By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — Howard Bailey, Jr., the chairman of TEAM Westport, the town’s multi-cultural advocacy committee, was 15 when he helped to integrate a segregated high school in his home state of Tennessee. 

For months, he and other Black students entered the school enduring catcalls and slurs, some from white parents, who hurled taunts at the children, “peppered with monkey signs, jungle calls and the ‘n’ word,” he said. 

It was an experience that was “traumatic and frightening to this day,” he recalled at Thursday’s TEAM meeting.

Years later, he and his wife removed their children from Westport schools to send them to private schools because of the racist slurs his children endured in Westport, Bailey said.

Bailey recounted his personal story Thursday as Supt. of Schools Thomas Scarice’s discussed the issue of hate speech and bias, in and outside schools today, and First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker’s commented on the challenges bias of all forms pose for Westport.

In his statements at the beginning of the meeting, Bailey emphasized that racism, antisemitism and other hate speech and bias occur everywhere, not just Westport. “There is an environment in student culture that is extremely troubling,” he said. “With the pervasive growth of social media and the recent political environment … I now see the advent of this same dynamic that I lived through as a child and parent being inflicted on my grandson.”

Bailey said that additional resources and personnel are needed in each school to address the problem, taking feedback from students and to help parents of children targeted by hate speech or bias. School principals shouldn’t be expected to deal with the issues themselves, he said.

“It’s going to take resources,” he said. “Combatting it should be a top priority statewide and nationwide. This is really an outrage nationally and in Fairfield County.”

Scarice agreed that the current atmosphere of bias and hate speech is not a problem found only Westport or its schools. “Students come in our schools a product of our community and our world — I don’t believe that students come into our school without bias and we’re creating bias in our schools.” he said. 

“But we are doing work in our schools and will continue to do the work,” he said, noting that he recently observed an anti-bias lesson at the secondary level and an anti-bullying lesson in an elementary school, he said.

Scarice said there are “two pillars” in the battle against bias and hate speech in schools — prevention and response. “The prevention piece is absolutely critical, he said. “but the questions we’re hearing more about are response.”

To better respond to bias incidents and other misconduct, the school district is currently revamping its code of conduct, the superintendent said. “We are certainly part of the solution,” he said of the need for the school district to address the bias problem.

Tooker called the recent testimony of Dr. Carol Felder and her husband, Richard Anderson to the Board of Education about racism in Westport schools “devastating news,”  indicating that work needs to be to done to address bias and hate speech in Westport.

“This is not a school problem, this is a community problem,” Tooker said. “I take responsibility and accountability for that from the standpoint of being the leader of this community.”

A forum on addressing issues of antisemitism and bias in the schools is planned at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 13, at Temple Israel, 14 Coleytown Road.

On hand to listen to Westport officials discuss the issue were Fairfield First Selectman William Gerber and his administrative team who came to the meeting Thursday for advice on assembling a similar group to fight bias and hate speech in their town. At the end of the TEAM meeting, Gerber asked Bailey if Fairfield and Westport might cooperate in developing such a group.

“I’d be delighted to work with you,” Bailey told Gerber.  “There is a lot that we can all learn from each other.”

Much of what TEAM members have learned about the challenges students face from hate speech and bias is derived TEAM’s annual Teen Diversity Essay Contest, Bailey said. An archive of past essays is on the TEAM website. 

This year’s contest topic concerns hate speech and the civil exchange of diverse opinions. Winner in the contest will be announced at a May 6 ceremony at the Westport Library.

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman and has taught journalism at New York and Southern Connecticut State universities.