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Conversations around race and racial justice
Elizabeth Shockman

White Bear Lake students walk out to protest racism

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Dozens of White Bear Lake Area High School students walked out of class on Friday. Holding signs and chanting, they listened to fellow students describe racist incidents they’d endured at the school. Then they marched down McKnight Road.

Earlier this week, several Black students at the school were the targets of anonymous racist slurs and violent threats on social media.

Senior Saron Bekabil said the protest was to demand school leaders take more aggressive action to both condemn and prevent racism at the school northeast of the Twin Cities.

“The administration always says, ‘We will be better, we see you, we understand you,’ but every year something happens and a kid is traumatized, so we actually need change,” Bekabil said. “We need this investigated, we need something different. We don’t just need assurance.”

Bekabil, who is 18, said she’s brought complaints to school leaders before about a white student using a racial slur in classes, but has not been satisfied with how leaders responded. In one instance, she said a school leader told her they would give students three strikes before issuing consequences for racist behavior.

It’s made her question how seriously administrators take racist incidents.

“They don’t actually feel our pain, they don’t understand our trauma. It comes with trauma — even after [the death of] George Floyd, we still have trauma after that,” Bekabil said.

On Thursday, White Bear Lake Area High School principals sent a message to school families informing them of the racist threats that occurred this week. They called the social media posts “deplorable” and said they were working with local law enforcement to investigate the incident. They said racist behavior would not be tolerated at the schools.

School officials did not respond to requests for an interview.