The Impact of Racism

          In the book Accountable by Dashka Slater, it dives into a serious event that happened at Albany High School in 2017, and goes on to explore themes like accountability and justice. This book goes on to show how social media can spread hate speech, misinformation and inspecting the roles of individuals. Through detailed research and storytelling, Slater prompts the audience to think of their responsibilities in managing to create more just society. Systemic racism creates environments that allow discriminatory behavior, as seen at Albany High School. Implicit bias affects how individuals and institutions respond to racism by leading to delayed anti-racist actions.

        The systemic racism created at Albany High School goes on to demonstrate how discriminatory behavior was allowed between people. As a person describes how things are normalized at Albany High School, they go on to mention a series of discriminatory events that happen at school.As stated, ¨Class discussion of slavery. Everyone looks over at you. Teacher asks you - the only Black kid in the class - if you have any thoughts¨ (Slater 20). The experiences Black students have in the classroom, and how there is little consideration to what's being said to them. This becomes normalized and influences how students think they can treat Black students, even if someone tries to disrupt discrimination, it is not taken seriously. As said, ¨ Murphy remembers his older brother interrupting one of these lectures to pose an objection. …Back then, nothing much had happened. Why was everyone making such a big deal about it this time¨ (Slater 164). It suggests that similar situations have happened before and were ignored, showing how little importance they place on discriminatory events. Instead of the school addressing and preventing them, they choose to overlook them. This indicates that systemic racism significantly contributes to the frequency of such incidents in people's environments in this incident.

       Implicit bias also played a significant role in how the situation at Albany High School was handled because the school realized they needed to treat this racist incident differently than other events where rules are broken. As it often leads to downplaying the true consequences of actions and what can happen as a result. In this part the staff are indecisive of what should be done about the racists account since they were never shown how to treat such incidents like this. They were unsure whether they should follow the ¨rules¨ given to them to punish the students. As stated, “Nor did they explain how to respond to thirteen followers with different levels of participation and varying responses to the accounts discovery, or how to protect student privacy while also responding to a community that wanted answers and accountability. All these rules could tell them was how to punish¨ (Slater 151). Although no one knew how to handle the entire racist incident, they attempted to do what they believed was right, which ultimately did not positively impact the situation. They followed their institution's directives without conducting their own research to determine what would be best for both groups. Another incident where a speaker is talking, they go on to mention how some situations are mistreated and downplayed to have less consequences without fully having a good impact but instead letting it continue. They state, ¨Taking the punitive approach means allowing the cycle to continue, rather than building a society ´where accountability is actually a conversation about what happened, why it happened, and how do we prevent it from happening again´¨ (Slater 186). This tends to happen frequently, preventing any progress in addressing such behavior because it's consistently downplayed; this ensures that incidents like these continue to occur without full awareness as these situations are treated distinguishably from others. Staff misjudged how to work through racism. As shown, implicit bias played a big role at Albany High School causing people to downplay the real consequences of actions and overlook what could happen.

         In conclusion, systemic racism and biases in schools lead to structural issues which significantly reinforce inequality. Reflecting on the actions taken in Accountable by Dashka Slater and considering the opportunity to discuss with our principal about potential responses if such an incident occurred at SRHS, it's clear that addressing these issues head on before they escalate is key. Immediate actions allow for swift consequences and help prevent future occurrences. This motivated approach emphasizes that racism is unacceptable at SRHS and should be actively reduced. SRHS can also learn from Albany High by acting quickly against hate speech and racism, having clear policies, regular diversity training for staff and students, and a safe way for students to report issues. As this may help to reduce racism.