Student Refuses To Stand For Pledge In Westhampton Beach To Protest Perceived Systemic Racism In District

A TikTok post by a Westhampton Beach High School sophomore, showing her sitting during the Pledge of Allegiance on April 8, has gone viral — sparking mixed reviews, responses and threats.

It also has brought to the forefront the issue of racism and racial bias within the district, which some say remains a problem.

“I’m exercising my right to protest,” Kylah Avery, the part Black, part Native American student, said as to why she chose to sit during the pledge. “I’m not standing until everyone has ‘liberty and justice,’ like it says.”

Some responses on TikTok were positive and supportive, with one person defending her, using the acronym for “Black, Indigenous, Person of Color”: “Ya’ll attacking a BIPOC woman for not standing for the flag that represents her systemic disadvantages?”

Others saw the move differently: “If you don’t want to respect our country then you can leave,” one person said. “Our people fought for us for this. Wow.”

Kylah responded to that comment herself, stating: “Native American genocide*** Your people killed natives for this.”

The sophomore said she has been harassed during lunch at school and told via direct messages on social media to “get out of this country” and “be prepared to be bullied in school.”

High School Principal Christopher Herr said he has been in communication with Kylah and her father, discussing what has been said and making sure she feels safe and protected.

“I also addressed the student body today, discussing the freedom of expressing one’s opinion — that we must respect and celebrate our differences — and not tolerating unkind words or using social media to bring people down,” he said in an emailed response on April 9. “I also challenged everyone in the building to be better every day.”

Kylah confirmed this, and said while she sent screenshots of messages to administrators, she was told school officials couldn’t identify the particular individual who had threatened her, because no last name was in the username.

“He is followed by and is following many people from my school, indicating that he goes here,” Kylah said. “They looked him up once and then didn’t put any more effort into searching for the kid.

“I’ve also been ‘prank’-called and been called the ‘N’ word and a monkey, and I didn’t report it, because the number was blocked, and I felt that it would be pointless to go to the school just for them to say that they couldn’t find out who did it.”

None of the threats so far have been made to her face, Kylah said.

But she added that students wore former President Donald Trump hats, “Make America Great Again” apparel and other patriotic-themed attire to school in response to her decision to remain seated.

Superintendent Michael Radday admitted that beyond the recent incident, concerns about racism within the school community toward members of marginalized groups have been brought to the district’s attention recently.

“There is no doubt that it’s been a difficult time for our country. However, we are privileged to live in a society where we can freely express our opinions and should be able to do so without judgment,” he said. “We are all unique individuals with different life experiences that help shape us and frame the way we see the world. Students have the right to express themselves, their values and beliefs, in many different ways.

“Although we might not always agree with others’ viewpoints, we need to respect individuals, their differences and their freedom of expression.”

He continued: “Our district does not tolerate racism, cyberbullying or unkind words or actions. We teach our students the value of diversity and respect for all. Any student found to be in violation of our code of conduct will be subject to consequences and disciplinary actions.

“We must engage in difficult conversations and uncomfortable experiences to move forward as a community and country. We must live by the golden rule: to treat people the way we want to be treated.”

East Quogue resident Jessica Evans said that regardless of what the district says in its statements, negative backlash from the pledge protest highlights a perpetual battle with prejudice in the district.

The 33-year-old said she’s been hiding her curly hair for decades, saying the fear and shame behind displaying her natural self began the day a Westhampton Beach Elementary School teacher, who is still employed by the district, asked if she was wearing a wig.

“She had always commented on my hair and always singled me out. She was making comments about my ‘ethnic hair,’ about my ‘ethnic curls,’ and laughing in my face and saying that it was a wig. It made me really sad,” Ms. Evans said.

“Body image in general is something young girls shouldn’t have to deal with, but even talking about it now, I’m looking at myself back in that classroom. I remember it clear as day. It’s wild that it stuck with me for so long, but it made me so self-conscious.”

While the teacher did not return requests for comment, Ms. Evans, a former Westhampton Beach resident who moved to East Quogue so that her son would not attend the same elementary school, said it made her uncomfortable and insecure — not just about her hair but about her body, and being Black.

So, to try to “blend in” with the other students, the multiracial Ms. Evans, whose father is African and mother is Irish and Italian, began straightening her hair. But the teacher’s comments had already done their damage, she said, in more ways than one.

