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Growing up LGBT: School, Friends, and Mental Health

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How racism affects the mental health of our peers

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How racism affects the mental health of our peers

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Colbie Lofton's first week of classes at Appalachian State University is sealed in her mind.

Lofton, who is Black, asked her macroeconomics professor a question during class and heard someone sitting behind her say, "I guess n****rs don't understand."

Lofton, "completely shocked" to hear a racial slur used so casually, said nothing, and neither did her professor, who Lofton said paused and appeared to have heard the comment. When the class ended, Lofton left, reeling from hurt, and went to a nearby bathroom to cry. She then returned to her dorm and confided in her roommate, but she said she didn't report the comment to the university because she was not aware of the process to do so.

That 2018 incident was a marker for other racial incidents that would follow at the predominantly white campus in North Carolina and leave Lofton without any illusions about the deep prejudices that some students on campus have against Black people. She has felt "out of place" ever since and hyperaware of her surroundings, which has taken a toll on her mental health.

"That is a story that continues to sit with me," said Lofton, who is now a junior.

She is not alone. Black students at many predominantly white colleges have long complained of the racial hostility, subtle and blatant, that they regularly encounter on their campuses. Whether victims of constant microaggressions or outright verbal or physical assaults, many have stories of being called a racial slur directly or seeing it scrawled on a campus wall, viewing racist posts by classmates on social media, or sitting through a presentation by a classmate professing a white supremacist conspiracy. The incidents were the focal points of protest movements and demands for change for several years, but the calls for action seemed to reach a crescendo this year as Black students at colleges across the country repeatedly called for college administrators to condemn and address racism on their campuses.

The national racial justice movement fueled by outrage over the police killings of George Floyd and other unarmed Black people has given the students' cause momentum and forced college administrators to act more forcefully and urgently to speak out against racism and implement diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. But even as the students welcome that they are finally being heard, their efforts have come with a heavy price.

Students of color who engage in activism and leadership frequently sideline their own mental health needs to focus on the fight for racial justice on their campuses. They have less time and emotional bandwidth to dedicate to typical student experiences, such as creating and maintaining personal relationships and a social life, performing academically and navigating what is likely their first time living away from home. Black student leaders noted that the amount of stress they endure and the time-consuming nature of activist work -- plus the racist incidents that inspire this work -- can cause students to fall behind in their studies or can become so emotionally burdensome that they drop out.

"Right now, everybody is very tuned into changes that they would like to see in our world and our country," said Sharon Mitchell, president of the Association of University and College Counseling Center Directors, or AUCCCD. "It's great that students are engaged, but there's always been that struggle ... you overcommit to things where you're putting your academics or health in jeopardy."

College administrators, in surveys, repeatedly list student mental health as one of their top concerns and improving it as one of their top priorities. They have focused more attention on setting and meeting diversity and inclusion goals to hire and promote more Black faculty members, administrators and professional staff and pursued new ways to improve the lives of students of color on campus, as conversations about racial injustice in American institutions continue.

But mental health experts, particularly Black psychologists and students themselves, say not enough is being done to address a lack of diversity in college counseling and the stigma associated with seeking help, and students are suffering as a result. Annelle Primm, a nationally recognized cultural psychiatry expert and senior medical director of the Steve Fund, a youth mental health advocacy organization that focuses on equity and young people of color, said the consequences of individual acts of racism and a campus climate that is hostile to Black students can be detrimental to their education.

"There's a high level of students of color suffering in silence," Primm said. "That's unfortunate, because the mental health needs can have an impact on academic performance and whether they stay in school. If they're a student with financial challenges, they may make the decision to leave school altogether if all these challenges mount on them."
An Urgent Wake-Up Call
Higher ed leaders across the country rushed to publicly declare their commitment to inclusion and racial justice in May in the days after Floyd's death, as American streets filled with young people of all races demanding change. Presidents of predominantly white colleges joined the public discourse about racial injustice and systemic racism in all aspects of American life, including at the institutions the presidents -- the large majority of them white -- run.

While many presidents acknowledged the hurt and pain that Black students were understandably feeling and expressed their shared sadness and grief, for some students the statements were not nearly enough.

More often than not, students who experience racism on campus are left feeling invalidated, ignored and undervalued by administrators who consistently maintain that hateful speech is protected under the First Amendment or require students injured and offended by such speech to seek redress through bureaucratic and time-consuming processes that significantly slow the policy changes they want and need to feel comfortable being Black on campus.

Psychologists and other experts say that addressing racism in a meaningful way on campus can improve these students' mental health.

"There could also be some harm done if it's not successfully resolved, or if they're put in a situation where they feel voiceless," Ivory Toldson, a professor of counseling psychology at Howard University, said.

Students can be "psychologically scarred" if they experience neglect from institutional leaders and when a college does not directly approach issues of racism and inclusivity, he said.

Several racist and anti-Semitic incidents propelled a days-long sit-in at Syracuse University in 2019 and another monthlong occupation earlier this year, when students slept on the floor of a campus building and risked suspension to have their concerns about campus safety taken seriously and to push for policy changes. While the demonstrations led Syracuse president Kent Syverud to agree to multiple policy initiatives demanded by the students, including a more diverse base of university counselors, students also emerged with a deep mistrust of administrators and the Syracuse Department of Public Safety, due to initial disciplinary action taken against them for staging the sit-in.

Racially insensitive comments by Salisbury University students after Floyd's death left Black student leaders there hoping for a strong condemnation by the university president and other administrators, which the students felt never came.

The leaders were disappointed that in a video posted to social media shortly after the students' comments, President Charles Wight noted that the offensive language was protected under the First Amendment, "no matter how much we abhor what is said or what is written." A statement from the university at the time also said it "condemns and repudiates racism in all its forms" and that the incidents would be investigated.

Savannah Johnson, a junior and public relations officer for the Salisbury student chapter of the NAACP, was not surprised by Wight's response. She said issues that deeply affect Black students frequently "fall to the bottom" of administrators' priorities, despite the emotional toll they take on the students.

She said in the weeks that followed Floyd's death, she struggled to get out of bed because she was so overwhelmed by the incident and the public reaction nationwide.

