A Black student at Oaks Christian School in West Lake Village, California, alleges he was racially harassed for years as a student. The student and his family are suing the school to seek damages for the incidents.
The student, who is a minor and remains anonymous in court documents, claims that the school “was negligent and careless by allowing students to harass, humiliate, and bully the plaintiff with impunity,” The Los Angeles Times reports.
According to the lawsuit, the family also claims that the school violated California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act by continuously allowing the discrimination to persist and not adequately acting to stop it. The incidents described in the lawsuit are disturbing acts of racism. Allegedly, other students at Oaks Christian School downloaded a smartphone app that made whipping sounds from the speakers and played it whenever a Black student walked by.
The lawsuit filed against
the school in Los Angeles County Superior Court claimed that students held a mock slave auction among themselves in the cafeteria and openly debated how much the Black student plaintiff would be worth if he were to be sold. They even asked him about his physical physique to guide their price. There was another instance where a student held a piece of fried chicken above the boy’s head and taunted him by saying, “I know you people like this.”The suit said that at one point, several students threatened to lynch him. In response to the lawsuit, Oaks Christian released a statement on Oct. 18. The school claimed that when the student informed the staff at the end of last year about the racial harassment, administrators immediately began investigating the complaint and expelled three students from the school in relation to the complaint. The statement expressed that the school has “frequently monitored” the situation and that no other racist incidents have been reported to the school.
“And while these actions of student-on-student harassment are unacceptable, and were swiftly and firmly addressed, the actions of a handful of students do not reflect the culture of Oaks Christian School or our broader community,” the statement read. “To this end, Oaks Christian will continue to aggressively address any forms of discrimination in its school community whatsoever or wherever they may arise.”
However, the lawsuit filed by the student tells a different story. The plaintiff is currently a senior, and despite the continued racist abuse he has suffered, he intends to complete his last year at Oaks Christian.
In an interview with The Times, joined by his mother and attorneys, he recalled that the first racist incident occurred while on an eighth-grade class trip at the Slave Memorial at Mount Vernon. He said several other students told him “to join them in the graves.”
The faith-centered college reportedly didn’t do much to support him.
“I felt separated,” he said. “I felt like, why me? Why did they feel the need to say that? I didn’t do anything to them.”
He acknowledged that he had informed Oaks Christian staff about the bullying, but the administration had failed to address the problems he was experiencing.
He opened up in the interview about one instance where a school administrator informed him that his U.S. history class would be covering slavery that day and to “brace” for inappropriate comments to be made by his classmates.
By filing the lawsuit, however, the student hopes to make a real change in Oaks Christian’s culture.
“I’m bracing for it to happen — I’ll have to go through it so nobody else will,” he said. “There has to be a change.”
“Since this relentless behavior went unchecked, it fostered a toxic atmosphere at Oaks Christian School, where racism became normalized, and students felt empowered to see how far they could terrorize plaintiffs and other Black students.”
The atmosphere at Oaks Christian School left the Black student feeling isolated and so emotionally burdened that he could barely focus on his academics. His mother says that the student is now in therapy to help recover from the emotional damage.
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