By Magaly Muñoz

For over 25 years, an Oakland leadership organization has worked to foster multiracial relationships amongst students, where historically, there has been division.

Youth Together was created by Raquel Jimenez, a Latino history teacher at Castlemont High School, who noticed tension between Black and Latino students. Through a coalition of other Oakland-based organizations, Youth Together was established to provide resources to students and give them skills to build community with other racial groups.

Student members of Youth Together told the Post that the reason they joined the organization was to build skills around social justice and connect with people they otherwise wouldn’t have met.

One student, Oli, said the group helped her to grow confidence in speaking with new people and to learn more about the history of racial issues in Oakland, which she wishes teachers did more of to include in their curriculum.

Lena, another student who attends Skyline High School with Oli, said the groups at school are typically divided by race because “students fall into stereotypes”. She explained that kids would put her in a “stereotypical Asian” persona but once they got to know her, they started treating her differently.

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Berlin, a student Youth Together member, shared that he transferred to three different schools because of racial tensions with other students. He said other groups attempted to start problems with him because he didn’t come from the same background as them.

Lena said people would be more open to being friends with other races if they were taught about them more frequently in school.

“It’s really important to understand different ethnicities and their backgrounds and struggles that they’ve went through,” Lena said.

Asian, Latino and Black students make up the biggest racial groups in Oakland Unified School District. Latino students in particular make up over half of the student population with almost 24,000 kids in the 2022-23 school year.

The Youth Together students shared that over the years more white students have started attending their schools and the diversity is no longer what it used to be. They also said the teachers do not reflect the student body diversity.

Oli said although there are student fights at Skyline, she doesn’t feel that they are racially motivated. But she claims that most of the racial tensions actually come from teachers who express negative rhetoric to students during their lessons, especially in history classes.

Through these conversations about race and social justice, the students are better prepared to speak to their peers at an annual event called Unity Day.

Unity Day was hosted at Skyline and Oakland High School at the very beginning of the school year. Kids participated in activities and group discussions about diversity and the ongoing disparities in their education.

The Youth Together team said they looked forward to having these talks with students and to connecting them with others.

Lead organizer Seanna said she wants Unity Day to bring folks together and undo the years of division that Oakland schools have experienced. Her two high school aged brothers, who are also members of Youth Together, have told her that tensions run higher now than they did when she was in high school several years ago.

Seanna wants the cycle of tension and detachment among different racial groups to end, both in school and in the city. She said people felt more united and like a community when she was growing up, but that doesn’t feel like the case anymore.

If Unity Day is what the school and larger community need in order to get along, she hopes the idea continues and expands until things start to come together again.

“It just takes one person to want to keep fighting, to inspire other people to keep fighting, and that’s the domino effect I would love to see. Maybe that change that we all crave for will come,” Seanna said.

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