Imagine walking around Holyoke High, or do not since you might do that daily and can still feel the dull pain in your calves from walking up 3 floors. As you’re passing by a conversation, certain words are being spoken and you’re wondering to yourself “ what did i just.. What?” This is a more than often occurrence that happens for myself and many others.

     Every day you’re able to walk down the halls of the school or pass by the walkways outside and hear a racist remark. In fact my freshman year of high school a paper went out about anti racism at Holyoke high and how the school is trying to make this place a better environment

     Pa’lante has written a whole document about this if you’d like to go check it out here is the link “ . https://palanteholyoke.org/racism-audit/ “ 

     There is a ton of judgement as well for just being a certain skin color, having a certain style of hair or presenting yourself outside of the “ social norm “ . I myself know an individual who sits with my friend group occasionally and will make racist remarks towards people who are white passing or are white themselves. Yet no one speaks up because it’ll start an issue. As if speaking up is as worse than racism itself.

     You can walk down the school hallways and hear slurs, comments, talks of people from other places, other countries. Checking the Holyoke Massachusetts population of certain races and ethnicities you will see the large percentage of people who live in Holyoke are white and black/African American. Whilst looking at these results and noticing how Holyoke high students tend to speak is truly disappointing. 

     In June of 2020 there was yet another statement put out saying 

      “The last few weeks, school and district leaders have spent extensive time discussing our commitment to being an anti-racist school district. We appreciate the input that we have received from students, staff and HPS families supporting the urgency to act now.“ I hope there is a continuation of effort towards anti racism at Holyoke high as well as students also putting in effort themselves to hopefully change the way they are thinking, as well as this I hope individuals who hear words that are racist or hurtful have the courage to try and correct what they are saying.