“After straightening my hair, I tried to give it a more natural curl, so the teacher wouldn’t make fun of me anymore. I tried to mimic their hair, so she wouldn’t single me out anymore. But it was too late,” Ms. Evans said. “There were students in that class who still believed it based on what she said, telling me, ‘Your hair doesn’t grow, right? So that’s a wig, right?’”

Ms. Evans said it took her a long time to distinguish between bullying and racism, which, on April 8, was labeled by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky as a serious public health threat.

In a statement, she pointed to the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on communities of color, as seen in case numbers, deaths and social consequences.

“Yet, the disparities seen over the past year were not a result of COVID-19,” Dr. Walensky said. “Instead, the pandemic illuminated inequities that have existed for generations and revealed for all of America a known but often unaddressed epidemic impacting public health: racism.”

Racism, she went on to tell Time magazine, is “not just the discrimination against one group based on the color of their skin or their race or ethnicity, but the structural barriers that impact racial and ethnic groups differently to influence where a person lives, where they work, where their children play, and where they worship and gather in a community. These social determinants of health have lifelong negative effects on the mental and physical health of individuals in communities of color.”

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, of the 2,898 people who lived in Westhampton in 2018, 80.8 percent were white, 12.6 percent were Hispanic, 4.04 percent were Black or African American, and 1.31 percent were Asian. Back in 2013, the number of minorities was even lower, with whites making up 88.8 percent of the population.

In neighboring East Quogue, where 4,797 lived in 2018, 84.4 percent were white, 5.4 percent were Hispanic, 2 percent were Asian, and 0.46 percent were Black or African American. In 2013, 95.4 percent of East Quogue was white.

Of the 1,653 people who lived in Westhampton Beach in 2018, 80.8 percent were white, 11.6 percent were Hispanic, 1.8 percent were Asian and 1.69 percent were Black or African American. In 2013, 90.4 percent of the population there was white.

“People have asked me: ‘Why haven’t you moved?’ and ‘Why do your children have a white father?’ I feel like it’s crazy questioning,” Ms. Evans said. “But it’s a community thing. It’s a society thing. I’m sure it’s not something that goes on in just this little district, but it is hard when we live in a predominantly white neighborhood. When people treat you that way your whole life, it’s really damaging.”

Mary Alyce Rogers, a clinical social worker and therapist, said her daughter, Ella Donahue, a member of the Westhampton Beach Class of 2020, was asked in elementary school whether she was adopted from Africa.

In third grade, she was told her skin was “the color of poop.” A year later, while not paying attention when a photographer taking a class photo on picture day told her to move over, he said in front of her class, “Does she even speak English?”

“In elementary school, a mom of one of my classmates, who was running the book fair, spoke slowly to me, and said, ‘Do you have enough money to buy all of that?’” Ms. Donahue recalls. “In middle school, a boy on the lunch line said to me and a friend of mine, who is Jewish, that ‘Black Jews had to sit at the back of the gas chambers during the Holocaust.’”

In her brother’s middle school yearbook, a classmate wrote: “N---ers are like ants, step on them.”

Geena García, a 2018 graduate, recalls “a lot” of “casual” racism and racialized bias from other students, as well as teachers. One of her most vivid memories also involves an experience in a Spanish class.

“My teacher was from the same Latin American country that my family and I are from. I remember two of my classmates, who sat behind me, began to whisper a laundry list of slurs for Hispanic people to each other and laugh. There was no doubt that they knew I was sitting in front of them, and that myself and our teacher were Hispanic,” she said.

“I remember feeling upset and anxious, but not knowing what to do about it. I wasn’t really shocked, because one of them had been outwardly racist toward students from other marginalized backgrounds before, and clearly had not faced any meaningful repercussion that made him understand that slurs are bad.

“I just felt uncomfortable around them and in class for the rest of my time at Westhampton Beach.”

Freshman year, Ms. García remembers, a teacher and an older student had an open conversation before class about the “problem with illegals” and “how bad it had become.”

“In my sophomore year, one of my classmates randomly started talking about how the United States was ‘his country’ and not immigrants’. The same year, a history teacher made multiple hostile comments about immigrants in class, and directly to a Hispanic student. All of these times, I felt alienated, uncomfortable and unsafe,” she said.

