Aya Elamroussi, Special to the AFRO

Washington D.C. high school students gathered last week in McKinley Technology High School in Northeast to discuss the issue of gun violence.

The Interschool Seminar, titled Student Voices on Gun Violence & Social Justice, comprised mainly of five student-led discussions. The AFRO observed a student-facilitated discussion on gun violence in communities of color. Due to lack of permission for media release, not all students quoted will be identified.

A list of discussion tops at the seminar. (Photo by Aya Elamroussi)

About 12 students, most of whom were Black, spent the one-hour discussion mainly contrasting the media and social attention of the Never Again movement, which was sparked by the Parkland shooting, and the lack of attention given to Black communities when they face gun violence.

“The Whites, they get more attention,” a Black high school student said during the discussion. Referring to last month’s March for Our Lives, the student continued, “We would never have the whole D.C. shutdown for us. All the tables, tents, celebrities. We wouldn’t have gotten all of that. Black Lives Matter is a terrorist group.”

While the government isn’t exactly calling the BLM movement members “terrorists,” a 2017 FBI report introduced the category of “Black Identity Extremists” and linked the group to participation in “premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement” motivated by the group’s “perceptions of police brutality against African Americans.”

The phrase “hands up, don’t shoot” made its way to the March for Our Lives rally. Bustle reported that its use was to protests gun violence against Black and brown people, too.  But the students at the seminar didn’t see it that way.

“It’s kind of disrespectful to the Black community,” one Black student said. “We’ve been through so much with police.”

The seminar was organized by the D.C.-based non-profit Center for Inspired Teaching, which trains teachers to be instigators of thought, not merely information providers.

“Every is student-facilitated. Students choose the topics,” Cosby Hunt, senior officer of teaching and learning for Center for Inspired Teaching, told the AFRO. “Adults come. But they sit in the background, and they listen.”

Cosby added that these seminars were born from students’ deep desire to talk to each across the Greater Washington Area.

Two Black high school junior students led the seminar on gun violence in communities of color and served as discussion facilitators.

“I felt a calling to do that because that’s what I’m passionate about,” Nailah Tukpah, student facilitator of Edmund Burke School in Northwest DC, told the AFRO.

To prepare as a facilitator, Tukpah read several articles contrasting the Never Again movement to gun violence in communities of color.

Tukpah,17, pointed out that mass shootings and gun violence in communities of color are two different problems. She said that while she can’t relate to experiencing a mass shooting, others can’t relate to being around gun violence “daily” in communities of color.

“But overall, we all want the same goal,” Tukpah said.  “We want more gun regulations.”

Sydney Jackson, 16, also co-led the discussion.

“I chose gun violence in communities of color because I feel like those are the communities that are most affected on a daily basis,” Jackson told the AFRO.

Jackson pointed out that the shooting in Parkland, Fl. got attention, both from news media and advocacy organizations, because Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is majority- white. “They had the money and the backings to make such an impact and a change.”

“Personally, as a person of color, that makes me feel incredibly sad because it’s the sad truth we live everyday: my life will never be as protected as a White’s person’s life.”

Jackson is biracial, Black and Native American, but she said she experiences life as a Black person because that is how she is seen in the world.

Both Jackson and Tukpah said they enjoyed being facilitators and value the conversations the Interschool Seminar platform allowed them to have.

“In D.C., we really do live in a liberal bubble…I really wish I could have these conversations with people who don’t agree with me,” Tukpah said.

Jackson echoed, “Everyone should have these kinds of discussions because they’re important to our growth and our learning and our understanding of the world around us.”