Black students warn racism is ‘running rampant’ at their Sacramento high school

Administrators at Pleasant Grove High School have allegedly done nothing to protect students of color from blatant racism.

TheGrio Staff

Jan 12, 2018

Rachael Francois thegrio.com — Rachael Francois, a senior at Pleasant Grove High School, says she has witnessed racism at her school and the administrators have done nothing to stop it. (Sacramento Bee video screenshot)

Students at Pleasant Grove High School in Sacramento, California, were so uncomfortable with the racist incidents at their school that they decided to take action and write a letter to their teachers.

But instead of support, they were met with shame and ridicule.

Rachael Francois, a senior at the school, told Fox 30 that she decided to act when a “truck load of white guys rolled past, and screamed out the N-word, hard ‘R.’”

“My self-worth was a little bit ruined from that,” she told the Sacramento Bee. “It kind of made me think, like, is this really who I am and what people think of me? It really makes you feel different from everyone else, especially going to a predominately white school.”

She and two other African-American students decided to write a letter, which Rachael put into the boxes of all of the teachers.

But the vice principal of the school then yelled at her over the letter and one of her teachers called her selfish for taking action.

“We don’t belong”

According to Rachael, she and other African-American students have seen plenty of racism on their campus.

“I do feel like … we don’t belong and we are not part of the school,” she said.

Recently, the school was the subject of a viral video where some students were seen talking about killing Black people that they wished “would go down.” The students involved were expelled, but Rachael said that it was just one incident in a laundry list of many more.

“There was all these things happening such as nooses hung around the trees. A white kid ran into the class rooms and said kill all the N-words,” she said.

She also noted that it wasn’t until the viral video that the staff at the school even did anything to address these issues. Superintendent Christopher Hoffman has acknowledged that there are problems at the school and promised to help.

The district, he said, would take “disciplinary action when necessary, but the real goal is for these type of actions not to happen anymore.”