"I had multiple breakdowns," Johnson said. "It seems like people are just starting to wake up to things we've been trying to say for years, decades, centuries."​

Dealing with regular microaggressions and overt acts of racism on an individual level, while also living through the constant debates and discussions of systemic and institutional racism, can be sources of pain, trauma and stress. For some students, it can also lead to more serious conditions such as anxiety and depression and leave them feeling hopeless that things will improve.

Additionally, the coronavirus pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on Black and brown people who have died from COVID-19 and suffered financially at much higher rates than white people.

A recent survey report by the United Negro College Fund highlighted the emotional turmoil that students who attend historically Black colleges and universities are experiencing due to the coronavirus pandemic and economic recession. One student who responded to the survey wrote that it has been hard to "cope with the constant death and sickness around me."

"Dealing with COVID-19, the police brutality, and trying to come up with money to pay for fall semester is [causing] me a lot of stress and anxiety because either way it's the stress of trying not to get sick, not getting killed by police or finding a way to pay for school that has me on edge." --Student response to UNCF survey

Primm, of the Steve Fund, said it's not surprising that a deadly public health crisis and an epidemic of deadly police shootings of Black people could lead to poor mental health outcomes among Black students.

As racial incidents are more widely covered by national news outlets and shared on social media, the subject of systemic racism is being more openly discussed, debated and analyzed. This new spotlight on specific and particularly traumatic examples of racism can be "emotionally burdensome" for all Black people, but especially youth, said Primm, former deputy medical director of the American Psychiatric Association and former director of the association's division of diversity and health equity. Students already coping with the impact of the pandemic on their education and social life may struggle to simply focus on being students and "trying to find their way in the world," she said.

"They have experienced a mixture of emotions: anger, sadness, fear for their own safety, anxiety, being easily distracted and [having] difficulty concentrating," Primm said. This wide range of emotional responses is "not a recipe for academic success or balance," she said.

The Steve Fund recently formed a coronavirus crisis-focused task force, which issued recommendations for how educational institutions should respond to the increased mental health needs of students of color during this time. The task force, which includes students, mental health experts, corporate and nonprofit executives, and college representatives, is the "first time leaders from across sectors have come together to consider the mental health status and needs of young Americans of color," a report about the task force recommendations said.

The report recommended that college administrators take a "trauma-informed" approach to their leadership and communications strategies, which includes more listening and demonstrating empathy toward students of color for the injustices they may have experienced, the report said. The group also encouraged more collaborative partnerships between college counseling centers and staff members from the diversity, equity and inclusion and student affairs offices, as well as student organizations that advocate for and support students of color.

"Counseling centers alone do not have the capacity to provide customized outreach for students of color and handle elevated demand," the report said. "Offices such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) and Student Affairs are natural partners. Working collaboratively, they have the potential to promote mental health among students of color, while bolstering equity, inclusion and belonging."

The report also recommended colleges invest in teletherapy resources that may better meet the needs of students of color. Some telehealth applications and web platforms, for example, advertise a diverse base of mental health professionals from outside the college or university and could provide students of color with a counselor of their same ethnic or racial background, who tend to have a better understanding of the racial experiences of students of color, or share their perspectives about those incidents. Many colleges struggle to employ enough therapists to meet student demand in general, much less staff their health centers with therapists of color, which the counseling profession itself lacks.

"I'm tired, frustrated, and upset. COVID-19 [is] out here killing us and so is the police and I'm tired. I never felt like I needed more therapy in my life." --Student response to UNCF survey

Of course many Black students have long been aware of systemic racism and have experienced examples of it firsthand prior to this year, Primm said. Common incidents such as being racially profiled by campus police, receiving disparate treatment by staff members, witnessing a white professor using the N-word or being stereotyped by peers all contribute to heightened mental health concerns, she said. Even if they attend colleges with large numbers of students of color and where they are less likely to have racial problems and tensions on campus, students of color are still in greater need of mental health support for racism that occurs off campus, Primm said.

"While those students might experience some kind of an oasis in terms of cultural similarity and have a greater sense of belonging in those settings, their experiences in the larger society are consistent with those of students of color who attend a predominantly white institution," she said. "There's really no escaping these negative, racially charged forces in our society, especially at this point."

The result is a generation of Black students more likely to be suffering from anxiety or depression than their white peers and in need of culturally competent mental health support from colleges.

Most of all, Black students dedicating their time and energy to calling out or preventing racist incidents continue to hurt their mental health in myriad ways.
Fighting Campus Racism Is 'a Whole Other Job'
Kyndavee Bichara, a junior at Appalachian State, said she frequently feels burned out because of the antiracism work she does on campus.

Bichara is a varsity track and field athlete, president and co-founder of the Black Student Athlete Association, and president of the Black Student Association. She's also part of a collective of Black student leaders, called BlackAtAppState, which is an ongoing campaign to improve Black students' experiences at the university through policy changes and administrative action. In late May, Bichara and Lofton, who is a student leader for Appalachian Social Justice Educators, helped organize a Black Lives Matter march in Boone, N.C., where the university is located.

Lofton said she received messages on social media from residents who identified her as one of the organizers of the protest and said that the movement doesn't align with the values and beliefs of the Boone community. One commenter posted directly on BlackAtAppState's Instagram account, calling the student movement "terrorism."

Just 4 percent of the 17,518 undergraduate students enrolled at the university were Black in fall 2019, according to the most recent data from the National Center for Education Statistics. White students made up 82 percent of the undergraduate population. Boone is a town of about 20,000 and is 93.5 percent white and 2.7 percent Black, according to a U.S. Census Bureau population estimate from 2019.

Bichara said Black students do not necessarily always "want" to constantly call out racism and advocate for the Black community on campus. But they often feel responsible for speaking up on racial issues that are important to Black students, play a role in their academic outcomes and affect their overall college experience on campus and off, she said. Being a Black leader on a predominantly white campus requires the frequent retelling of experiences of racism, leading discussions and presentations about racism, and putting aside personal mental health needs to address the needs of the community, she said.

"Students who aren't fighting these fights have the luxury to be college students," Bichara said. "It's almost like a whole other job added on to just trying to be a student. A lot of times, student leaders who are from marginalized groups, we exhaust ourselves ... our grades drop, our mental health is at stake and a lot of people have even gone as far as dropping out because of the mental burden that being a marginalized student leader comes with."

