crossposted from Not In Our Town
Brooklyn, NY: A girl in 9-year-old Malik Jones’ * class called him a monkey and said he was dirty. Other students started repeating the girl’s words. When Malik touched something, classmates would wipe the spot he had touched.
Malik is one of three African American students in his elementary school class in Brooklyn. The class is predominantly white, but includes some Latino and Asian children.
“Malik would come home every night and want to wash his hair, but he has dreadlocks and he doesn’t need to wash his hair that frequently. Then we found out he was being called dirty at school,” recalled Mark Jones, Malik’s father. “He is the darkest child in the class and the only one with dreadlocks.”
One day in class, the girl who led the teasing made a mocking reference to “Malik’s face.” Malik had a tantrum. When his father was called to pick him up at school, Malik could not stop crying. “For five to seven minutes, he kept crying and repeating the words “ever, ever, ever,” Jones said.
Malik’s parents have had many meetings with his teacher and school administrators about their son’s racial harassment. After identifying the young girl’s behavior as bullying, the teacher read a book to the class about bullying behavior, hoping to change the children’s relationship. The outcome of this intervention is still unknown.
Jones told school officials that his options were either to ensure that the classroom environment changes, or to pull his son out of the school. The school has pledged to address the issue, but Jones remains guarded.
“My son was having an experience in the school that caused psychological trauma for him,” he said. “I want my son to learn that skill set of coping with people who are racist or simply insensitive…but I don’t want him to suffer through this.”
Millions of families experience the trauma of bullying and harassment. We are looking to the Not In Our Town Network for advice, guidance and best practices.
How do you transform an environment where a child is being harassed?
What would you do if this were your child? If you were the teacher or school administrator what would you do? What can a PTA do to help support families like the Joneses?
If you are a parent, has something like this happened to you?
Please share your responses, expertise and stories in the comments field below.
*Note: This story is based on an interview with the boy’s father, who asked us use a fake name to protect the family’s identity.
Students Tune In and Speak Out (JLS Middle School – Palo Alto, California)
Not In Our Town (NIOT) is a national movement that encourages and connects people who are responding to hate and working to build more inclusive communities.
Not In Our Town uses the power of media, grassroots events, educational outreach and online activities to help communities talk to and learn from each other. Together, Not In Our Town communities share stories and strategies about how to foster safety, inclusion and acceptance.
Developed by The Working Group, Not In Our Town began with a PBS documentary that told the story of how people in Billings, Montana joined together to respond to a series of hate crimes in their town. This simple, powerful story of citizens banding together struck a chord with audiences, and created a model that inspired viewers around the country to hold their own campaigns against intolerance. Now in its second decade, the Not In Our Town movement continues to grow.
Hi there, Tami. Thanks for sharing the Not In Our Town blog posts and video on your site.
I enjoyed reading your blog, too. Wishing you all the best!
This is heartbreaking, I send all my love to this family. We can’t control the parents of Malik’s classmates, who obviously are planting the seeds of racism within their children. It seems like the bully got away with far too much for too long so in many ways the teachers actions may be too little too late. The teacher could be in on it to some extent as well. What seven year old is allowed to act like a white supremacist even ONCE? And given Malik’s justifiable fear it obviously has been an ongoing thing.
When I once showed two seven year old charges (both white) a Paul Robeson movie and one boy called Paul “Mr.Bongo Lips.”
I nailed him.
I mentioned the wave (actually the kink) he had in his hair and that it could make him discriminated against in some groups. I told him of Paul Robson’s struggle at Rutgers including being put in hospital due to the violence he endured during football practise. I thought I had made a breakthrough because he seemed very interested.
Later he proudly told me (I’m not making this up) that “my dad said there’s no way that they (the all white football team at Rutgers) ever tore the nails of Paul Robeson’s hands with their cleats, because cleats were not even invented then…”
That book should not have been about bullying that the teacher read to the class it should have been about lynching, the Holocaust and a few examples of inhumanity that humans visits upon each other due to skin colour or creed.
