Racist incidents have become ‘normalized’ at one Henrico County high school, some students say

Editor's note: An earlier version of this article included the actual names of the students quoted within it. Following publication of the article, the students requested that their names be removed, and the Citizen obliged. The Citizen often uses only first names or pseudonyms for students or minors, but did not do so initially in this article because the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities had indicated in advance that all attendees of this event and their parents had granted permission for the students to be interviewed and photographed. The Citizen also confirmed that permission with the students during their individual interviews.

Additionally, a quote attributed to one of the students that indicated some of her teachers had used the n-word during discussions of books that included it has been updated to reflect her clarification that such incidents happened at her middle school, not at Deep Run High School.

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“Oh, you’re taking AP Bio? I didn’t think you’d be the fit for it.”

“How are you going to fit all of your hair into a swim cap?”

These are some of the comments that Deep Run High School students Emma and Kelly (not their actual names) say they hear from their white peers and teachers on a regular basis. As Black students at a predominantly white school, Emma and Kelly said that microaggressions, racist comments, and even slurs have become normalized in their school environment.

“Every year that I’ve gone to high school the last three years, there’s not one year where I haven’t – there’s not even one month at my school where I haven’t encountered some type of racially motivated aggression,” Emma, a student at Deep Run, said. “Even if it’s small things like walking into the restroom and seeing racial slurs towards Black people on the stalls. That’s heartbreaking.”

“It’s become so normal to the point where the kids that are racist or homophobic in general, they do it so often because they know that there won’t be any consequences,” said Kelly, another Deep Run student. “Our school doesn’t take it seriously.”

Kelly and Emma, along with several other students from Deep Run, attended a conference Nov. 30 at the University of Richmond for Richmond-area high-schoolers hosted by the Virginia Center for Inclusive Communities: “Diversity Dialogue Day.” While meeting with students from different schools and counties, Kelly and Emma encountered minority students who had dealt with similar experiences.

Jasmine (not her actual name), a student at Huguenot High School in Richmond, had never heard about Deep Run before meeting Kelly and Emma. But their stories were all too familiar to her as a fellow female Black student.

“We get hit with a lot of stereotypes. It’s just melted into the school system,” Jasmine said. “I think a lot of us don’t understand that everyday we get hit with a certain sort of prejudice. We get hit with microaggressions because of how we look, how we dress, how we act, all of it.”

Facilitators of the “Diversity Dialogue Day” wanted the conference to act as a safe space for students to discuss these issues of prejudice, stereotyping, racism, privilege, and how they impact their school communities, VCIC facilitator Sheena Lyle said. But another goal is for students to bring these conversations back to their own schools and continue to push for more dialogue surrounding diversity and inclusion.

For Emma, that is her goal as well, although she feels it may be difficult to convince students and staff at Deep Run to talk about uncomfortable issues.

“That’s my mission coming here, is to take away things that we’ve learned outside of school and bring it in to touch the outer community,” she said. “There’s not many conversations, and it’s a PWI [predominantly white institution] school for the majority, so I hope if we’re successful and we actually do it the right way, we should be able to bring it back to our school and continue it.”

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Deep Run High School has a student population of mostly white students (55.1%) and Asian students (27.2%), with a small percentage of Black students (7.7%). The school serves the Glen Allen region of Henrico County, which is majority white (59%) and has a minority of Black residents (25%).

The school has had its fair share of racially motivated incidents in recent years, according to Emma. Racial slurs written on the bathroom stalls is a common occurrence at Deep Run, Emma said, as well as students making racially insensitive comments or jokes.

“It’s just become normalized. It’s not out of the ordinary, it’s not foreign at my school,” she said. “There’s no reason why I feel and many other students at my school feel like, ‘Oh yeah, the n-word written on the bathroom in permanent marker is normal.’ We just go, ‘okay,’ just go about our day.”

Not only some students, but some staff members as well have made racist comments to Emma, she said. When telling a teacher about her goal to join the swim team, Emma said the teacher dismissed her and questioned how she would fit her hair into a swim cap.

Teachers at Kelly's middle school, she said, repeatedly used the n-word when reading and discussing books that included it, despite Black students saying they were uncomfortable.

“You have these teachers that use the, ‘I have to say it for educational purposes’ excuse,” she said. “They try to make you feel bad for feeling offended or for feeling hurt. When you get mad, the teachers and the other kids will say, ‘Why are you offended? It was a normal thing to say back then.’”

