Andrew Crider, Staff Writer
Glen Allen high school in Henrico became the center of controversy and national news headlines last week when a video produced by the African-American Policy Forum was shown during two school assemblies.
The video, titled “Structural Discrimination: The Unequal Opportunity Race,” shows colored runners racing next to white runners in a relay. During the race, various obstacles with titles such as “Housing segregation, poor schooling and underemployment,” appear and prevent the colored runners from keeping pace with their white counterparts.
The video was shown as a part of the school’s celebration of black history month on Feb. 4. According to U.S News Education, the high school has a 63 percent white and 21 percent black student body. School officials were made aware of complaints from parents that evening.
Don Blake, whose granddaughter attends Glen Allen high school told NBC12 he believed the video created racial divides.
“They are sitting there watching a video that is dividing them up from a racial standpoint. It’s a white guilt kind of video,” Blake said.
Responding to concerns from community members, the Henrico County School Board released a public statement on Feb. 11.
“While we as educators do not object to difficult and constructive conversations about American history and racial discourse past and present, we understand why many people feel this video in particular was not the best way to deliver such an important lesson,” Superintendent Pat Kinlaw said in the statement.
The statement released by the school board indicated that there had been a large amount of emails and phone calls addressing the video.
“The school division has heard the feedback from our community loud and clear, and we will take additional measures as needed to review instructional material on an ongoing basis,” Kinlaw said.
School Board Chairman Micky Ogburn said the Henrico School Board and administration consider the matter to be of “grave concern.”
“It is our goal to prevent the recurrence of this type of event,” Ogburn said.
The school board has announced that it instructed its faculty to no longer show the video.
Luke Harris, co-founder of the African-American Policy Forum, told the Washington Post that the video was designed for elementary and secondary schools.
“We found that the video has a huge impact on the people that we’re showing it to,” Harris said. “Most of us know very little about the social history of the United States and its contemporary impact. It was designed as a tool to throw light on American history.”
Staff Writer, Andrew Crider
Andrew is a junior economics major who has written for student newspapers since he was in high school. Andrew is interested in political history, aviation, photography and running. He has a tendency to refer to his peers, coworkers and bosses as “ma’am” or “sir,” but is getting better about referring to his friends at the CT by their first names instead. // Facebook