A Letter from a Lakota Parent

The following is an excerpt from a letter a friend of mine, Robert Wilson, sent me about his own experiences with Lakota schools that he sent to The Cincinnati Enquirer. His eldest daughter attended Lakota West and he has two young children that will start attending Lakota schools in the near future.

He asked that I post what he had to say on the blog. I want to stress that these are his thoughts and observations, not those of UCABJ. But his letter does provide a fresh perspective on a story I wrote for Cincinnati Magazine’s June issue (link here for your convenience).

~Geoffrey Dobbins
Vice President, UCABJ

Dear Editor,

My daughter recently graduated from Lakota West High school. When my daughter first started attending Lakota West, her peers treated her like any other student.

During her junior year she became more interested in her Choctaw background. It was then that my daughter’s problems at school began. She started to hear racially insensitive remarks from other students and sometimes even faculty. Classmates called her “fake” for wanting to learn about her ancestry and said she was “obviously white.” They said she should stop acting like she was “something she is not.”

She was active in what Lakota calls its Multicultural Enhancement Club, but I found the group to be unorganized and lacked leaders with experience in cultural diversity issues. Most of the group’s members were African American students, which led me to believe that interest in learning about other ethnic groups was lacking among much of the West Chester community. This disturbed me a great deal.

My daughter is at a point in her life where she is very curious about her roots. Her European roots, her Choctaw roots, and who knows what other bloodlines she may learn about in the future. I think it is healthy for her to learn more about these things. When people say she is being “fake” for wanting to experience these aspects of her ancestry, their comments tell me that parents, teachers, and the board of education at Lakota are failing these children.

Academically, Lakota may score high marks within the state, but if you turn these children loose in a workforce that is becoming more and more diverse everyday, they are going to have some big problems.

As concerned parents, my father and I questioned administrators of the school about the situation. My daughter wanted to wear traditional Choctaw dress to school to celebrate American Indian month. A number of her classmates told her “it isn't Halloween” and said she should take off the costume. These comments made by those students hurt her feelings so severely she came home crying. I asked her if she discussed the issue with counselors, teachers or principals. She said she had spoken with administrators at the school and that they weren’t very helpful.

My father plays an active role in the North American Indian Council of Greater Cincinnati and my daughter asked the chairperson of the council – Jean Marie Brightfire Stophlette – if she would be interested in speaking at one of the school’s multicultural events. Jean, being the warm-hearted and ambitious person she is, said yes. When Jean visited the school, she privately spoke with administrators about the concerns my father and I had discussed. Jean supplies cultural diversity training for companies all over the country. One of her more well-known rolls has been cultural diversity trainer at Procter & Gamble.

She offered to help the school address its issues. She also proposed an assembly that would aid teachers and students in being less judgmental towards people that are different from themselves. Jean was not happy about their response.

The generalizations and the bigotry are rampant at that school and it is not subtle. It is out in the open where kids and teachers alike hear it every day and do nothing about it. To them it's just kids being kids.

Unfortunately, this is not a perfect world and we will all be subjected to people who either don't know any better and were raised to believe they are privileged because of the color of their skin. These types of things make me cringe but we should not have to put up with these incidences in our schools. We send our children to school to learn, not to resent one another.

There needs to be strict guidelines put in place just like there are in the workforce for such behavior. There needs to be cultural diversity training within the schools. And YES, I DO agree with the NAACP about getting the justice department involved.

When there is an act of discrimination against a company by either an employee or customer, the justice department steps in and either imposes a fine, or strict guidelines which include training employees and managers on not only how to accept different cultures but how to deal with people who don't accept differences very well.

When subjected to any type of discrimination by customers in my area of work, we were not only trained to ask the customer to leave, we were EXPECTED to do it. I would do this regardless of company policy anyway because it is a moral and ethical response. It is also the law. When the staff at Lakota fails to confront problems like these, in a way they convey that they condone the behavior. That is not acceptable by any standard.

Thank you for reading and understanding a very important issue that needs addressed.

Robert Wilson

Lakota Parent