Fourteen students from Winston-Salem/Forsyth Schools gathered in the Parkland High School media center Thursday evening for the city's annual High School Race Relations Forum.
For a little over an hour, they passed around a microphone and shared their thoughts about the roles that race and ethnicity have played in their lives, and more specifically, in their schools.
Some students, like Rakiya Davis, a senior at Reynolds High School, said they’ve seen progress with diversity and inclusion. She said things have changed since her Freshman year when honors and AP classes felt like something only white kids could take.
“But now it’s like, you go into honors class, and you see Black kids, Hispanic kids, any races of kids," Davis said. "It feels like different, because it's like, I can be a Black girl and be in the honors class and not feel like, ‘Oh, she's trying to be too smart. She’s trying to be this, she's trying to be that.’”
But other students, like Kemia Worthy, a Parkland senior, said there were still persistent racial divides.
“We’re one school, but it still is like we have two different schools with the racial segregation," Worthy said. "And I feel like that's a huge problem. Because that also goes to show like in many areas, such as our clubs, our sports, like, in every aspect of this school, you can see the racial divide.”
Another student, Esly De La Cruz, spoke about her experience as a Mexican immigrant.
“It really gets me mad because they don't focus on the Hispanic students who don't have papers and only focus on the people who were basically born here, and they give the opportunities to those people," she said. "And me as a Mexican, I feel like we should have the same opportunities as other races have.”
The city of Winston-Salem has been hosting this forum annually since 2002.
Amy Diaz covers education for WFDD in partnership with Report For America. You can follow her on Twitter at @amydiaze.