Well, because we’re different. And because we don’t always want to get along. But at Roosevelt High School, Somali and African-American students are learning that taking sides is no longer an option.
Stories differ as to exactly what sparked the violence at Roosevelt the night before the terrorist attacks. It started after the evening’s football practice, when a fight broke out between players—who were mostly African-American—and a group of Somali boys. At a bus stop just outside the school, the war of words quickly came to blows, and somehow in the scuffle an assistant coach was stabbed in the back as he tried to stop the fight. A 14-year-old player was stabbed in the chest. The coach recovered almost immediately. The boy, who is African-American, spent a few days in the hospital. Eventually, both healed. But the incident was far from over.
For weeks after the fight, Roosevelt’s halls were crawling with police looking out for more trouble and reporters looking out for a new angle on a story too titillating to pass up. School violence is always news. But this was even more compelling, because people just don’t get stabbed in schools in this town. And then there is our seemingly endless fascination with black-on-black violence (unless it happens in a ghetto). But this story went one better: Most Somalis are Muslim, and September 11 had just turned all Muslims into the enemy of free people everywhere.
The stabbing made local headlines in print and on television for more than a week. School administrators and teachers suddenly found themselves fielding frantic phone calls from parents wondering whether they should keep their kids at home for awhile or enroll them someplace else. Students pleaded with their parents to allow them to stay at Roosevelt. Some received permission only after proving the school’s safety by physically escorting their parents from one end of the school to the other.
Roosevelt principal Michael Huerth told the press repeatedly that the stabbing was an isolated incident. While it’s true, Huerth said, that real tensions exist between Somali and African-American students at the school, the fight and subsequent stabbing were more a reflection of the widening divide between many Americans and dark-skinned immigrants in a post-September 11 world.
More than half a year has passed since the stabbing. But many students say they still can’t stand at a city bus stop or hang out at the mall wearing a Roosevelt sweatshirt without enduring the familiar jibes. “Roosevelt, isn’t that the school where someone got stabbed? You shouldn’t go there.”
No wonder my initial requests for interviews went unanswered. Here I am, a reporter, looking to stir things up all over again. When teachers did call me back, the suspicion was clear in their voices. Students, once I finally met them, were more blunt. “We don’t think you should write this story,” most conversations began. Conflicts between Somali and African-American students were, for the most part, about miscommunication, they told me. From their point of view, reporters had only made the waters murkier.
As I listened to these young people I couldn’t help thinking how mature most of them seemed, and how easy I had it when I was in high school in suburban Arizona 20 years ago. But what’s happening at Roosevelt is not unique. American and foreign-born students are feuding all across the country in public schools that are ill-equipped to deal with what amounts to forced integration far beyond the bounds of what Brown v. Topeka Board of Education encompassed.
I visited Roosevelt 14 times for this story. I spent many hours sitting in hallways waiting for students whose promises to show up for interviews went unkept. In all that time, I never saw anything approaching violence. Instead, each time the bell rang, I saw students from countries all over the world burst out of classrooms to form a giant, moving mass of colorful clothing, body piercings, chunky heels, low-slung pants, and a loud slurry of different languages trying to make it to class before the next bell rang.
What, no violence? Not even one punch thrown? No, not one.
“Black Americans are not immigrants. They are not to be compared to immigrants. It’s like comparing apples to bicycles.”
—Mahmoud El-Kati
There are still 10 minutes before Roosevelt’s Unity Group meeting starts, but the room is already packed. “Over here, sit over here!” a Latina girl yells, waving to her friend who nimbly climbs over the back of a nearby chair to grab the only empty seat in the midst of several other Latin-American students. There are about 40 students here—a larger turnout than usual. “It’s probably because there’s pizza,” jokes one boy loudly as he points to five Domino’s boxes stacked on a table in the back of the room.
Unity Group was formed before the school day ended on September 11, says Karen Hart, Roosevelt’s Dean of Students. Hart spent her day on September 11 racing around the school with the message, “We need to unify. NOW!” Principal Huerth had tried to get the group going the year before as a way to help Somali and African-American students work out their differences. But the group floundered. The events of the last two days brought the idea back to life and with a much broader mission to unite the whole school.
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