning, but was often afraid of school because of the teasing I knew I would receive. My family was also not financially stable, so more often that not, school was the only time that I got a decent meal. Lunch should have been the highlight of my early school days, but instead lunch was something akin to a prison cafeteria. There was no talking aloud. The walk ways were patrolled. When you finished eating, you were to go out to the blacktop and sit until the lunchtime was over.

I remember being so confused as to why we were being treated as if we were in boot camp. We were treated liked criminals. The worst part is that the principal of an elementary school, allowed a school bus driver to come in almost every lunch period. He would blow this awful coaches whistle, and walk up and down the walk ways ranting and raving about how we need to learn respect. He would say things like "y'all run y'alls mouths too much" "I better not hear any talking! Eat your food and get up!" " you do what I tell you to" "you may not learn respect at home, but you gon learn it here". I was one confused and terrified six year old. We were all pretty much well behaved, and I'll admit, average short attention spanned six year olds. There was hardly ever a time when someone was acting out. Because I had the great misfortune of attending the same elementary school from K-6th, I was one scared and confused preteen as well.

What was the motivation behind this kind of treatment of grade schoolers? Middle school was no different. Metal detectors, armed police officers, one way walking throughout the entire three story school. Switching classes was a tremendous pain, especially when you have five minutes to use the bathroom and get to class on time. Teachers often gossiped about other teachers with students, they put fingers in our faces, they even used profanity directed towards us. The only conclusion that I can come to, as to why grade school children would be treated like prisioners, is because they were preparing us for the futures they saw for us. They saw convicts instead of innocent children. They saw the scum of society instead of future scientists, doctors, lawyers, and decent human beings. They saw a group of African-American and Hispanic children, and they could not bring themselves to treat a child as a child. They saw us as worthless. They treated us like trash.

So many schools in DISD are run this way. Parents are at a constant loss as to why their innocent and sweet children, have gone from happy to hardened and depressed. Two parent homes, as well as single parent homes, experience these changes in there children all too often. I grew up with people who over the years become disgusted by authority, hardened, and depressed. The daily verbal and mental abuses that were experienced in my ealry childhood still haunt me. Is this just one big conspiracy to groom future prisoners, so that the legal system meets it's expected yearly quota? I don't know. My experience seems too ridiculous to be true, but it is. I'm sure DISD is not just one bad apple. School districts across the nation have to do better. The education system has to do better. If we continue to groom future criminals, what does that say about our nations future?