“There was another time in my American history class when veterans from the VFW came to speak to us. One of them repeatedly used a slur to refer to Vietnamese people, and no one else, including my teacher, seemed to bat an eye. I still feel ashamed when I think about it, and the fact that I didn’t say anything.”

In middle school, Ms. García said a classmate raised her hand to say the NAACP was a racist organization, because white people don’t have an equivalent.

“Our teacher, instead of being a responsible teacher of American history and telling her that the difference is that white people had not been enslaved for 200-plus years and didn’t need race-based advocacy, chose to tell her that ‘There are people who would definitely agree with you,’” Ms. García said. “In middle school, I knew that this was ridiculous, and yet an apparently educated history teacher thought that it was appropriate to reinforce this kind of historically illiterate thinking in his students.”

The former Westhampton Beach student struggled with depression and anxiety in high school, and admitted to never feeling “fully comfortable or safe at school” because of the environment students and teachers created.

According to Mental Health America — the nation’s leading community-based nonprofit, founded in 1909 and dedicated to addressing the needs of those living with mental illness and promoting the overall mental health of all — racism causes trauma, and trauma paints a direct line to mental illnesses, which needs to be taken seriously.

“People of color and all those whose lives have been marginalized by those in power experience life differently from those whose lives have not been devalued,” the organization said. “They experience overt racism and bigotry far too often, which leads to a mental health burden that is deeper than what others may face.”

Ms. Evans agreed, referencing her own middle school experience where a health teacher asked her if she learned the slang she used in “the ghetto.”

“It was such a bizarre thing to say, because I was in middle school. I didn’t even have an understanding of what a ghetto was. I grew up in Westhampton,” she said.

“For her to say that in the middle of class, and then for my peers to laugh, to laugh at me, because even though we’re from the same town, I must be from the ghetto, because I’m Black — there’s really no way to describe that type of feeling when people make you feel like your life is lesser or not worthy.”

Even now, as a wedding planning and owner of a small business, Ms. Evans said she struggles because of other people’s perceptions and opinions. She participated in blackout Tuesday, the collective action where people replace their social media images with a black box to protest racism and police brutality, which was originally organized within the music industry in response to the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor last June — and immediately received backlash.

“Someone said that I should change my profile picture from a black square and that maybe then more of my Facebook friends would actually like my company’s page,” Ms. Evans said.

“I really can’t even explain what that feeling was like, because I have seen so many people post, say, in regards to who they were voting for, and, actually, more people would like their business page. So, I could see what they were saying was really just to take myself out of politics, because I’m not on the right side.

“And it’s interesting, because I’ve never actually told anybody who I voted for. People just assume. People treat me a certain way, or support me or choose not to support me because of what they think or who they think that I am.”

She followed those comments up with a Facebook post about how she’s been hiding for too long, and posted a picture of her natural, curly hair alongside a lengthy message about some of her experiences inside and out Westhampton Beach School District.

“I suffered in that school, too,” Jennifer Napoles said in response to Ms. Evans’s post. “I’m not saying everyone, but a lot of people said mean things they should’ve been fired for. It still causes some trauma, and you just made me comfortable to speak on it. This world is toxic. And it’s sad it happens where the grass is supposed to be greener.”

Bronson Martin also shared his feelings through several Facebook posts in February, where the half-Black, half-white Class of 2000 graduate detailed positive and negative experiences within the district, especially during his time as a member of the basketball team, which grew in popularity because of its record during his time there.

“We were a team that consisted predominantly of minorities in a district that was predominantly white. Take the 1998 state championship basketball team — of the top eight players on that team, seven were minorities,” he said. “There was a negative bias from the administration that extended to the basketball team and minorities in general during my time in school. I lived it.

“The negativity became more apparent once the basketball team became bigger than the school in the eyes of those in power. Our high school coach did not fit into the nice little box that he was expected to by the administrators. I’m pretty sure if he had a mediocre basketball team that posted losing seasons that he would have been fired summarily.

“We were lucky to have a coach who fought for us,” Mr. Bronson continued. “The basketball team was a microcosm of what is seen in the world today. Minorities are not just entertainers. Our basketball team was not just a vehicle for entertainment, but some people definitely viewed us that way.

