Racism and its Impacts on a Potentially Segregated Community in North Texas

“Please,” the woman impassionedly pleaded at the school board’s general public podium. “I beg you to protect these kids — Those kids at Marcus can be racist! That football game! They implied Lewisville kids don’t belong!”

Up until this point, with the exception of some good news about Spanish-speaking accessibility in our elementary schools, the school board meeting had been pretty dry. (No offense to the board, but for our AP Government extra credit, we had wanted to investigate the processes of school board decision making on topics a bit spicier than school buses.) The frigid and rigid board room finally piqued our — four students from different corners of Asia’s — interest.

The woman was stressing how rezoning the schools in our area could put students — particularly students of color and relatively socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds — at risk of suffering daily abuse at the hands of their racist classmates.

Lewisville ISD was looking to rezone the schools particularly for the reason of my highschool becoming underpopulate, but the woman’s point, (however misguided in argument, in my opinion) has made me look at the allegations of racism within her argument and to what extent they are true.

Within my time at MHS, there were many racially-charged incidents that gave leeway for questions about whether tensions between races exist as part of simple and innocent competitive rivalry or as part of structural and fundamental flaws with the ways we raise our students — brewing a subtlized but deadly racism on the daily. The facts and incidents that immediately come to mind are as follows:

• In 2019, a kid in my graduating class had a photo of him standing next to and gesturing at a white board that had the N word and a swastika drawn on it circulating online. This caught the attention of North Texan news outlets such as Fox News.
• In 2020, Marcus, a 73 or so percent white and 4 or so percent black school put on a production of the musical Hairspray, which led to many questions about ethical casting.
• In 2016 or 2017, at our yearly “Battle of the Axe,” rival football game, it was circulated that (I cannot verify the validity of the report first hand) Lewisville students robbed a Marcus band bus, prompting many Marcus students to make socio-economically charged comments about the incident.
• Multiple POC friends of mine have reported to me instances of being harassed by other members of the student body with comments having to do with race and ethnicity.
• In my experience, very little traumatic harassment directed at me has occurred, but there have been an abundance of comments about the “Asian-ness” of my eyes and how most of my success is a product of being Asian.

Saying all this, I do not mean to misrepresent my school as a completely off-the-rails racist institution, but there undeniably alarming forces at play. I, as a student of color experienced an overall happy academic career at this school, but this obviously cannot be the truth for all students. Beyond the socially-constructed racially-charged incidents in Flower Mound and going back to the school board meeting woman’s issue, there are many questions of the structural implications of such a supposed enviroment. When can we recognize this environment as a sort of modern-day-segregation and focus on race when it comes to making decisions about school zoning?

Would moving more children of color into my highschool heighten any sorts of tension? There are performance disparities between the three highschools in my area. To what extent are those disparities a reflection upon social inequity within schooling?

Does socioeconomic inequality cause the differences between the schools or do the school environments reinforce socioeconomic inequality?

Some would say that yes, there is an issue with racism within our school environments. To absolve this, we should rezone the schools according to population-based issues which are not inherently racially-oriented and incidentally provide education about how to treat those around us with respect. This is the part of the argument that I most agree with, but there are a few limitations I’ll get into maybe when I’m not 600000 words over the suggested word count. Keeping POC students from being zoned for better performing schools further perpetuates racial systemic inequality.

Others, like the lady at the board meeting would say yes, there is an issue with racism in our community, but we should not rezone the schools to simply avoid the inevitable issue of race altogether. — Kids are raised a certain way and are resistant to change at least within the small window of their early education. Putting students at risk of abuse in their early years could be harmful later on in life. I have heard horror stories from the few non-Asian POCs at Marcus, so would they be better off in another school?

Others would say there are no issues with racism that manifest on the structural scale. Differences in performances at the schools are merely a product of reality — that Lewisville is a poorer area than Flower Mound. Students at Lewisville — 56% of whom are considered financially disadvantaged do poorly because of shifts in priorities within their lives relative to the students at Marcus about 6% of whom are considered financially disadvantaged.) The “different academic experiences” of the different races are thus not a factor that should be considered when zoning schools.

Lastly, some could argue that no issues about race exist at all. Students at Marcus and Lewisville alike daily collaborate on academically rigorous activities and the community is really an example of progress within. Any complaints about the aforementioned racially-charged incidents are nit-picking at a loud but miniscule minority irrepresentative of the school environments as wholes. Rezoning is therefore again, not an issue of race, but of what will sustain each of the schools.