Black students want more from their schools during Black History Month, and beyond

As they prepare for their fourth-ever workshop, one member of the Black Youth Empowerment (BYE) group admits that they didn’t get a very good sleep the night prior.

The reason is that their school recently took down a Black History Month display—mid-way through the month—and replaced it with a Valentine’s Day display. The teen spent the night putting together a slide deck on Black History Month in the hopes it will be circulated in the school.

The eight-member youth group isn’t exactly surprised by that. They, alongside their Black peers, are often tasked with presenting and championing their schools’ Black History Month celebrations, which they say are often simple displays in the hallway.

One BYE member, 17-year-old Samara, says she presented some “low-effort” ways to cover Black History Month to the staff at her school.

“Literally, just Google a Black person that is relevant to the subject that you're teaching about,” she says as an example. “[For] English they should not be hard to find. Science? There's so many Black inventors…the first open-open heart surgery was done by a Black man, who also opened the first non-segregated hospital in America.”

“There’s so much out there and there’s so many resources,” she adds.

Black History Month occurs every February, which has been the case in Canada (at least officially) since 1995. It shouldn’t take anyone by surprise, the teens say. But part of the problem could be what’s in the curriculum, and the education that the educators themselves received.

“We don’t necessarily learn about Black people,” says BYE member Avi, 16. “The teachers aren't educated in that space. So one month for them, even, seems long.”

It’s a perfect example of the driving force behind BYE, which formed in 2020 through a collaboration between the Victoria Sexual Assault Centre’s Project Respect and the Girls and Femmes with Afro-textured Hair. The idea was to work with Black youth (Grades nine to 12) to develop workshops focused on consent, gender, and bystander intervention. The students are paid for their time and can use the experience on resumes or towards satisfying their Community Connections graduation requirement.

With six high schoolers from across the region—including Salt Spring Island— on board, the first workshops—focused primarily on safely intervening in racist behaviour or incidents— were created and delivered to other Black youth.

But it wasn’t long before BYE realized they needed to go beyond students. After speaking with Black students across the province, they realized that without buy-in from leaders, teachers and educators, anti-Black racism—in all its forms—would continue in Greater Victoria classrooms. They decided they could have the most impact with the adults that set the tone in schools and classrooms.

They built a new workshop, informed in part by what they heard from other Black students.

“When reading To Kill a Mockingbird, [some teachers] will just say the N-word maybe without warning or with no censorship,” Samara says. Or Black students would come to their teachers or student counsellors about a racist experience and would leave feeling dismissed, belittled or gaslit by their response, she adds.

And then there’s the whole “touching your hair thing.” That was a common experience among themselves and the students they spoke to.

“A lot of them didn’t necessarily feel comfortable telling the kid who was doing it to stop,” Avi says. “That’s when it goes back to, ‘well, I have to go to the teacher then.’”

With a frustrated laugh, Samara says she’s had teachers themselves touch her hair.

“From my point of view, [the workshop] is kind of giving them a little bit of perspective, and just a different way of looking at things and a different way of interacting with their students of colour,” she says. “It’s giving them an idea of what we go through.”

Their actions as teachers have a huge impact, Samara adds. And students notice when teachers do nothing.

“If they don't do anything, then that is still an impact,” she says. “We’re kind of just giving them an idea of how their role can help and support all students even more.”

And the workshop is popular. BYE's second-ever administrator-focused workshop has close to 100 registrants.

Lisa Gunderson, an education, equity and diversity consultant, co-founded the program with clinical counsellor Nichola Watson. The women support the teens and help to facilitate the workshops.

She says a lot of time in the workshops is devoted to the N-word.

It seems obvious, but educators have defended the use of the word in their classrooms in the name of academic freedom, she says, despite its harmful impact on Black students, and the precedent it sets for non-Black students.

It’s one of many intense subjects BYE tackles, she says, all while sharing their own stories to adults in positions of power. That’s why the members of BYE have debrief sessions and one-on-one check-ins with the adults as needed after each workshop.

But mainly, the members of BYE support one another. For some of the youth, the group is one of very few non-white spaces in their lives, Gunderson says.

“By going through this process, I see them being stronger, saying what they want to say more, being able to feel more comfortable being in their skin,” she says. “They are gaining community and that to me, is the most important thing because wherever we go, we need to be able to either build community if it's not there, or be comfortable joining communities.”

Gunderson is clear that anyone—especially parents—can address racism to make their schools and communities better for Black youth.

“Advocate for us,” she says. “Even if there's not a Black student in your class, as a non-Black parent, your child could benefit from learning about us.”

“Don't ask for the N-pass, don't laugh at that joke. Go to a Black history event,” she adds. Ask why there aren’t more Black authors in your child’s curriculum, so the Black students don’t have to.

Next for BYE? Maybe including some younger students, and presenting their workshops in more leadership spaces, including school boards.

"The idea is to continue it in the future, for as long as we can, and hopefully see it expanded in different places," Gunderson says.

"And I would love to see this expanded to different groups. So I would love to see an Indigenous Youth Empowerment, where Indigenous students come together and talk about how the class rooms could be made safer for them. And the same thing for students of Asian ancestry, and Latinx."