“People don’t like to talk about racism, inequality, discrimination when it doesn’t affect them. That’s privilege. These topics should be discussed. Sweeping them under the rug, which is done more often than not, does not lead to change for the better.”

“If students can get away with openly and proudly calling other students slurs, why would there be any consequences for the more subtle/quiet comments?” Ms. García asked.

“The school sends a message to its students of color that being open about how their classmates and teachers have targeted them will be a waste of energy, and it sends a message to its racist students — yes, racist, not ‘biased’ or ‘ignorant’ or ‘culturally insensitive’ — that they can victimize their classmates and get away with it. This tells students loudly and clearly who is valued and worthy of protection and who is not in the eyes of the school district’s administrators and leaders.

“How can you not expect students of color to struggle?”

One of the traumas Mental Health American listed is “school curricula that ignore or minimize their contributions to our shared history.”

Institutional racism, according to the nonprofit, is discriminatory treatment, unfair policies, and inequitable opportunities and impacts, based on race, produced and perpetuated by institutions (schools, mass media, etc.).

Ms. Rogers has sent emails to school officials that included screenshots of further proof of racism within the district, including a photo of what appears to be a Ku Klux Klan member, which she said was sent in a group chat among students on a high school sports team. Another depicted an athlete with his father on the athletic field, where the boy referred to his father by the “N” word. Both are white.

“I absolutely agree with you that this photo with attached comments is repugnant and extremely disappointing. Please rest assured that this type of posting is not condoned by the district,” Board of Education President Suzanne Mensch said to Ms. Rogers in response to the latter image sent via email.

She added, “This is a personal photo posted on a personal account outside of the school day. We provide instruction and guidance at all ages about appropriate content and use of social media. We have also provided many resources for our students and parents to enable age-appropriate conversations about racism.

“However, particularly during this time of the pandemic, where we haven’t had in-person instruction in months, this continual conversation needs to be a partnership between parents and school; the burden does not rest on the district alone. We as a district will continue to review and improve our curriculum and teaching practices, as well as providing emotional and social supports for all students and staff.”

Alexis Gersten, who has a son who is a freshman in the school district and another who is a junior in college, attended a February 14 Board of Education meeting where Ms. Rogers addressed discrimination and listed incidents she feels the school missed addressing. She said more needs to be done.

“I don’t think that we’re going to get very far unless the district starts denouncing these kinds of incidents out loud,” Ms. Gersten said. “Administrators have to say, out loud, that these things are wrong. They have to make a public stance on each and every incident and say that they decry them.”

To any of these parents’ and students’ knowledge, the district or its administrators have never done this in the past. Ms. Evans suggested that many Black families have moved out of the district because of this.

She said she still sees today how her younger brother and her son, who often is not identified as a person of color, are both currently enrolled in the district, get treated differently.

“I have teachers emailing me, calling me all the time, saying, ‘Hey, Jessica, I just want you to know Jason’s missing an assignment.’ They’re so helpful. My brother does not get that treatment,” Ms. Evans said. “When my mother gets an email, it’s, ‘You know, Justin is failing again. You’ve really got to get him back on track.’ The conversation is different. It’s demeaning.”

She said even though the school created a social justice committee in March, which Ms. Rogers is a part of, she personally doesn’t believe it comes from the right place, calling it “pure hypocrisy” and a way for the district to simply jump on the Black Lives Matter movement bandwagon.

“I just want Black people in our community to be respected, to be treated with the same respect that white people in our community receive before anyone gets to know them,” Ms. Rechhion said. “If you’re white in our community, you’re respected until you’ve proven that you are someone not to be respected — but others are not respected until they earn their respect.”

Mr. Bronson said the fact that “Black Lives Matter” has to even be talked about speaks to systemic inequality and racism and the brutality the Black community has experienced for more than 400 years.

“Black people have been treated as second-class citizens since the day they were brought to America as slaves. Do I feel we are making progress in America? Yes, but only on an awareness level,” he said. “Has change been implemented? Not much in my opinion. I do think it will take multiple generations to see concrete change across the board, and this is not solely a situation where white America has to change. This is a situation where Black America has to change as well. However, I will continue to do my part to stand up for the fair and equal treatment of the Black community, and I hope others do the same.”

He added, “We can’t change the past, but America as a country can try to do what is right going forward.”