Had I been the teacher, I would have told the little girl she was a very ugly and humiliated her. That’s the kind of shocks that I saw nasty kids get growing up, I received them on occasion as well for being too boisterous. Silence hangs in the air during class and children think about their actions and the actions of others and know that nastiness and racism carries lasting consequences. If I saw her genuinely turn over a new leaf and shape up then a few weeks later I would let her know she was no longer ugly but not until she changed and truly made nice.
“We can’t control the parents of Malik’s classmates, who obviously are planting the seeds of racism within their children. ”
To finish that: we CAN control the actions of teachers as they work for Malik and for his family. To the PTA: automatic suspension K through 12 for a racial slur and yes, there is no misinterpreting the term “monkey.”
Amanda wrote, “We can’t control the parents of Malik’s classmates, who obviously are planting the seeds of racism within their children.”
Actually, is this obviously so? Perhaps Malik’s classmates’ parents might be some of the 75% of white parents who, as documented in a study discussed in the LIE LINK above, “Want to Raise Racist Kids?,” simply never talk about race with their children because they think the best thing to do is to be “colorblind.”
All of our children of all races are surrounded by racist images, attitudes and structures, most of them unconscious, on a daily basis. When they pick up these attitudes, it’s not their fault.
Shaming children who are bullying does not stop bullying. (Many bullies are themselves shamed children who are struggling to be powerful or get attention anyway they can.) Isn’t shaming a child for saying something racist is like slapping a child for hitting?
The most powerful interventions I know of (see the work in schools of the National Coalition Building Institute – ncbi.org) start with the refusal to participate in ANY us/them divisions.
In NCBI practice, the purpose of interrupting is to actually change the person who is doing the hurtful behaviors. Therefore, you want to reach from the best in you to the best in the other person. It’s not the same as being “nice.” It is recognizing the equal value of the person you’re confronting, regardless of what he or she has just said or done.
When our hearts are sickened or broken by a comment or action, it’s very hard not to respond in righteous anger, but it’s not usually effective. When we are so sure we’re “right,” we often convey the message that the other person is less than us. That doesn’t change people; it just makes them not say or do anything like that again in front of us.
The only truly effective way I know to give people a chance to change is to be willing to become an ally to them, to listen long enough to discover what in the world would make them say/do something like that.
Reconciling interventions in which an adult counselor brings together a child who has bullied with a child who has been the target of that bullying can be transformative. The targeted child gets to find his/her voice, the “bully” must listen to the harm that he/she inflicted, and reflect on where the behavior came from.
Even more effective is preventing the behavior by creating a sense of community in the school and classroom, emphasizing mutual concern, caring and connection, and talking about differences in a positive light. I do author-illustrator visits in schools across the country and I’ve been to a few schools that have actually succeeded in both creating a welcoming environment and having a zero tolerance for bullying.
I don’t know Amanda. I tend to think that humiliation is not a great teaching tool, especially with kids that age. The goal should be to teach her, not to humiliate her and make her feel like a piece of crap. She’s just doing what she was taught to do…so teach her something else, but don’t do it cruelly.
Shaming a child as Amanda recommends is completely in appropriate. The actions described in the article are appropriate, to talk about bullying behavior and what is and is not acceptable in class, etc. You don’t make the child herself feel worthless, but you do put her on notice that the behavior is unacceptable. I don’t know that the teacher would necessarily have noticed these kids bullying this little boy. Kids can be sneaky and the behavior probably happened outside an adult’s line of view.
My kid is one of the few Jews in school. He has endured quite a bit of teasing. Nothing as bad as Malik, but just the same…I am realizing as I write this that I have fear in my heart, that I won’t be believed, and that saying anything will somehow cause my son to suffer more. I guess that is the long ranging effect of my growing up as the only one in my class, too.
Has anyone seen the “UP” films from Great Britain (7 up, 14 up, 21 etc?) I stand by my feelings about Malik’s bully and by the long held belief by most child psychologists as shown in the aforementioned documentaries that our basic personalities are formed by about age six. It sounds as if it may be too late for Malik’s tormentor.
Having been bullied myself as a teen by an older kid named called “Jack” in a Redneck town off of I5 in Norcal where they lynched a gay couple in the late 90′s. My single parent mom was working a night job, we were low income and as she has never experienced anything like it herself she did zero to defend me, partially out of exhaustion and a dislike of dealing with institutions. I swore when it was my turn to be a parent that my children would always be defended if they were justifiably upset. I doubt Jack was reachable to reason with at age 7 as well.