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Brian Fellows, who has been Deep Run’s principal since 2019, said that school administration tries to promote constant conversations about prejudice, inclusivity, and diversity within the school community.

“We’re always having conversations about trying to figure out ways to make sure that all of our students feel welcome,” he said. “We want everybody to feel a sense of pride in going to school here or working here. We want everybody to feel safe.”

When it comes to specific racial incidents in which the perpetrators are students – such as racist comments made or racist graffiti written in the building – Fellows said that Deep Run administrators often will investigate the situation, then deliver an appropriate consequence to the student at fault based upon Henrico Schools’ Code of Student Conduct.

“We listen, we make sure the students are okay – because in those types of situations, students are hurt,” Fellows said. “If it was something that was verbal, we try to figure out who did it and what was said. And if it’s some graffiti that has happened, obviously anytime graffiti goes up, it comes down immediately.”

Fellows said that in cases in which teachers make racist or insensitive comments, the administration addresses the incident either through a conversation or disciplinary action.

“If a student or group of students feel a particular way about a situation and they share it with us then we certainly address it,” Fellows said. “And addressing it could come in a variety of forms, It could be a conversation, it could be a meeting, it could be a disciplinary consequence.”

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Kelly and Emma said that it wasn’t just these incidents that upset them, but the way the school administration responded. About a year ago, a white student wrote a racial slur on a note card and took a picture of it, Kelly and Emma said, and the picture was sent around to students at Deep Run and other schools in Henrico.

When the administrators emailed parents about the incident, they said the image was Photoshopped. Many students believed that the perpetrator ended up not facing suspension, Kelly said.

Emma said that she wished the school administration had addressed the student body first.

“You’re protecting the aggressor and you’re ignoring a community – address us,” Emma said. “I think the first thing that the school should have done was reach out to the students to address us because we’re the oppressed. You can send an email to our parents, but we’re 14 to 18, we have our own feelings and mindsets. I was hurt by that.”

Fellows said that after administration investigated the incident, they concluded that the photo was Photoshopped. While he said he could not speak about what punishments were given in that specific incident, he said that Deep Run administration always tries to provide appropriate consequences in these cases.

“The picture was taken several years earlier and was not taken here at school or during school hours, so there are some limits to what the school can and can’t do, depending on the situation,” Fellows said. “But to the extent that we are able, using the Code of Student Conduct, students face consequences – and rightfully so.”

After the incident, Deep Run administration reached out to parents, the student body, and the school community, Fellows said. However, Fellows said that administration is not always able to provide students and parents with communication or updates after every situation.

“In that particular situation, we communicated back with the student body and the community,” he said. “We’re not able to do that in every situation, but where we can, we do follow up.”

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Deep Run has launched efforts in the past few years to bring students and staff members together to have open dialogue on issues of prejudice, Fellows said. Deep Run’s Parent-Teacher-Student Organization and several student groups teamed together to start an “uncomfortable conversations” series where students share their experiences about race and identity in videos that are sent out to the community.

A few years ago, Deep Run students also pushed for the PTSO to create a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion committee, which Fellows said is the first PTSO DEI committee in Henrico. The committee partnered with VCIC to offer training sessions to 20-30 students each month that focus on the role of bystanders when it comes to prejudice. Student groups also have teamed together to provide some professional learning sessions to Deep Run faculty.

“Just really getting all the groups together – the students, the teachers, the school staff, the parents – and just having conversations and saying, ‘What’s going well? What can we do better?’ and then putting plans in place to try to make it better,” Fellows said.

But racist behavior also extends to other schools in Henrico. Perhaps the most prominent example in recent years was a 2017 incident documented by an explicit video posted to social media, in which white football players at Short Pump Middle School – a school that feeds into Deep Run – stimulated sexual acts on top of Black players who were lying down in the locker room. The video was posted with the caption, “We gonna (expletive) the black outta these African children from Uganda.”

Rather than receive an immediate apology and acknowledgement of the situation from administration, many Short Pump parents reported that they learned about the incident from the news media. Short Pump’s principal sent an email to the school’s families the following afternoon that called the video “appalling, disturbing and inexcusable” and encouraged “each family to have conversations with their children about embracing diversity.”

Short Pump football players also were forced to forfeit the rest of the season, provoking frustration among some players and their families.

Black students across the county saw the video and were outraged by the lack of response from the school’s administration and Henrico Schools leaders, Kelly and Emma said. The effects still resonate with the students today, they said.

“They just cared about their image, like they barely addressed it,” Kelly said.

