Culver City Students Work To Diversify Educational Curriculum

Originally published on the LA Journey

To combat racial injustice within the school system, Culver City students are working to diversify the education system within the Culver City Unified School District through a group called POC 4 Change.

The students, who also led a student protest against police brutality, are currently working to pass a four-stage plan to increase the inclusivity of education in their district and beyond. The plan involves starting “necessary conversations” on school campuses, teaching students how to be “active anti-racists” and creating an intercultural literature class that is mandatory for graduation.

Sabahat Nabiha, the co-founder of POC 4 Change, decided that she needed to be an advocate because of the lack of education about diversity that exists at her school.

“I've never had a black teacher, [and] many of my black friends, they've never had the conversation with the racism that they face like in a daily environment. They've never had that conversation in a classroom,” Nabiha said. “When we realized that needs to change and that needs to happen, we got to push for these kinds of changes.”

Breanna Moict, one of the group’s members, feels, as an African American woman, that change is necessary because of her own experience with feeling alienated by the curriculum after she moved from Georgia to Culver City.

“It was a culture shock,” Moict said. “What was more upsetting to me was the lack of representation of my own culture, and I had to read outside of school and do my work outside of school. I had to further my education on my own culture. I felt like if you're going to have the mark of a diverse school, you should have a diverse curriculum.”

Bitania Beniam, POC 4 Change’s other co-founder, decided to push for change because she felt like there was a lack of black leadership within Culver City, and as an African American student, she feels an obligation to have a leadership role. She also thinks that the Culver City School District is flawed in terms of its perspective on race.

“In Culver City, there's this whole entire ideology [that] we are liberal and our school's so diverse so that expels any racism or anything happening in our city,” Beniam said.

She also felt compelled to take action because she no longer is surprised by the death of African Americans, which she finds upsetting, especially as a black woman.

“It's this whole thing of me becoming desensitized to everyone dying on TV and it's coming to a point where I don't care anymore,” Beniam said. “I don't want it to be like that and for me to have brothers and for them to see that. It's just too much. It's not just George Floyd. It's everybody else.”

One part of the students’ plan is to have these “uncomfortable conversations” about race not just with students, but with administration, Nabiha said.

“It's telling the district, 'This is your problem. Recognize it, stop ignoring it, stop putting it on the brush, stop creating new committees that say they're going to do this and this and this, but in reality, they don't do anything,'” Nabiha said. “We're saying, 'Have the actual conversation to get down to business and admit your fault and realize how you can grow from that.'”

When trying to get these plans passed, the students have faced some resistance from the school. Nabiha specifically noticed this, but she plans to continue to advocate despite this challenge.

“We've had a lot of pushback and a lot of micro-aggression,” Nabiha said. “These are people that say, 'We're not racist, I'm not racist,' but in reality, they don't want these changes to happen. We are going to go ahead and set up a petition starting from tomorrow to push for all these changes because we need them now and not in August.”

Many school board members have been supportive of this movement, though, specifically Board President Summer McBride.

Throughout her time on the Board and on the district’s PTA, McBride has constantly advocated for “equity and inclusion,” so she believes that getting these plans passed is of the “utmost importance.” She has worked as a part of different diversity task forces, contributed to organizations that supported families not aided by the government, and supported the movement to make Culver City a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants.

She thinks that the reason she has been more active in the fight for inclusiveness than her fellow board members is because of her own experience as a black woman and a mother to black children.

“I look at this with a sense of urgency because I know what I've experienced, and I know what they experience,” McBride said.

She also feels as if her own work with people of different backgrounds has caused her to want to be a promoter of change.

“I have [to] feed my passion to make sure that we don't drag our feet on what we're doing,” McBride said. “I personally believe that there are some radical changes that need to happen now. They actually should have happened years ago, but I'm here in this position now, and I want to push for that change.”

While McBride is pushing for “systemic” change, some of her colleagues are pushing to end racism with more “organic” methods. Despite these conflicting views, though, she still thinks that the plans in motion will probably get passed, even if some changes are made.

Moict thinks that the plan will be put into place with a “90%” certainty. However, while Nabiha knows some board members have been supportive, she has begun to doubt whether the plan will actually work because of the people who are not cooperating.

“I've been held with open arms [by] people saying, 'Yes, we want to help, we want to get it all,' but the person that can that can sign it off with one signature, that can instill all this with one signature, is the person that we’re having the most trouble reaching,” Nabiha said. “Now I know what to do, but I don't know what to expect from the rest of the stages.”

Either with her uncertainty, though, Nabiha knows that this plan has to be put into action because of the roots of the education system, which she believes need to change.

“The education system...is a system that promotes only white people, and we realized that it's been around for hundreds of years, and it hasn't changed,” Nabiha said. “America has changed [and] society might have progressed a little bit, but the education system never did, and it's about time that it needs to change. If we can stop these little little microaggressions, if we can stop kids from getting flawed points of views from a young age since preschool, then we know that we can stop systemic racism in its tracks.”