Southland teen alleges campus racism in lawsuit

A Black student at the prestigious Oaks Christian School in Westlake Village says he has been routinely subjected to racial harassment and bullying. Specifically, students there have allegedly downloaded a phone app that made whipping sounds and played it when a Black student walked by, according to a lawsuit filed against the school in Los Angeles County Superior Court last week.
Students at the school reportedly conducted a mock slave auction among themselves in the cafeteria, openly debating how much the Black student would be worth if he were sold. They reportedly asked him about his physical capabilities to estimate a price, according to the lawsuit.
Some allegedly dangled fried chicken above the boy’s head, saying “I know you people like this,” the suit said. And several students threatened to lynch him at a specific date and time, the lawsuit alleged.
The student, who is a minor, is named as John Doe in court documents. His family alleges that the school “was negligent and careless by allowing students to harass, humiliate, and bully the plaintiff with impunity” and is seeking unspecified damages, according to the lawsuit. The family also alleges that the school violated California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act by allowing discrimination to persist and failing to stop it.
The plaintiff is currently a senior. In an interview with a Southern California media outlet alongside his mother and attorneys, he said he is intent on completing his education at Oaks Christian — a fourth- through 12th-grade campus known for its athletics and faith-centered education. The campus promotes its Christian mission on its website: “To dedicate ourselves to Christ … while growing in knowledge and wisdom through God’s abundant grace.”
The lawsuit states that the teenager has been the target of racial bullying and harassment for years. In an interview, he alleged that the first incident occurred on an eighth-grade class trip at the Slave Memorial at Mount Vernon when he said a few students told him “to join them in the graves.”
“I felt separated,” he said. “I felt like why me? Why did they feel the need to say that? I didn’t do anything to them.” To cope at school, he would wait for the hallways to clear, and he felt unsafe in common areas, often opting to eat lunch in classrooms to avoid harassment, the lawsuit said.
Despite being aware of the alleged racial harassment, Oaks Christian administration failed to take adequate action to address the problems, according to the lawsuit. In one example, a school administrator pulled him aside before a U.S. history class covering slavery that day and warned him to be ready for inappropriate comments from some “jokesters” in the class and advised him to “brace for it,” according to the lawsuit.
The whipping-sound phone app was well known among students and became a tool of racial torment used to humiliate and degrade Black students during the 2022-2023 school year, the lawsuit alleges.
“Since this relentless behavior went unchecked, it fostered a toxic atmosphere at Oaks Christian School, where racism became normalized, and students felt empowered to see how far they could terrorize [the] plaintiff and other Black students,” the suit alleges.