Mitchell, of the college counseling directors association, said these "extra" burdens frequently come with being Black on a college campus. Black student activists in particular expend a lot of mental energy trying to initiate change, which is sometimes a slow and "disheartening" process, said Mitchell, who is also the senior director of student wellness and director of counseling services at the University at Buffalo.

"There's the racial battle fatigue of constantly having to explain why you're upset and why it's problematic," Mitchell said. "It's something that makes being a student and being a human being difficult."

Lofton, the Appalachian State student who overheard students using a racial slur about her in class in 2018, said the experience has shaped her perspective of the university in the years since. She wouldn't be surprised if other Black students felt the same way. She noted that the town of Boone has a smaller Black population than the university and that students are also sometimes verbally victimized off campus. White residents make racist comments directed at Black students while they shop at the local Walmart or walk down the town's main streets, she said.

Lofton said she often feels unwelcome in town and on campus, but she's driven to keep pushing for change so that Black students in future classes will not experience the same racial hostility as she and her classmates.

"It takes a large toll on my mental health," she said. "I know that students have been facing this for multiple years. I think about, why is this still happening today? But that drives me to work harder. It drives me to make sure the generations after me have it better."
Activism as an Outlet
Mitchell said being part of a community of campus activists with shared experiences, beliefs and goals can be a helpful way to cope with the additional stressors of discrimination. It's also a way for students of color to understand that racism against them isn't unique to them as individuals and is a larger societal problem, she said.

"If nothing else, they have found a sense of community," she said. "They have found like-minded individuals that are identifying some of the same issues or problems ... A lot of time I think people can feel that, 'I'm the only one who feels this way or has had this experience.'"

Toldson, from Howard University, said student activists who feel they are not being heard tend to suffer emotionally. They could experience increased feelings of "voicelessness" and impostor syndrome, a persistent feeling of inadequacy and self-doubt, he said. But when student activists and college administrators work together to improve the racial climate on their campuses, it can be very positive for the psychological health of the students, he said. This is especially true if the students and administrators come to a "successful and healthy" resolution about controversial incidents on campus and the college provides additional resources or make administrative changes demanded by the students.

Toldson is co-editor of a book about campus racial unrest, Campus Uprisings: How Student Activists and Collegiate Leaders Resist Racism and Create Hope (Teachers College Press), which is a collection of essays written by students, faculty members and campus leaders about the nonviolent protest movement for racial justice on college campuses over the last decade.

Primm, of the Steve Fund, said she also views student activism as a way of "counterbalancing" the negative mental health impact of the racism and discrimination that students of color face.

"It can give students and young people a sense of agency and self and collective efficacy," she said. "That kind of activity engenders hope, that things can get better. That's good for mental health. To not be isolated and alone, but feel like you're part of a whole, with other people that are of like mind and good conscience."

Bichara said as an active student leader at Appalachian State and member of multiple organizations, she has learned to develop self-care habits such as disconnecting from social media and email messages for a few days when feeling overwhelmed. She took note of the positive feedback and support BlackAtAppState has received for giving voice to Black students and outreach from fellow student activists who checked in on her well-being.

Mitchell said the University at Buffalo's counseling center has been developing "self-care for activists" workshops this fall for students who are doing advocacy work or attending protests, largely in response to the social unrest and large demonstrations against racial injustice across the country this summer. The workshop will discuss topics such as, "How do you be socially aware and socially involved, but also find a way to recuperate, rejuvenate, have downtime before you go back out there? How do you stay safe," she said.

When it comes to mental health support for students of color, it can be difficult for campus counseling centers to deliver what a student might be looking for, such as a person who shares their cultural background or life experiences, Mitchell said. Traditionally, the role of a campus therapist is to remain officially neutral about social or political issues and not share their personal beliefs with students in order to be seen as unbiased and welcoming to all students, especially those who might not share those same beliefs, she said.

Primm said there is a "dearth of medical health professionals and counselors of color" over all. Lack of diversity in counseling centers can discourage Black students from seeking or continuing care, even though white professionals are supposed to be trained to work with students of different cultural backgrounds, she said.
Shortage of Counselors of Color
Racial and ethnic representation in college counseling centers that is on par with the racial and ethnic makeup of the institutions' student body is ideal and "something to strive for," Mitchell said. But that is largely not the case at most colleges that are not historically Black institutions or don't serve mostly students of color. Among the BlackAtAppState students' demands is that the university hire a Black mental health counselor and increase student access to Black medical professionals through telehealth services.

In 2019, 11.7 percent of staff members working at college counseling centers were Black or African American, and 6.6 percent were Hispanic or Latino, according to the AUCCCD's most recent survey of center directors. The U.S. Census Bureau reported in 2018 that 15.1 percent of all undergraduate college students were Black and 20.9 percent were Hispanic, according to a press release.

Lofton and Bichara at Appalachian State have both sought counseling from the university's on-campus providers, but they were discouraged by the lack of diversity among therapists at the center. They both gave up on counseling after their first therapy sessions because they felt the white counselors could not relate to the experiences that were driving them to seek help in the first place. Bichara noted that the counselor she met with was a nice person but unable to connect with her because of a lack of shared perspective.

"Being a Black woman and specifically going to counseling to talk about how taxing being a Black woman is, it's hard to talk to someone who isn't a Black woman about that issue," Bichara said. "I looked very hard for a Black therapist and couldn't find one, even in the surrounding Boone area."

Social justice issues have been increasingly incorporated into master's degree curricula for therapists over the last decade, Mitchell said, and this shift is helping therapists understand how discrimination or a poor racial climate on campus can affect the mental health of black students.

"If social injustice contributes to poor mental health outcomes for people, even as professionals we have to figure out how we speak to that and really validate that," Mitchell said. "Those are things that go into being proponents of mental health on a campus -- not just dealing with the individual."

Mitchell said she looks for this type of cultural competency and understanding in everyone she considers hiring to work in counseling services at the University of Buffalo. She has called on white mental health professionals to participate in antiracism work and be allies to their colleagues and student patients of color.

Primm said therapist and patient relationships between people of different backgrounds are successful with the right training on systemic racism and "cultural humility" rather than a therapist imposing their own cultural viewpoint on a patient.

