Middle schoolers weigh in on racism, protests

“The Black Lives Matter movement wasn't made to belittle any other race or make anyone feel unimportant or uncared for. It was just made to bring attention to this problem that is still going on today,” Stowe eighth-grader Gabby Doehla said Friday during a Google Meeting discussion she spearheaded to talk with her fellow students about racial injustice.

“Of course all lives matter, but this movement is just trying to bring attention to the mistreatment of African Americans today,” she said.

The Stowe Middle School students who tackled these topics last week have been meeting for months in a series of remote get-togethers meant to advance “core values of belonging, kindness and willingness to grow.”

The 17 students in grades six through eight formed their group at the very beginning of the pandemic and have been meeting regularly since.

Stowe Middle School Principal Dan Morrison, in a letter to parents last week, said students want to know more about the nuances of what’s going on and would like to continue the dialogue during the summer.

“Your students have powerful voices and opinions on this subject,” Morrison wrote.

On Friday, the students acknowledged certain segments of society respond to the Black Lives Matter movement by saying things like “all lives matter.” In a prompt for the advisory, an analogy was used of people participating in a breast cancer awareness walk and someone yelling at the walkers “all cancer matters!”

“You would be, like, ‘Dude, of course, but I’m trying to draw attention to the need to find a cure for breast cancer,’” the prompt says.

Added seventh-grader Ryley Emerson, “All lives can’t matter until black lives matter.”

The students also talked about the difference between peaceful protesters and the fringe element that causes havoc in cities.

Rowan Dodge, a sixth-grader, said she read about one city where a man spent his entire life savings to start a restaurant and it was destroyed by looters and vandals. She said “it’s still a crime, even in these times,” as police are spread thin “keeping people safe on the streets.”

“It’s a really bad way to prove a point,” said eighth-grader Clark Andelin. “That’s his life savings you just burned down.”

Police violence also came up, with calls for reform and praise for cops who do the right thing. Linnea Dreslin pointed out that, even as people call for defunding police departments, or abolishing them altogether, individual police officers by and large are there to protect the public, and support the reforms that protesters are demanding.

“There are plenty of police officers who are on our side,” Linnea said.

Eathan McGuire, a sixth-grader, said his “dream job” is a police officer when he grows up. He said there are countless middle school students across the country who also want to be police officers, who are watching protests like the current ones and the others that have flared up in his lifetime, and learning from them.

“It makes me very disappointed, and makes it so people have negative” views of police, Eathan said. “If I become a cop, I’m there to help them and do stuff for them.”

The students were asked if there’s anything awkward or even guilt-inducing about being white in an overwhelmingly white town in a state that’s not much darker.

Grace Evans, an eighth-grader, agreed that she and her friends and family have never had to worry about, say, being pulled over because of the color of their skin. But she thinks standing with people of color sends an important message.

“We can be allies,” she said.

Grace said it’s healthy to get rid of the mindset of whatever “makes you feel like you’re better than everyone else,” and that applies to racism, but also to things like someone’s religion or their body weight.

“We can’t control what happened in the past, but we can control our actions in the future,” she said.

Eathan noted that racism is a learned trait, and even someone born into a racist family can be taught differently in school, especially when your current events tie into the history of racism in American.

“When you are black, you shouldn’t have to be careful,” he said. “You shouldn’t have to be overly cautious of your kids.”

The last word goes to Gabby. She said as long as more people see past actions as mistakes and learn from them, things can get better. For her cohort, Black Lives Matter and its origins following the Trayvon Martin shooting less than a decade ago are in those nebulous areas of social studies that pop up every so often — are they current events or history?

This seems different, even to an eighth-grader.

“We’ve had a terrible history with racism and I’m very disappointed we are still trying to cope with it,” Gabbie said. “I really hope this was the final straw.”