We all must set the tone to stop racism from being OK in Olympia

This year, we begin Black History Month with thoughts about the history we are making now.

On Jan. 14, Ahmari Steplight, a Black basketball player from River Ridge High School in Lacey, was insulted and harassed by white boys at Capital High School. One of them cursed, called him a gorilla, and he and his friends made loud gorilla noises. No one intervened to stop them. The student who hurled the “gorilla” epithet recorded the incident on his phone, posted it to Instagram, and tagged the River Ridge player so he would see and hear the insults again online.

School officials apologized, made statements about ongoing work to come to combat racism, and offered assurances that the student who made the video would be held to account. When asked why no one intervened, Olympia School District Superintendent Patrick Murphy said it was because no one heard them, and that it wasn’t clear that the group’s noises were intended to mimic a gorilla.

The incident received widespread media attention in, among other places, Newsweek. Ahmari Steplight’s father, Qayi Steplight, was quoted in The Olympian saying that “If you go into Olympia, you don’t know what you’re going to get. You know you’re not welcome. Every time we’re at football games, basketball, baseball, whatever, we get consistent stories from families about how we’re treated. They used to paint their faces black at Capital and Olympia games. Everyone seemed like it was OK. The parents there, the staff at the top of the bleachers, nobody ever says anything. ... I’ve been around enough families and kids, people feel like nothing is going to ever happen.”

But there are signs this incident is making something happen. Since that basketball game, Qayi Steplight says he’s been encouraged by his conversations with the school principal and Superintendent Murphy, and by the outpouring of community support for his family. Olympia Mayor Cheryl Selby also met with him. And he was surprised and pleased by the number of Capital High students who participated in a school walkout and rally against persistent racism at the school.

This past week, Black Student Unions at River Ridge and North Thurston high schools also were inspired to hold walk-outs and rallies that expanded the agenda. At River Ridge, a Monday march and rally were billed as a call to “end racism and rape culture.” It was led by a multi-racial team of young women. Many of the speakers said they were fed up with being sexually harassed, groped in school hallways, maligned for being LGBTQ, and not having their complaints taken seriously. The burdens of racism and sexual harassment, they all agreed, fall hardest on Black girls.

Still, local school districts’ earnest efforts to combat racism and other forms of discrimination have been resisted by some teachers and school leaders. Others complain that equity initiatives have been inconsistent, piecemeal, and shortchanged in school budgets and policies.

Qayi Steplight said he had “hoped my son wouldn’t have to experience the same traumas I did growing up. People need to recognize that these traumatic events stay with you for a lifetime. I’m still dealing with it.”

In Olympia, the number of students vulnerable to those traumatic experiences grows with every passing year as the city’s demographics change. Superintendent Murphy reports that over 38 percent of students at Capital High School are students of color. And, he says, in elementary schools it’s getting closer to 50 percent.

We can’t change the past, but Olympia needs to recognize and repudiate its early history of housing discrimination, which pushed Black families to Lacey and left a lingering cultural residue. And all local school districts need to reckon with the many forms of bigotry that make students think it’s OK to harass their peers.

So what history will we make this year? One student protester at River Ridge held up a sign this week that lights the path to progress: “Tolerance of racism is racism.”