My mother pulled me out of public school in the middle of second grade because the elementary school’s principal was racist. I along with my younger siblings, cousins, and play-cousins was homeschooled by my mother for a few years. When I was in sixth grade, my community opened a Muslim school, which I attended with my siblings until I graduated. My mother also taught at the school. We were one of the founding families and one of the handfuls of Black families who attended.
The student population was small, between 75-100 in the first few years with the bulk of the students being in the lower elementary. The majority of the students were from the Arabic world, including Palestine, Egypt, Syria, and Jordan. There were a small handful of Indian and Pakistani families along with a smaller number of Black and Nigerian families. Because I attend the school for only my middle and high school years, I can only speak to that experience. Amongst the girls, there were two cliques that were mostly divided by ethnicity. All of the Black people and the majority of the Palestinians always hung out together and made up one group. The other group was everyone else. Of course, each group thought theirs was the best and the coolest.
Even though, there were these two main cliques, that were no major issues between us. We were not the Bloods or the Crips, we could hang out and associate with each other but we just preferred our group. I checked my memory against my sisters and none of us remember any racism from any other students.
Ironically, almost every issue with bigotry we experienced was committed by the Quran, Arabic, and Islamic Studies teachers. These teachers were the ones who were supposed to teach us about Islam, but they were the ones who were discriminating against us.
I’m not going to detail every racial incident or microaggressions we encountered but only highlight a few. These are all facts and are all horrible.
1. The Quran teacher invited all of the girls in middle and high school to her house for a pool party. But she did not extend an invitation to us because we were Black. Mind you, this excursion was going to take place during the school day. The principal found out, changed the location of the party to her house so that all of the girls could attend. This incident stuck out to me then because it was one of the first times, we explicitly knew we were being excluded solely because of the color of our skin.
2. My older sister was a member of the first graduating class. She had reached all of the requirements to be awarded valedictorian but the administration did not want to bestow that honor to her. They wanted to give it to an Arab girl. They tried to change the rules on how the award will be given from the highest GPA to also include SAT scores in order for the other girl to receive the reward. But Alhamdulillah, one of the only Black teachers in middle/high school told my mother what they were planning and both fought against it. The administration solution was to add a salutatorian so the other girl would get an award at graduation, which was very unnecessary in a graduating class of four. Another lesson learned that the rules could change arbitrarily to make us illegible for awards, honors, or promotions even when are the most qualified.
3. My sister was counting her lunch money at school, the Arabic teacher cruelly joked that she was counting drug money and made a comment about her having a gun. This is just one of the many microaggressions that we had to deal with that acted as a reminder that is Blackness made us criminals.
My sisters and I experience was different than that of my younger brothers, where we did not experience racial issues with our peers, they did. I cannot count the number of times, my brothers were called abeed (slave) on the basketball court. One time, my younger brother was called the N-word. Years later the perpetrator apologized to my brother. I will not make excuse these behaviors because the perpetrator were children.
My mother was fed up with all of the racism that we experienced and decided to quit. She pulled all of us out of the school in the middle of our third year. My mother really doesn’t play when it comes to racism. She doesn’t care when and how it inconveniences them. When she is done, she is done. Eventually, after much prodding and having the principal come to our house with a bunch of students, my mother was convinced to go back and we returned to school. After, we returned there was a meeting with the principal and those teachers in order for us to express our grieves. I do not remember receiving an apology. My two sisters and I also wrote an open letter to the principal, board, and administration to open their eyes to the problems, to call a ‘spade a spade’. We were not going to sit by, allow them to mistreat us and other students. I do not think it helped much, but it did serve as a lesson for me that regardless of power positions, you should always stand up for yourself and others. I hoped that it showed them that we would not tolerate mistreatment.
My experiences at the Muslim school were tempered with blatant racism and microaggressions. These experiences were not harmless or trivial, they had an emotional impact on me. They made me realize at a vulnerable age, that no environment is safe from racism even if it is filled with my brothers and sisters in Islam.
That even though the Prophet Muhammad (May Peace and Blessings be Upon Him) said in the last sermon, “All mankind is from Adam and Eve, an Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab has any superiority over an Arab; also a white has no superiority over Black nor a Black has any superiority over white except by piety and good action” not every Muslim actually believes it.