“I understand that of course parents should know what’s happening but it would have been better if you could have sent an email to the student body about it,” Emma said. “Like, ‘Hey, we recognize the issue. We’re sorry. And this is what we’re going in the meantime to ensure this doesn’t happen again and that it’s not something that’s a habit, it’s not normalized.’”

Two weeks after the video was released, more than 20 parents, teachers, and students addressed the Henrico School Board at a meeting about other racist incidents at Henrico Schools that went unpunished, saying that the video was not an isolated incident.

In the weeks following the incident, Henrico Schools announced the creation of a new job role in division leadership that would address diversity-related issues – the HCPS Chief Equity, Diversity and Opportunity Officer – and eventually hired Monica Manns to fill the position.

HCPS also issued new requirements for staff to participate in cultural sensitivity training each year and later created the “Equity Ambassador” program, which gives several students at each high school the opportunity to meet with HCPS leadership and implement events at their school that promote equity and inclusion.

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At the end of the conference last month, Emma, Kelly, and other Deep Run students sat in a circle with one of the school’s counselors, Jodi Beland, who had come along with them for the day. Beland listened as students shared their experiences with racism and their frustrations with the school environment and administration.

One student recounted a time when she first arrived at Deep Run in which another student began making racially insensitive comments to her and repeatedly bullying her. When her father told school administrators, they said the incident would be investigated. But only a little while after, the bullying resumed.

“That kid literally came up to me and started doing the same thing he was doing before,” the student said. “And he said, ‘What are you going to do? Tell so-and-so again?’”

Kelly said that Deep Run administrators fail to hold students and teachers accountable when they become aware of racist behavior.

“You can’t really do anything about it because even if you do report it, the admin will brush it off as like, ‘It’s just kids being kids. Oh, it’s a joke,’” she said.

After listening to the students, Beland told them that dialogue about racism and prejudice at Deep Run would need to continue back at school, including with administrators and staff.

“The way that we’re going to be able to make change is by having those courageous conversations,” she said. “Creating a safe space for them to learn.”

Fellows said that he does not believe that incidents of racism and prejudice occur frequently at Deep Run, but said that administration may not be aware of incidents that were not reported. He encouraged students to flag down any teacher or administrator they see if they need to report an issue and encouraged parents to send an email or call the school.

“Personally, I don’t think it's happening frequently, based on information that I know,” he said. “However, we don’t know everything. And so it’s dependent upon folks to share what’s happening in order for us to address it.”

While conference facilitators start the day by focusing on broader concepts and scenarios – such as discussing “debate versus dialogue” or exploring different biases – facilitators want students to connect these ideas to their own school communities, Lyle said. At the end of the conference, students meet back up with their school groups and discuss what more can be done at their schools to address inclusivity.

“[Beland] was there, she was listening and thinking, ‘How can we make this school more inclusive? How can your voice be heard? How do we get this up to the principal or the administrators?’” Lyle said. “And in some venues I’ve been to, they actually do a plan and VCIC will follow up.”

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Jasmine said that the discussions she had at the conference should be had by all youth, including those younger than high school.

“As a Black woman, I’ve learned that recently in these new times, it’s really good that we start to bring together community, and that we need diversity,” she said. “And I think that learning about dialogue and the difference between dialogue and debating and how we can bring together a conversation that’s inclusive to all people and not just what we’re used to, it’s really impactful.”

In addition to “Diversity Dialogue Day,” VCIC hosts another annual conference for middle-schoolers, “Prejudice Awareness Summit,” that Henrico and Richmond schools have attended.

Emma emphasized that the way people talk about issues of prejudice and diversity is just as important as the need to talk about them. She wants to inspire other students at Deep Run to speak up, actively listen, and engage in more respectful conversations about race.

“Being able to communicate to another person, but then also understand what they’re saying too, and to internalize it – that’s something that I would want people in my school, being a predominantly white school, I would want them to kind of see that we’re not trying to be the aggressor,” she said. “We’re not trying to argue against each other. But we have a problem, let’s work together.”

After facing racial incidents and microaggressions during all of her three years at Deep Run, Emma said that the school environment needs a fundamental change so that she and other minority students can attend school feeling safe and included.

“It’s become too normalized and it’s gotten to the point where there’s something that needs to change,” she said. “There needs to be something that’s ensuring that no student at Deep Run is going to face adversity while trying to get their education and feel unwanted or discriminated against.”

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Liana Hardy is the Citizen’s Report for America Corps member and education reporter. Her position is dependent upon reader support; make a tax-deductible contribution to the Citizen through RFA here.