Held to answer

Diego Stolz would have loved to trade places with Mya Gordon, a young black teenager who made a documentary about the racism she encountered in Lake Oswego, Ore. – also known as Lake ‘No Negro.’

That’s the title she gave her documentary, “Lake ‘No Negro.’” It could be a slur in the hands of a white teen, but Mya’s black skin protected her.

Diego’s brown skin offered no protection. He was an eighth grader at Landmark Middle School in Moreno Valley, Calif., a school that is 66 percent Hispanic, 19 percent black and 6 percent white. His last year in school was hellish. Four other students took pleasure in picking on him. He was physically roughed up and had his property stolen.

When one of the boys harassing Diego punched him in the chest and threatened to hurt him again, he finally went to a science teacher for help.

Diego was an orphan being raised by his aunt and uncle. They received assurances from Landmark Middle School’s Assistant Principal Kamilah O’Connor, who is black, that the guys picking on him would be suspended. Their schedules would be changed when they returned, she said.

But they were never suspended.

Less than two weeks later, Diego died when one of his tormenters sucker-punched him on campus. His head hit a cement pillar, knocking him unconscious. Another assailant joined in, and they beat his lifeless body.

Diego has been dead for a year, and last month the killers admitted to involuntary manslaughter.  They will be sentenced in February. For now, they are free to spend Christmas with their families.

Mya was about Diego’s age when she moved from New Jersey to Lake Oswego, where she found herself surrounded by white kids. It was a big culture shock, she told Pamplin newspapers in their “Amazing Kids” series. Middle school was a rough time, she said.

There were incidents that “ranged from micro-aggressions to overtly racist interactions.”

As a freshman at Lakeridge, she talked to the school’s principal, Jennifer Schiele, about the lack of support for diversity. The principal encouraged her to form an equity council. From there, Mya’s equity cause bloomed. She was later co-chair of the school district’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion advisory committee, a group of community members who advise the superintendent.

Finally, there was her 14-minute documentary on the racist history of “Lake ‘No Negro’” that explored Oregon’s exclusion laws more than a century ago. The video currently has about 30,000 views on YouTube.

To her credit, Mya told a reporter that looking back now, “I’m very grateful my life happened the way it did.”

She graduated from a public high school rated number three in the state. According to test scores, 71 percent of students at her school are proficient in math and 92 percent in reading. Mya is now at the University of Pennsylvania, a college with only an 8 percent acceptance rate. It’s an elite school.

By comparison, Diego Stolz’s school was ranked 2,311 out of 2,715 middle schools in California. According to state test scores, 16 percent of the students are at least proficient in math and 25 percent in reading. But the school does receive an A- in diversity.

The biggest difference between Mya’s school and Diego’s is that his classmates are guinea pigs for politicians obsessed with racial equity. Students in schools at the lower end of the socio-economic hierarchy have borne the brunt of policies that make it increasingly difficult to discipline violent youths.

It’s not surprising that Diego’s tormenters were not suspended. Beginning with the Obama administration, school officials were offered financial incentives if they lowered suspension rates, since a disproportionate number of students suspended or expelled tended to be students “of color.”

A popular buzz phrase that has been accepted as gospel is “the school-to-prison pipeline.” According to experts quoted in media and testifying before legislatures, school suspensions start students on a downward spiral towards prison. With no school, they get into more trouble, turn to crime — and end up in prison, which is regarded as equivalent to slavery by some criminal justice reformers.

According to these experts, a better alternative to suspensions and expulsions is Positive Behavioral Intervention and Supports, and Restorative Justice practices. These are as soft as they sound and can be inappropriate for violent offenders. How many of these experts send their children to schools known more for their diversity than academic achievement? (President Obama attended Punahou Academy, Honolulu’s most prestigious private school.)

Had the assistant principal at Diego’s school kept her promise, his attackers would have been suspended. It might have pushed their parents to discipline their sons and steer their behavior in a different direction. Or, perhaps not, if the parents bought into the current obsession with systemic racism and decided their sons did nothing wrong.

Seeing everything through a racial or equity lens warps the truth. Here in the Portland, Ore., metro area (including Lake Oswego) almost every public official, every political candidate, every community organizer and activist proudly announces they view the world through an equity lens – no matter what the issue.

In reality, this plays out in deaths like Diego’s. It is also reflected in an act of urban terrorism recently displayed in a Portland neighborhood, where a family seized on their black and indigenous ancestry as a reason to fight a legal eviction. The home had been in foreclosure since 2018, and the new owner  wanted the property.

Armed protesters barricaded a three-block area for several days. Politicians and even some local media pleaded for compromise. As the story unraveled, the only sympathy this family could claim was their race and their indigenous heritage, which they insisted gave them a special right to the property.

In 2002, the family’s 17-year-old son, William Kinney III, committed a felony hit-and-run killing a man and seriously injuring his wife. The family took out a loan on the home, ostensibly to pay for his legal defense. Kinney pleaded guilty and served about five years in the Youth Authority and Department of Corrections. Upon release, he continued to get into trouble. Most recently he was accused of animal abuse.

Enough people rallied to the family’s defense that they raised about $300,000 through a GoFundMe account. Then it was revealed that they also owned a $600,000 home not far from the one they refused to leave.

Is this to become the latest in America’s search for racial equity – blacks no longer have to pay their bills? Some Kinney sympathizers have turned their equity lens on the unfairness of prosecuting him for manslaughter when he was 17.

Today, with changes that have taken place in sentencing laws governing juveniles in Oregon, Kinney could likely receive the restorative justice approach that Diego Stolz’s killers are experiencing.

Because they are under 18, their identities are being strictly withheld. This is to help protect their futures so they can have a better life. As adults, they will not have to admit what they have done. Diego will remain dead, but not by their hands. Their records will be clean. They could even legally buy a gun.

In news accounts, everyone refers to them simply as “the bullies.”

That’s a travesty considering what passes for bullying in some places. Just using the N-word, for example.

– Pamela Fitzsimmons

Related:

Hanging On to the N-Word

Craven Conversations on Race