Black High School Student slain in Corona

This is a difficult story to write about. There are no simple solutions, or straightforward answers. A young black boy was chased down in his central-Corona neighborhood by 3 Mexican / Latino youth his age and stabbed with wounds that took his life within 2 hours.

Today [Sunday] at least a thousand students, parents, and concerned community members attended a car wash / bar-b-que / gathering at the high school to fundraise for the family and grieve the loss of the well loved 15 -year old Dominic Redd.

Students gathering together wearing t-shirts saying "RIP Dominic" and other similar statements say that they are angry, some say they are ready to retaliate and fight back; others make clear, especially the Latino/ Mexican students interviewed, that this is not about "mexicans" verses blacks as much as this is about gang members attacking Blacks.

Students disclosed rumours that the 3 youth responsible for the death of Dominic did so as a challenge to get into a gang, students quoting the "CVL's" as the culprit. [This is not verified, but is rumored from many students]

Other students inteviewed of White and Black ethnicity say they feel safe everyday at school, and claim regular hate speech by Mexicans because of their white skin color.

Parents and students repeatedly complained that the schools always want to say this is not about race, and deny there is a significant problem on their campuses.

REGIONAL / HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE
Race riots are no stranger to these and other Inland Empire schools, as well as Los Angeles based schools, etc. Riverside in particular has been seeing an insurgence of race-motiviated violence at least since the February Castle Park incident of rioting, leading days later to a follow up at La Sierra High School, then a couple of months later to the Norte Vista High School riots. All of the above, the schools have denied the impact of racial tensions and have point blank mandated that teachers NOT engage students in discussion about this, but to try and SUPRESS DISCUSSION while simultaneously increasing police presence on campuses and gang profiling units.
THESE ARE NOT SOLUTIONS.
FURTHERMORE, any effort to actually discuss "race" on the typical high school campus in this area (if not beyond) is treated almost as a criminal act.

To be as straighforward as possible, I would like to say that if we did not live in White supremist society where people of color are disproportionately failing and not making to high school graduation and even less making it to college, where our prisons are filled with 70 to 80 percent people of color in a nation where the same ethnicities only exist in much smaller proportions overall--with all of this as the starting point, it's a no wonder that we find ourselves in situations like this.

Schools are presenting a one-size-fits-all curriculum to a nation of diverse student. This curriculum is not only one size fits all--but it is inherently White, owning class centered in its viewpoints.

Students of color are not given the opportunity to know their own rich culture and history in our campuses, and are in fact, discouraging from embracing their own diversity. Dominant culture always wants to remove race from discussion, and hope that we can all just get along as "one" united race. The problem with this concept is that since the dominant culture is disproportionately favouring only one race / culture, this therefore marginalizes all the rest.

Most students don't even know not only what the African-American communities enduring during the 60's civil rights movement, but even moreso, they are even more unaware of the similar Mexican struggles endured and continuing to endure along segregation and racism.

The City of Corona, for instance, had an intense program of segregation. The City pool, for instance, used to closed off to Mexicans leaving one day a week for "Mexicans" to swim in, whereby the would clean the pool the very next day before allowing "Whties" back in again.

Our schools are more statistically segregated today than ever before! And, I am put in the position as an educator of predominately youth of color to watch almost consistently my class average grade levels at D or below, while my class demographics are 90% or more Mexican / Latino.

White centric education is FAILING our youth, and leaving a LIMITED set of options for them to choose outside of that. Policing of youth of color is increasing with incidences like this only fueling it more.

Public schools CONSISTENTLY BLOCK youth from outside contact, leaving them limited to the set of ideas and information decided for them by the district and national policy makers. I have approached several school districts REPEATEDLY with offers from reformed gang members, youth from various inner city communities, hip hop performers, etc., who are willing and eager to come to these campuses and engage students in dialogue about these issues from a perspective that is more eye-to-eye than school administrators can offer. REPEATEDLY, these offers have been turned down with the instruction to RESTRICT ENGAGING YOUTH on these issues.

Programs like one in Corona who operate on Merrill St. giving afterschool programs for Black and Mexican youth in the area are under mandate by the CORONA POLICE STATION to close their doors, reflecting the trend that true community / youth services are porrly funded and NOT given the bureacracy support they need to effectively support communities.

Take a step into Home Gardens, for instance, the SEGREGATED part of Corona that NOBODY wants to admit is there. Damn, most of these youth are shipped off to schools like Centenniel, but are coming from a totally different world than their predominately White, Middle class educators. There is one K-6 grade school Home Gardens which gives a decent representation of the communities' demographics: 100% Latino, 100% free lunch program. Gangs and violence are everyday experiences for these youth, and the Middle Classes and policy makers just pretend they are not there.

Guns, violence, gangs, drugs--all of this are the options our youth has to turn to when WE [policy makers, educators, mainstream society as a whole] consistently fail them.