Negative experiences can discourage students of color from seeking therapy, Primm said. Black students and other students of color also run the risk of being labeled a "person of concern" or a threat on campus simply for seeking mental health support, which fits into stereotypes about Black people being dangerous or unstable.

"There's also the issue of cultural mistrust, given the fact that most therapists and counselors are not from diverse cultural backgrounds," Primm said. "There's concern about sharing one's most personal experiences with someone considered an outsider ... Some students, if they're going to see any provider of mental health services at all, prefer it to be someone of their background."

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Racism fuels poor mental health outcomes for Black students

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Colbie Lofton's first week of classes at Appalachian State University is sealed in her mind. Lofton, who is Black, asked her macroeconomics professor a question during class and heard someone sitting behind her say, "I guess n****rs don't understand."

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A more basic overview of challenges we all deal with.

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None of what follows obligates a student to have a miserable social experience in middle school. In fact, I believe that most young people make the journey through grades 6-8 without acute or lasting distress.

However, that doesn't mean they don't see more push and shove in school relationships than they have before, or that they don't have more moments when hurt, self-doubt, loneliness, or anxiety are part of the trip.

For causes to be discussed below, middle school can be a challenging social passage. It helps for parents to know some of the bruising possibilities to watch out for, and for young people to know that parents know, because then hard times at school can be shared, emotional support can be extended, and some coaching advice can be given.

In general, it is not helpful when a young person, in the pride of her or his independence, keeps these challenges to himself: "I should be able to handle my own problems." Just because a student is starting to grow more independent from parents doesn't mean she or he is obliged to keep them in the dark. Independence doesn't have to mean isolation. Just because the code of the schoolyard says not to tell on peers doesn't mean the young person has to "gut up and shut up" and undergo hard social challenges alone.
Growth Changes in Middle School
At least during the first year or two of middle school, most students go through times of feeling socially insecure and emotionally vulnerable. Consider three factors that can cause this insecurity.

First, there is the onset of early adolescent change (around ages 9-13) when the young person starts detaching and differentiating from childhood and parents in order to start developing more independence and individuality. Growing up requires giving up, and so some cherished old childish attachments to self and family must be let go. Now more painful distancing from parents begins. Where the 1st-grader loved having parents show up at school, the 6th-grader can find this public parental presence painfully embarrassing: "Mom, Dad! What are you doing here?" It's a vulnerable time, the young person knowing that they can't go back home again to that simpler, sheltered, more secure period of early life. Adolescence begins with insecurity from loss.

Second, there is the need to form a second social family outside of home, of friends who are all becoming different the same way they are, for companionship and understanding. But peer group membership does not come free of charge: To belong one has to conform. Among the unstated but well understood requirements are, "To be one of us, you have be like us, believe like us, behave like us, go along with us, look like us, like us best, and not do better than us." Fitting in is complicated. And as socially insecure young people strive for standing and definition, the incidence of five social cruelty behaviors become more common: teasing, exclusion, bullying, rumoring, and ganging up. Often targeted for this mistreatment are young people who are perceived as "different" from the desirable social norm, who absorb the insecurities of their attackers. Adolescence increases the incidence of social meanness as young people strive for social membership and standing.

Third, usually during the early middle-school years, puberty begins as hormones drive growth to sexual maturity, altering physical appearance in maturing ways the young person does not control. They have to wait and see how their changing body is going to "turn out," and what manner of body they will now have socially to work with when it comes to defining their sexual gender role. Now parents notice how the young person is more self-preoccupied with personal appearance, needs more privacy at home, takes more time to get ready to go out with friends, shows more particularity about dress, endures extended self-encounters in the mirror, and is easily upset by any questioning or critical comments about their looks. Adolescence increases physical self-consciousness and vulnerability to embarrassment, humiliation, even shame.

Taken together, these three factors create a level of insecurity that can play havoc in peer relationships at school, the major social gathering place in a young person's life.
Common Social Concerns
Readers with a low tolerance for lists may want to skip what follows, but I know of no other way to specify and sensitize parents to this social complexity than by itemizing common discomforts with which many middle school students must daily contend.

This is a non-exhaustive list.

People wanting to be your friends just because you're popular.

Gossiping about people.

Growing apart from a good friend.

Being teased.

Spreading rumors about people.

People ganging up on you.

Having a good friend turn against you.

Quarreling with a friend.

Having a friend share with other a secret you confided.

Feeling jealous when a good friend wants to be with someone else.

Seeing a friend change into a different person.

Competing for a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Bullying other people.

Taking or defacing another person's belongings.

Having someone embarrass you.

Receiving messages that hurt your feelings.

Feeling like you have to follow the lead of a dominating friend.

Being threatened by someone promising "to get" you.

People boasting about doing what they're not supposed to do.

Hurting people with nick names.

Fighting to prove how tough you are.

Worrying about whether anyone will like you.

People cutting each other down with insults.

Being excluded from a gathering when your friends were invited.

Going to a party when you feel shy and not outgoing.

Pretending to have a good time when you're not.

Writing bad stuff about one person to another.

Breaking up someone else's friendship.

Keeping others on the outside of a group.

Competing against a good friend.

Pressuring people to go along if they want to be included.

Wishing you had a best friend.

Wishing you had as much as other people.

Being spoken to one day and ignored the next.

People who exclude you from a group but are friendly one on one.

Being embarrassed by your parents in front of friends.

Having parents not like one of your friends.

Envying people more popular than you.

Not having the right clothes to wear.

Feeling trapped by a best friend who is too possessive.

Acting like you don't care when you really do.

Acting like you care when you really don't.

Back in the days when I was compiling these concerns and occasionally working in middle-school classrooms, after giving each student a copy of the list, I would ask them to individually check off any concern they had experienced and double-mark the five concerns each student considered worst of all. Then in small groups of four, I asked them to come to consensus on the three worst problems, brainstorming how to deal with them, each group then sharing their suggestions with the larger group, finally ending with a class discussion about ways to take care of oneself during a more complicated social time.

