Is there anything as devastatingly sad and bloodboiling-ly infuriating as a racist child? If there is, it’d be pretty hard to come by. So when news broke late Friday about 26 Asian students being attacked at South Philadelphia High School, we feasted on a series of reactions that ranged from disgust to concern to, finally, a kind of angry sadness. But then, you should have seen the other guys. Asian kids in the Philadelphia public school system have had this problem in fits and starts for quite some time now, and, without putting too fine a point on it, it is the shame of the City of Philadelphia that this problem has not been addressed in a definitive way sooner. And even as of this writing, the Mayor has yet to issue a statement on the matter, and what the City is doing about it. That absolutely needs to happen. Today. This isn’t kids bullying other kids; this is systemic. And so while we’re handing out blame, let’s also throw some at the parents: No matter how screwed up your community is racially — and there are parcels of South Philadelphia where, even in 2009, battles are drawn along racial lines for who gets to be the king of Shit Mountain — every parent has a duty to the world to raise kids that are not going to go to school and beat up 26 kids because they’re Asian.

For their part, the Asian kids are handling this with about as much grace and good sense as anyone can: They’re not going back to school this week, after a meeting late Friday with School District officials left them feeling no confidence about going back at all. Instead, this week, a group of “dozens” of Asian South Philadelphia High students will meet in Chinatown and study privately. Wei Chen, president, South Philadelphia High School Chinese American Student Association, said in an official release, “It is our opinion that South Philadelphia High School is still not a safe place for us. Because we are Asian immigrants, we are targeted. We have been working with the school a long time, but still the school has failed to provide a concrete plan to address our safety inside and outside the building. We remain very upset with some staff members who are unresponsive to our concerns. We have been saying repeatedly that the security team has problems, but the School District still has not responded to our concerns. One staff person even slept through our meeting last Friday.” Utterly shameful. Meanwhile, if you’d like to help, students put out a call for assistance for Mandarin and Vietnamese translators and for contributions to help pay for the cost of the students’ transportation as well as meals during this time. Contributions may be sent to Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (215-922-6056) or Asian Americans United (215-925-1538). We’ll be following this story closely as it plays out this week and beyond.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 7th, 2009 at 10:45 am.