School is where children LEARN and that age group (7) is hugely resilient which is why I remember when I talked out of turn and was abruptly called on it that I turned red faced and felt worried for awhile afterwords yet quickly strived to improve and impress my teacher and classmates. (Test scores where much higher then as well) I’m not saying to destroy her young ego, what I’m suggesting is that she be told, by a respected authority figure in front of a group of her peers that she shares space with daily, that her actions are ugly and archaic.
If she goes home saying “Daddy and Mommy, I heard that Martin Luther King was one of the greatest Americans!!” or “I learned I was unfair to Malik, he’s not bad..” that is most likely going to be shot down in about ten seconds. If she has to think about the consequences of her actions WHEN THEY OCCUR she can at least learn to behave and not be rude and hurtful in a public setting. I still wonder why this teacher waited so long to react provided he/or she did at all.
Malik was having something close to what sounded like a nervous meltdown which is heartbreaking. At some point things crossed the line from being CALLED a bad name to feeling like he was being TREATED like one and feeling that others (perhaps even the majority) felt that way about him. That is very serious.
@Annie O: as uncouth as it seems, yes true, many whites as well as other races and combos thereof do raise their children to be colour-blind but it is their choice as parents and one I gingerly try to respect. I feel people have to embrace anti-racist parenting of their own volition and seek it out in their own lives. Community and PTA groups should help with the nudge but as more and more whites are fearing race discussions in this current climate and baulking at the notion they are sadly turning away indefinitely or towards extremism. Sites like this are helpful because one can be approach the subject from a safer vantage point than in person.
I think some bullies need to experience shame and humiliation in order to empathize with what they’re doing to their victims. There are some mean little kids out there that just like to exclude and be dominant and it doesn’t always come from the bully’s own hurt feelings at all. You’re going to have the occasional sociopath and I’d rather they learn sooner rather than later that spreading hate around is not going to be tolerated. If my child were treating another child like Malik was treated I’d be okay with him or her getting a taste of what it’s like to feel like that so that they’ll become a better person.
As a teacher and a photographer I see and photograph “the good, the bad and the ugly”. I agree that the bully has learned this most likely at home….however; I agree with Amanda. Every once in awhile, especially when it it something as serious as bullying, not that they made a “bad choice” but they were BAD…..they need to hear it. And letting the peers also know that the action was BAD sets a precedent that it won’t be tolerated and you will be called out on it. Every child needs to feel that churning in their stomach of guilt so that they do not want to feel it again. Guilt is good. It is the internal human gauge for right and wrong. Experiencing that feeling makes you realize that you don’t want to feel it again. I don’t humiliate my students. But if they cross the line and hurt another student emotionally…they are going to hear it from me. I usually end up having a conference with the parents afterwards because they are steaming mad that I stepped over the line with their child. In the end, most parents realize when things are really bad…that line has to be crossed. I’m disappointed in the teachers and school if they didn’t combat the bully.
And if you imaging an old tight-bun teacher…I’m not. In my 40′s with two teenagers and have been teaching for 17 years.
I am not comfortable with Amanda’s suggestions either in regards to children or adults. Her suggestions towards children seem overly aggressive and violent, while she is strangely unwilling to model anti-racist parenting for adults. This inconsistency, as well as other strangeness (supposed Northern California upbringing combined with British spelling, and English cultural references) makes me wonder where, literally, she is coming from.
Even in my son;s much more diverse Brooklyn classroom I have heard children using casual teasing around issues of race (mainly about “Asian” eyes). I correct my son and remind him not to be cruel. To suggest that a seven year old is not worthy of teaching or is unreachable is to say we cannot better our world. Kudos to Malik’s parents for speaking up.
I hate the way schools handle bullying. Do they really think reading a *book* will help? Especially a book on “bullying is bad”. Most kids know this- the kids in class might not even think that they’re bullies. A book on racism might be more appropriate, but even then it’s iffy. Maybe it’ll make one or two of the kids feel guilty and question- but that book is up against peer pressure saying “Not only is it okay to do this, but if you don’t you might get teased as well”.
