African Americans in US face system of oppression: Activist

Press TV has conducted an interview with Yejide Orunmila, member of the African People’s Socialist Party in Washington, about a new analysis of US government data identifying 13 states where African-American students are suspended or expelled from schools at disproportionately higher rates than white students.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: It is better late than never even though this has been noted to have occurred in the past but the proportion is very alarming. What is your reaction?

Orunmila: This is something that is linked to the colonization of African people here in the United States that it is no different from what we see happening with police brutality and what we see happening with gentrification. It is all part of a systemic problem that means to eliminate or press African people in this country. So it is definitely not separate. It is all a part of the same system of oppression.

Press TV: When you look at the statistics that exists, this is occurring in a school setting. You are having people, African Americans in particular, taking away with them a harsh experience, the ones who obviously are being expelled or suspended and that translates into society. The repercussions are enormous here into the different facets that it negatively affects them on and then, of course, them going to society with that grudge in them. Shouldn’t there be more to be done by local municipalities to confront this?

Orunmila: Yes, I think there needs to be more that needs to be done, in particular like you said, in the municipalities but also in the home but also I think overall we are looking at a systemic problem that even if one municipality were to correct the problem, there is certainly a hundred or thousand more that have not corrected the problem, and if we are going to see any changes in the conditions of our children in school and their outcomes, then what we are looking at is a whole system change, and it can start locally but what we really need to understand is that this colonialism is something that we have to do away with, because if we do not do that, then we are going to be dealing with this time and time again because the study highlights the southern states but I think that what is really important is that in my home state of New York, there are the same alarming numbers with black children, where black girls are ten times more likely to be suspended and expelled to white girls, and we have black boys eight times more likely than their white counterparts to be expelled. So this is not something that is specific to these 13 states in the south, it is something that is happening across the country.

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