With so many social concerns preying on a young person's mind, sometimes I think a 7th-grade teacher's humorous comment was correct: "Maybe we should just declare a moratorium on teaching kids in middle school! They've got too much other stuff to think about." True, classroom instruction is often not uppermost in a student's mind; social survival is. This is why it takes a special kind of teacher to teach and reach students in middle school, like the one who ratified at the beginning of each year a student code of social communication and treatment to be followed where she taught. There would be no teasing, exclusion, bullying, rumoring, or ganging up allowed. Her classroom would be a safe place to learn: Did everyone understand? They did. Like a lot of very good middle-school teachers I have known, she combined four crucial elements in her relationship to students: She initiated contact, she expressed caring, she provided challenge, and she never gave up.

At this awkward age, common school experiences can be magnified by insecurity and emotional vulnerability so that even small slights can cause a lot of suffering. So, parents: When your middle-school adolescent comes home expressing in mood or words that it has been a hard day, first allow them some space and time to recover, then offer to give an empathetic listen if they would like to talk. In the words of one young person, "The hardest part of middle school isn't what you have to study, but what you have to watch out for." Making and keeping friends can take a lot of work.

And if, as parents, you have an adolescent who chooses to pursue a more solitary path through middle school to stay out of the stressful social fray, decompressing by sitting alone at lunch to read a book for example, in some cases this choice can be the better part of wisdom. As long as the young person is not isolated and without all social contact, and as long as she or he is not a target of social cruelty for being "different," for some young people, middle school can be a great time not to have a lot of friends to mess around with, to mess with you.

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None of what follows obligates a student to have a miserable social experience in middle school. In fact, I believe that most young people make the journey through grades 6-8 without acute or lasting distress.

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Update: The Bangor School Department will order an outside investigation into Bangor High School's handling of racism that Black students have experienced at the predominantly white school. Read more here.
In Ijeoma Obi's first gym class in her freshman year at Bangor High School, she saw a white student wearing a Confederate flag belt buckle glaring at her. In her second gym class, he called her the N-word as she was in the middle of a ball game. Obi stepped back in shock, and pretended to be out of the game.

Whenever Obi ran into him after that throughout the school year - in health class, during gym and in the hallway - he pointed to his belt buckle and called her the N-word.

Obi dreaded running into him. She changed her routes to classes, avoiding hallways where she might find him. She sometimes skipped lunch.

"He never left me alone," she said. "Freshman year was one of the worst years for me because of that kid."

Obi reported the student four times, she said - twice to a gym teacher, once to a hall monitor and once to someone in the assistant principal's office.

She was told to simply ignore him, and that it was "just in his nature" to behave that way and wear his Confederate flag belt buckle. The harassment only stopped when the student left Bangor High at the end of Obi's freshman year.

That's one of many stories five Black students shared with the Bangor Daily News about their time at the predominantly white Bangor High School, where Black students make up less than 3 percent of the student body. They have regularly heard white students toss around the N-word in hallways, bathrooms and school buses. White students have sometimes directed the slur at them. They've heard peers in class defend white supremacy and slavery. And they've walked out of class, changed schedules or quit extracurricular activities out of frustration and fear. Close friends and family members verified the details they shared.

Three of the five students graduated from the school earlier this month, ending their high school careers following weeks of protests in Maine and across the country that have drawn attention to racism in many areas of life in the U.S., including education, and prompted institutions to confront their own biases and say how they plan to tackle racial injustice.

"Racism is my high school experience," said Kosi Ifeji, 15, who will be a junior in the fall. "I know it sounds bad, but it really is."

Bangor schools Superintendent Betsy Webb and Paul Butler, the high school principal, said they were unaware of most of the specific incidents the five students described, but said the school department does not tolerate racism or discrimination, even when meant as a joke or based in ignorance and not malice. They cited the school department's policy that outlines steps for students to report discrimination and harassment, and for administrators to investigate and discipline students.

Black students, however, said teachers and administrators often didn't follow the policy after they reported discrimination. Both Butler and Webb said the Bangor School Department needs to improve.

"I would be disappointed in a staff member if I found that something like that was reported to them and it didn't make its way to administration. I would be disappointed and I would have some work to do," Butler said. "I accept this responsibility fully. We have to commit to accepting the responsibility for students feeling safe and valued."

"Schools in general, and certainly the Bangor School Department, have been too silent," Webb said. "We cannot be silent anymore. We have to talk about these things, and we have to listen to our students, our employees and our families."

Ibby Konteh, who graduated from Bangor High School earlier this month, talks about experiencing racism at school. [Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN]

Small numbers, little voice

Ibby Konteh, who graduated this month, said friends and teammates have used the N-word in his presence even though he has repeatedly asked them not to. When he was a sophomore, a classmate started calling him the racial slur at lunch, and Konteh switched to a different lunch period to avoid the student.

"And every time I saw him in the hall, he just kept doing the same thing," Konteh said. "I went to administration but nothing happened, and it just really got to me. I've tried my best to stop it, but I don't know what I can do anymore."

The spring of his junior year, Konteh discovered the phrase "N word" had been written on his car while parked at school. He tried reporting it, but was told that the school couldn't take any action. With no cameras in the parking lot, he was told, there was no way to prove it happened on school property.

Being in such a small minority and continually experiencing discrimination has led Black students to believe they don't belong in Bangor, they said. That's a common experience for students of color in predominantly white schools, and especially in Maine, where nearly 95 percent of residents are white, said Emma LeBlanc, a researcher at the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine who focuses on race in schools.

Ibby Konteh, who graduated from Bangor High School earlier this month, talks about experiencing racism at school, including a racial slur written on his car door. [Courtesy of Ibby Konteh]

"School districts where there are lots of kids of color and those kids organize, they might be able to assert their power better or they may become better advocates for themselves," LeBlanc said. "In a place where you feel like the overwhelming minority, it's really hard to have that kind of advocacy, and you don't have a stronger voice within the school district."

Obi, 18, and sisters Amara and Kosi Ifeji have all had to leave class and quit extracurricular activities that they enjoyed after hearing classmates make offensive comments, whether about white supremacy, slavery or other topics.

The experiences aren't just a blemish on their time in high school, but the most memorable aspect, they said.

Throughout their time in high school, the three have often broken down, feeling angry or helpless due to a lack of support from peers and administrators.

Based on their high school experience, Obi and Amara Ifeji said they have to leave Maine for things to truly change in their lives. Obi is headed to Columbia University in New York this fall, and Amara to Northeastern University in Boston.