I have next to no respect for schools when it comes to handling bullies. I’m sure some can- but too many can’t. 3 girls literally cornered me at recess and started threatening me, another girl saw this and told them to leave, and the principle yelled at the girl who *helped* me. The other 3 got a weak “that wasn’t very nice” and the girl who helped was told off properly. >(
Too many schools just want to stick their heads in the sand and pretend it isn’t happening, or punish the victim, or do the minimum possible so you can’t actually say “you aren’t doing anything!”, and it’s the kids who didn’t do anything wrong that suffer while the bullies learn that they’re in the right and won’t be punished for what they’re doing.
I sincerely hope that the school gets it’s rear in gear and the girl is able to see the error of her ways- but more than that I hope Malik will be okay.
Most schools have a zero tolerance policy for racism and bullying. If the little girl cannot learn to curb her behaviour then it is she who should be asked to leave not the boy. She is the one creating a hostile environment.
I agree, Renee.
ZooPath…you made a very good point!
It broke my heart, but I’ve experienced similar treatment.
This is fairly common when you’re a POC who comes into contact with racists.
The little boy will most likely remember that for the rest of his life.
I’m biracial, with very light skin…so light that I look like a white woman. It depends on who is looking at me. I’ve also been mistaken for Asian or Hispanic. Very few people can tell that I have African blood in my veins. The only indication is my hair. It is long, puffy, and tightly curled. I relax my hair but it is still very thick.
Anyway, one part of his story reminds me of racist comments people have made about my hair. Since childhood, I’ve been subjected to the most hurtful comments and attitudes toward my hair and other aspects of who I am. Being light-skinned doesn’t stop people from discriminating.
I could relate to his pain and bewilderment. I, too, was called vile names. I was called dirty and ugly. People said that I smelled and had lice. I was told that I had “n***er hair”. I was told that I had big nostrils. No one accepted me, white or black or otherwise. I felt inferior.
At a birthday party when I was about 8 years old, this little white girl was being mean to me for no reason. Later she asked my best friend why I had been invited. She asked Lindsey why she was even friendly with me, because “who wants to play with brown people?”
Poor little boy…I hope he will be able to love himself despite the ignorance and cruelty of the world.
Hmm…for some reason, my comment did not appear.
Anyway, I can relate to what this little boy is dealing with.
As a very light-skinned biracial woman, I have experienced racism throughout my life.
I was shunned by classmates who told me I was dirty and that I had “n***er” hair. One of these classmates was a white boy. The other two were a Hispanic boy and girl.
Once when I was about 16, a Hispanic classmate asked me if I ever took a bath or washed my hair. I was shocked, hurt, and angry. He was implying that I was dirty because I was part black and because my hair was kinky. I started skipping school. I couldn’t deal with the nonsense anymore.
My mother couldn’t afford the most stylish or expensive clothes, but I was clean. I bathed on a daily basis. I was very conscious of my hygiene, especially as a young girl who wanted to be attractive to boys. Unlike Malik, I don’t have dreadlocks. But my hair is very kinky. Ignorant people often equate this with being dirty and unclean somehow.
What happened to the little boy is a direct result of the racist notions that some people have about anyone who looks different from themselves. Racist notions about people smelling bad, being ugly and inferior, dirty, etc.
I have painful memories of racist abuse. If I knew Malik, I would try to comfort him. He needs to know that he isn’t alone.
It seems that the girl bullying him needs somebody to put her in her place. I don’t agree entirely with Amanda’s suggestion, but this kid needs to be told that she is out of line.
She has either learned this behavior at home, or elsewhere. I agree with both Renee and ZooPath.
This child needs to learn empathy and respect. Her behavior is unacceptable.
@Annie O…I appreciate what you’re saying, but this little girl is conveying to him that he is less than she is because he is black and wears dreadlocks. So I cannot agree with your statement completely. She needs to learn that this is wrong. Period.
Oh the poor little boy! My heart goes out to him and his family.
It’s racist bullying like this that really sets me off. They find one kid who’s different to their monotone atmostphere and they make a big deal about it.
Personally I’d have given that little brat a vicious tongue-lanshing.