This past weekend over 200,000 people attended the March for Our Lives in Washington.
This youth-led movement has sparked a national conversation about gun violence. One of the most encouraging parts of this new dialogue is the way in which students from the predominantly white Parkland area have acknowledged and amplified the preexisting work of black students to combat gun violence.
This amplification is a necessary part of ensuring that new policy proposals do not ignore the concerns of populations that are put at greatest risk by America’s extensive gun culture.
In more pedestrian instances of youth activism, interracial dialogue is fostered by conversations within schools. Because of this, an important part of supporting effective youth activism is supporting well-funded and racially diverse schools.
Unfortunately, in North Carolina there seems to be an attempt to partially re-segregate our already racially bifurcated schools. Two ongoing policy reviews by the North Carolina General Assembly and UNC Board of Governors threaten both the basic foundations of post-Brown v. Board of Education public education and extended projects of interracial youth solidarity.
On the primary and secondary level, legislation in June from the General Assembly created a committee to investigate the process of breaking up North Carolina school districts. This process is likely to split up larger systems, like Charlotte-Mecklenburg or Wake County, along racial lines in a way that both furthers racial segregation and underfunds schools predominantly poor and black schools.
Supporters of the legislation have denied this racialized impact, but many of the committee’s most involved legislators represent white suburban communities that have expressed interest in this exact utilization.
On the tertiary level, the UNC BOG is reviewing a report they commissioned on the efficiency of equal opportunity, diversity and inclusion programs.
Some members of the Board's subcommittee on the issue questioned the financial return on investment while one complained about the discomfort talking about kinds of privileged white students. Without the crucial resources diversity initiatives provide, marginalized youths, particularly students of color, are likely to be further excluded from higher education in our state.