"I love the state of Maine. It has afforded me so many opportunities. But I know to be the person that I want to be, I can't stay here. It's just not an option for me," said Amara, 18, who founded a multicultural student union at Bangor High School to give students of color a platform for sharing their stories with each other. "I can remember all the social injustices that I had to go through, and every racially motivated incident that I had to go through. And it's quite sad that those are the sentiments that I'm leaving Bangor High School with."

Amara Ifeji, who recently graduated from Bangor High School, dealt with racism throughout her high school years. [Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN]

'It's really taken a toll'

Like Obi, Amara Ifeji's experience with racism at school started a couple weeks into freshman year, during a civics class. While a student teacher conducted a discussion on slavery, he asked students to think about why white supremacy exists, why white people thought they were superior.

"And some white student said, 'because we are,' and he just went on to glorify white supremacy," Amara said. "And I was just 14. I didn't have any courage back then. I was really timid and shy, so I just started crying, thinking, this is absolutely horrible."

Kosi Ifeji had a similar experience last fall when a student brought up slavery during an English class discussion on "Of Mice and Men" led by a substitute teacher. The white student said that he didn't see a problem with it because slaves were given food and shelter.

As the only Black student in class, Kosi said it felt like a personal attack because he was addressing her while defending slavery.

Kosi left the class when the student didn't stop even after other students intervened. She reported the incident to the administration, which Butler confirmed. But she kept seeing that student in her other classes, and she wasn't sure he'd received any punishment.

"I felt ostracized from the class, and I thought, am I really that undervalued that nothing is going to be done?" she said.

On their drives home from school, Amara and Kosi Ifeji often screamed out of frustration if they'd had a particularly challenging day dealing with racism, Amara said. The last time she remembers a ride like that was in March, just before school closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"It is exhausting being a student of color at Bangor High School, so I was so happy to have had these last three months off because I physically can't deal with the students in my class anymore," Amara said.

Amara and Kosi's mother, Ifeoma Ifeji, said she lets her daughters handle racist incidents on their own, and she only intervenes if they ask her to.

But she sees how often they come home crying, and she said it's heartbreaking. Kosi told her mother one day that the idea of going to school and interacting with students made her physically sick.

"It's really taken a toll on my kids, but they're very strong," she said. "If they weren't, they would've withdrawn from school."

Ijeoma Obi (right) and Amara Ifeji, who recently graduated from Bangor High School, dealt with racism throughout their high school years at the predominantly white school. [Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN]

Typical for Maine schools

Obi said she had to quit playing clarinet, a lifelong hobby, when a student in the band kept insinuating that she liked and supported comedian Bill Cosby, a convicted sex offender, because they were both Black. The same student also made offensive comments about her hair.

"I tried to do as many activities as I could to feel included, but I always felt like the odd one out," Obi said.

Another Black student, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of provoking more harassment at school, said classmates have told her multiple times to "go back where I came from."

Beyond school, Amara Ifeji's white classmates have posted racial slurs and made jokes about slavery on social media. When she's tried to explain why their posts are offensive, they've blocked her. When she brought them to an assistant principal, he told her to take matters into her own hands. The school department's policy on bullying only addresses racial slurs on social media if posts directly mention students, or if students are impersonating peers.

"I wish I could say I was surprised, and that this is an egregious exception to a culture of acceptance and celebration of diversity in Maine schools, but that's not the case," LeBlanc, from the ACLU, said. "This is exactly the kind of thing that I've seen throughout the state."

The problem isn't one of individual students who use racial slurs, LeBlanc said, it's a school culture that has let the behavior happen.

"You have to have a school culture where such things are not just unacceptable, but fundamentally unimaginable, that if one kid does something bad, it's not on the handful of kids of color to have to respond," she said.

Schools can improve the experiences of students of color and their culture generally, LeBlanc said, by changing curriculum to ensure it reflects the experiences of people of color, putting more minorities in positions of power and influence, and appointing a diverse slate of student representatives to voting positions on the school board.

"That sends a different kind of message, both to students of color in terms of the response that they will get from administrators, but also to students who are bringing their racism into school," she said.

The Bangor School Department is working toward a curriculum that is more inclusive, Webb said. It's also working on forming an advisory committee with people of color as members.

"In America we have a whitewashed curriculum," she said. "And we need to make sure that the curriculum includes trainings and education, but it's also representative of people of color, Black students, brown students, students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, and that they see themselves in the curriculum and those who have made contributions to it."

Amara Ifeji and Ijeoma Obi, who recently graduated from Bangor High School, dealt with racism throughout their high school years at the predominantly white school. [Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN]

Last December, Obi and Amara Ifeji shared some of their experiences with discrimination at Bangor High at a joint meeting of the Bangor City Council and School Committee. They asked for changes so their younger sisters and other Black students don't continue to experience the racism that dominated their time in high school.

Six months later, on Monday, the two recent graduates made the same request of city leaders.

"There hasn't been a lot of progress," Obi said. "We're going to have more people like me who leave their school feeling unhappy because they weren't treated like everyone else. And no one should have to deal with that ever again, in Bangor schools or or anywhere else."

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Update: The Bangor School Department will order an outside investigation into Bangor High School's handling of racism that Black students have experienced at the predominantly white school. Read more here. In Ijeoma Obi's first gym class in her freshman year at Bangor High School, she saw a white student wearing a Confederate flag belt buckle glaring at her.

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"Looking at school as a place for safety" but not feeling safe.

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How we can make our peers feel safe and welcome in school

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How we can make our peers feel safe and welcome in school

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Listen to this post as a podcast:

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Depending on where you live, you might think we've reached a point where society has truly embraced people of all gender and sexual identities, making the topic of LGBTQ rights kind of a non-issue. The truth is, for many LGBTQ students, discrimination and harassment are still a daily reality, and school is one of the main places where they experience these things.

A 2015 national school climate study conducted by GLSEN, an organization focused on ensuring safe and affirming schools for LGBTQ students, found that over 85 percent of these students have experienced verbal harassment and 66 percent have been discriminated against based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. As a result of feeling more isolated and unsafe, many of these students miss school, avoid bathrooms, and stay away from locker rooms. Students who experience more victimization are also more likely to have lower GPAs and to report feeling depressed.

