by Zurya Anjum
Guest writer
The Sartell school board listened to the results of the Equity audit done by Equity Alliance on June 21. In the early part of the meeting a lot of members from Sartell community spoke for or against the Equity audit and the school boards plans to implement changes based on recommendations from the audit.
I am a strong supporter for the effort for working on equity issues not just in our school but also in our community and have been for years. I do want to answer some questions raised by community members at the meeting.
After the listening session last year where students, teachers and parents spoke about their personal stories, I am astonished that people in our community still think we do not have a problem in our schools related to equity. Kids as young as in elementary school notice differences in kids in their class. They notice differences in skin and hair color and the way they speak. I volunteered in both my kids’ elementary classes and young kids would ask questions about where I was from frequently. One of the first things we teach our kids are numbers and colors, so how is it possible they do not notice it in human beings? The only difference is how we respond to them when they ask us why someone looks different. They ask innocently and pick up on our biases as we answer them.
To people who say teaching about racism makes kids think they are divided into the oppressor and oppressed, here is my answer. We teach our kids about telling the truth, not stealing, abiding the law among other things. Are we teaching them to become liars, thieves or criminals? No, we are teaching them the difference between the two opposite sides of the principle to show the distinction between them. Similarly, we need to teach them the difference between being racist and being accepting of all.
Martin Luther King said in his famous speech that he dreamed of a day where his kids were not judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. He was very well aware how African Americans were treated at that time based on their skin color. We have come a long way but our journey is not done. It will only be complete when everyone is judged by their character and not skin color, religion or sexual orientation. We are sadly a long way away from that dream.
Marginalized communities are judged every day based on their ancestry, language, culture, sexual identity and economic status. I see this every day in my life even though I am protected to some extent by my education and socioeconomic status. I am treated differently if I walk in a store, go to the airport or a restaurant, dressed in semi formal work clothes or when I identify as a physician. However, even at work I have heard many patients ask office staff, “did she go to medical school? Can she speak English? What qualifications does she have?”
This is despite the fact I passed the same examinations medical students in the United States take during medical college. I had to essentially repeat my medical college education even though in my country I was working on my post graduate medical degree. Coming from a developing country and competing against U.S. medical graduates is not an easy task but I did accomplish it as did thousands of foreign medical graduates.
There is clear data that without the foreign medical graduates working in the United States, especially in the rural areas, the medical services would collapse. According to data from October 2020, 25 percent of physicians working in the United States are foreign medical graduates. Immigrants work in all areas of the work force and contribute to them and without them the supply of all services will be significantly affected.
Education, employment, housing, medical opportunities for marginalized communities are significantly different. This has clearly been proven in this past year of the global pandemic. There is clear data the pandemic affected the marginalized communities significantly more than the general population. The value of a grocery worker or a laborer is the same as a CEO or head of a company. Why are they treated differently if all human beings are equal based on our constitution?
Wise nations learn from their past mistakes whereas foolish ones hide their past mistakes. Teaching children about how the land we all call home was taken from the Native Americans who were the original owners, how we as human beings made mistakes about slavery, segregation, the holocaust and internment camps is an investment to make sure we learn from our mistakes and hopefully never make them again. If we do not teach them, we may repeat those awful parts of our history.
Racism is not inherited it is learned. Children learn it from their family and friends. Too many times we may not be aware of how kids are absorbing our attitudes and beliefs from conversations that are happening around them. If they hear someone they love and trust use racial slurs they believe they are appropriate words for them to use. They are mouthing what they hear from people who they look up too. We must remember though, “sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can last forever.”
Lastly, I just want to say that talking about racism does not mean all Caucasians are racists. That would be like saying all Muslims are terrorists. Both those statements are ridiculous. Racism is not linked to color of skin any more than terrorism is linked to a religion. That is the thought process that is being fed to us to create a wrong narrative. There is a segment of people who are using this to make people think the goal is to create good and bad people. Obviously, that is not the goal.
Please educate yourself on these issues and do not speak what other people are saying. Keep an open mind and remember; whether you are Christian, Jew, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh or any other faith, none of them teach racism. In fact, they all focus on tolerance and acceptance of differences. They all teach to judge people by their deeds and not by their socioeconomic status, race, gender or sexual identity. Let’s work together to make our schools and community a welcoming place for all.