And it's not just other students who create this hostile climate for their LGBTQ peers. Over half of the more than 10,000 students surveyed reported hearing biased remarks from school staff, and school staff often fail to intervene when they hear these remarks at school.

The good news? Overall, the number of students who report being harassed or discriminated against is declining. The climate is improving across the board, but for many students, it's not happening fast enough.

What Teachers Can Do

As educators, we set the tone for how our students treat each other. No, we can't control everything, but we can do a lot to influence the climate in our schools and make sure our classrooms are places where all students feel welcome.

The best place to learn more about the specific things you can do is on GLSEN's website, and I've posted two of their best resources for teachers below, but to get you started, I've pulled some of the most important steps teachers can take. I also interviewed Becca Mui, GLSEN's Education Manager, to contribute her insights to the podcast.

These tips, pulled from resources created by GLSEN and my interview with Mui, will give you a good start toward making your school safer and more welcoming for LGBTQ students.

1. Educate Yourself

If you do not personally identify as LGBTQ or spend time in that community, you'll be a much more effective ally if you commit to listening and learning about the issues. "A huge portion of support is staying educated," Mui says, "so things like listening to podcasts or just reading some blogs about LGBTQ people and continually learning about that can help you become an ally and an advocate in your school."

Making an effort to use whatever terminology is currently embraced by the LGBTQ community is another important way to show respect.

"It's always helpful to have a shared language when you're talking about identity," Mui explains. "One of the things that is tricky about LGBTQ and trans identities when people are not part of those communities is that that language is changing, specifically the language we're using to talk about gender."

This is a challenge even for people within the LGBTQ community. "It is literally my job to be connected, to be supportive, to know what's going on," Mui says, "and I'm constantly finding out that something's been updated, something's been changed." She recommends viewing language as an always evolving process. "Having the attitude that we use the language we have and we are open to learning that something's been updated can be really useful."

With that in mind, let's start here by looking at the acronym LGBTQ:
L = Lesbian G = Gay
B = Bisexual
a person who is attracted to two genders, or people with your gender and other genders Q = Queer
also an umbrella term to describe sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression that doesn't conform to heteronormativity a male-identified person who's emotionally or physically attracted to other males
a person who is female-identified who is emotionally or physically attracted to other females
In some spaces, the term "gay" is used as a general term to describe the LGBTQ population as a whole, but GLSEN is trying to move toward language that's more inclusive, rather than placing gay men at the center.

T = Transgender (or "trans")
an umbrella term for people whose gender identity doesn't match the sex they were assigned at birth

The opposite of transgender is cisgender (abbreviated as "cis"), someone whose gender identity is aligned with the one they were assigned at birth.

"Historically, (this term) was used as a slur," Mui says, "but there is a power in re-claimed words, and we find that across different types of marginalized identities, the power to take a word that has been used negatively and say, 'This is mine' that a lot of young LGBTQ people are feeling."

Another term that comes up frequently in discussions of LGBTQ issues is heteronormativity, which is defined by the Queer Dictionary as the belief or assumption that all people are heterosexual, or that heterosexuality is the default or "normal" state of human being. In our schools and our society at large, we often come from a heteronormative place, speaking of the LGBTQ population as the "other," which communicates to our LGBTQ students that they are deviant or unnatural. We'll talk more about that a little bit later.

To learn more about terminology and other important issues, download GLSEN's Safe Space Kit below.

GLSEN Safe Space Kit
A Guide to Supporting Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual
and Transgender Students in Your School

2. Check Your Biases

As with any kind of advocacy, it's crucial to understand your own background and biases. "All of us, LGBT and non-LGBT, have learned messages about LGBT people," reads a passage from the Safe Space Kit. "What were the earliest messages you received about LGBT people and where did they come from? Were they positive, negative or neutral? Understanding the messages we receive can help us identify our own beliefs and biases that we can then challenge, helping to make us stronger allies."

The GLSEN Safe Space Kit provides a "Check Yourself" exercise that will help you take a close look at your own underlying beliefs.

3. Teach Inclusively

The things we teach and how we teach them can send important messages to our students about whether or not they are valued as they are. "So much of our language is gendered in ways that we're not really thoughtful of," Mui explains. "Just saying, 'Boys and girls,' and not really thinking about who we're saying that to, or addressing the compliments that we're giving to students, really thinking about how are we using language, how are we making space in our language for students to identify and be whoever and however they want is a really important step."

Here are some things you can do to make sure you're nurturing your LGBTQ students in your instruction:

Include a variety of gender representations.
When students are presented with a narrow picture of gender roles-and they don't see themselves in any of them-they develop a sense early on that something is wrong with them. GLSEN's Ready, Set, Respect! toolkit for elementary teachers (link below) encourages teachers to make sure that classroom books and materials include diverse families and people whose careers and other life roles don't conform to gender stereotypes.

Group neutrally.
Out of habit, teachers will often divide students into "boy" and "girl" groups. This can make students who don't conform to gender-based stereotypes feel uncomfortable and isolated. The Ready, Set, Respect! toolkit recommends that instead, we divide students more neutrally by birthday month or by numbering them as 1s and 2s.

Evaluate your speech and materials for heteronormative and gender-normative bias.
In casual conversation, in the examples we use while teaching, and in our materials, we often communicate assumptions about gender and sexuality: Boys are attracted to and will grow up to marry girls (and vice-versa), girls will naturally prefer activities like shopping while boys will naturally be interested in athletics, and so on. All of these send the message that there is only one way to be "normal" and that students who don't fit these descriptions are abnormal. As you talk, teach, and look at your materials, ask yourself whether you're communicating these messages, and find ways to replace them with more inclusive examples.

Include positive representations of LGBTQ people in your curriculum.
"Whatever curriculum that is," Mui says, "there are usually people involved in that, whether that's the people you're listing in a math problem or the histories that you're teaching in a history class, there are ways to bring about diversity. Integrating that into your learning helps all of your students to learn more about the world and it helps LGBTQ students see themselves in their learning." GLSEN has resources on LGBTQ history that can help with this. As with all resources, teachers should preview these material before offering them to students. GLSEN serves K-12 students, and you will know best which activities and lessons will meet your students' needs. When sharing facts about LGBTQ history, it's important for educators to balance a positive influence and celebration of icons and leaders while not hiding the truth behind historically important events.

Ready, Set, Respect!
GLSEN's Elementary School Toolkit

4. Be Visible

Let your LGBTQ students know that you are an ally by displaying some visible sign of your support. Hanging a rainbow flag or a Safe Space Poster or Sticker in your classroom can accomplish this. GLSEN's Safe Space Kit points out that this kind of visibility affects students more than we might even realize. "Even if students don't come to you directly, the kit says, "research shows that just knowing that there is a supportive educator at school can help LGBT students feel better about being in school."

5. Respond to Anti-LGBTQ Behavior

When students experience harassment in your presence, take action. Simply saying something like "That language is unacceptable," is enough to acknowledge the act and stop it. The Safe Space Kit includes more detailed information on turning incidents like these into teachable moments and how to respond in more specific situations, like when a student says "That's so gay." But the most important thing to remember is to not ignore it. "Remember," says the Safe Space Kit, "no action is an action - if an incident is overlooked or not addressed it can imply acceptance and approval."

6. Support Students Who Come Out

As you make yourself more visible as an ally, students may be more likely to come out to you about their sexual orientation or gender identity. This important and sensitive conversation needs to be handled carefully, and the Safe Space Kit offers detailed advice for teachers.

Their most important advice is to listen. Instead of assuming that you know what the student needs or that their situation will be similar to that of other LGBTQ people you have known, treat each student as an individual and just let them talk. Ask them what they need and how you can help. You can give GLSEN's new Coming Out Resource to students who are thinking of sharing this part of their identity. It may be useful to let students know about hotlines they can call to get out-of-school support. The LGBT National Help Center at glbthotline.org has a collection of numbers that can help.

Remember that this student is trusting you with confidential information that you should not share until they are ready. To be on the safe side, talk to your administrator and guidance counselor about what your school policy says about confidentiality. If it doesn't go far enough to protect the rights of students, work to change that. Policies regarding confidentiality should also take gender identity into account. GLSEN provides guidelines for these considerations in its Transgender Model District Policy: "It is critical that parental/guardian approval is never a prerequisite for respecting a student's chosen name, appropriate gender, and pronouns... Staff should take guidance from and work collaboratively with the student to ensure that the student remains safe, both at school and at home."

7. Support a Student GSA

GLSEN's research has shown that the existence of a student GSA, or Gender Sexuality Alliance, can go a long way toward improving a school's climate for LGBTQ students. "Those need to be started by students," Mui explains, "but asking students if that's something they want support around" can be a good place to start. A GSA will also need a faculty advisor, so offering your services in that way can make a GSA a reality in your school.

8. Revisit Your School Policies

Making sure that your school's anti-bullying and anti-discrimination policies include language specific to sexual orientation and gender identity can also improve your school's climate, and GLSEN's research has found these types of policies to have significant impact on quality of life for LGBTQ students. Part of your work as an advocate is looking into these policies and working toward real change. Use GLSEN's Model Policies as a reference: www.glsen.org/modelpolicies.

9. Educate Your Colleagues

Apart from being more vocal and open with your own support for LGBTQ students, you can also conduct your own workshops for colleagues. The Safe Space Kit includes a sample 20-minute presentation teachers can give to school staff. GLSEN also offers in-person professional development. "We are a national organization, but we also have 40 local chapters which are amazingly volunteer-run by humans who are really dedicated and fantastic in this work," Mui says. "They're doing this work on the ground, and so we support them here from the national office with resources." Click here to view a map of local GLSEN chapters.

All of these actions will send a message of love and acceptance to your LGBTQ students-those you know about, and especially those you don't. Committing yourself to taking even a few of these steps can make such an incredible difference, impacting students' mental health, their safety, their academic success, and their overall quality of life. It just takes one person to start tipping the scales, to start moving a school culture in a more inclusive direction; I very much hope, for the sake of the students who need you, that you'll be that person. ♥

ONE MORE RESOURCE: LGBTQ+ youth face more than double the risk of experiencing homelessness compared to their nonqueer-identifying peers. In the last decade, many organizations have formed to help these young adults and children, providing support and resources so they can have somewhere safe and stable to live. To address this issue, Architectural Digest Reviews created this guide to housing assistance for LGBTQ+ youth.

There's more where this came from.
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Making School a Safe Place for LGBTQ Students

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Discrimination and harassment are still a daily reality for many LGBTQ students. Here are some things teachers can do to change that.

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How all of these resources support the topic...

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How all of these resources support the topic...

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About half of these resources deal with race and the effects it has on school age children. The other half of the resources give students a way to learn about and be more sensitive to other social issues their classmates could be dealing with.

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Children of multiple races explaining stereotypes and experiences

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Children of multiple races explaining stereotypes and experiences

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You may be aware of racism but are you aware of how it makes your classmates feel?

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"Because I’m Latino, I can’t have money?" Kids on Race

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Why this topic is relevant for middle school students...

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Why this topic is relevant for middle school students...

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Middle school is a rough time for everyone, and that's without the added social pressure. Middle school is a transition period and each student is trying to navigate a new environment/work load. Then you add on 'normal' social pressures and some have extra added pressures. These can be anywhere from experiencing racism to being tormented daily for being apart of the LGBT+ community. These extra added pressure negatively affect their educational experience. These various resources give students a look into the struggles their peers may face and how to be more aware of them.

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Experience of LGBT+ students in education

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Experience of LGBT+ students in education

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Negative experiences for your classmates are more common than you think. This will show you why.

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Racial bias' we have, but may not be aware of

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Racial bias' we have, but may not be aware of

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This video shows children of multiple different races seeing their own race more positively than another. Why might this be? Do you notice your own subconscious racial bias'?

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Controversial Cheerios Commercial New Brunswick

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Anderson Cooper details a 7th grader whose answers to similar scenarios differ depending on the race of the characters.

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Pedagogical lens on which I developed my project...

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Pedagogical lens on which I developed my project...

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When thinking about what topic I wanted to do this project over I initially went toward anti-racism education. But then I started thinking about how there are so many issues that middle school students deal with that can poorly affect their education, so I decided to lean more towards social pedagogy and how these different issues negatively affect the education of middle school students.