The Black student at Oaks Christian claims he was racially harassed for years, the lawsuit says

At the prestigious Oaks Christian School in Westlake Village, students allegedly downloaded a phone app that made rousing sounds and played them as a black student walked by, according to a lawsuit filed against the school this week in Los Angeles County Superior Court.

Students at the private school held a mock slave auction among themselves in the cafeteria, openly discussing how much the black student would be worth if sold and asking him about his physical abilities to estimate a price, the lawsuit said.

Some allegedly dangled fried chicken over the boy’s head and said, “I know you guys in a minute,” the package said. And several students threatened to lynch him on a specific date and time, the lawsuit alleged.

The minor student is referred to in court documents as John Doe. His family claims the school was “negligent and careless in allowing students to harass, humiliate and bully the plaintiff with impunity” and is seeking unspecified damages, according to the lawsuit. The family also claims the school violated California’s Unruh Civil Rights Act by allowing discrimination to continue and failing to stop it.

School Principal Rob Black and several administrators did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The claimant is currently a senior. In an interview with The Times along with his mother and attorneys, he said he plans to complete his education at Oaks Christian — a fourth- through 12th-grade campus known for its athletics and faith-based education. The campus promotes its Christian mission on its website: “To commit ourselves to Christ…as we grow in knowledge and wisdom through God’s abundant grace.”

According to the lawsuit, the plaintiff has been the target of racial bullying and harassment for years. In an interview, he claimed that the first incident occurred during an eighth-grade field trip to the Slave Memorial at Mount Vernon, when he said some students told him “to join them in the graves.”

“I felt separated,” he said. “I thought: why me? Why did they feel it necessary to say that? I didn’t do anything to them.”

To cope at school, he waited until the hallways were clear and felt unsafe in common areas, often choosing to eat lunch in classrooms to avoid harassment, the lawsuit said.

Despite being aware of the alleged racial harassment, Oaks’ Christian government failed to take adequate action to address the problems, according to the lawsuit. In one example, a school principal took him aside that day for a U.S. history lesson on slavery and warned him to be prepared for inappropriate comments from some “jokers” in class and advised him to “brace himself,” according to the lawsuit . .

The lawsuit contains no witnesses or documentation to support the plaintiff’s claims. Attorneys said information will emerge during the legal discovery process.

The loud 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.

“As this brutal behavior went unchecked, it created 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 lawsuit alleges.

With high school tuition costing about $42,000 a year, the college prep day and boarding school attracts students from affluent families and has a long list of famous alumni, including the children of Joe Montana, Will Smith and Wayne Gretzky.

Opened in 2000, Oaks Christian features state-of-the-art facilities including an Olympic-sized swimming pool, a modern football stadium and a café serving gourmet coffee. Over the years, it has grown to more than 1,600 students attending the school’s 40-acre campus, according to its website. African American students made up 8% of the student body in 2022, according to data the school provided to education research site Niche.

Read more:“They can’t silence us.” Instagram accounts talk about racism at LA’s elite private schools

The lawsuit follows allegations of racism on campus that surfaced publicly during the 2020 George Floyd protests.

That summer, a petition titled “Black Oaks Christian Alumni and Allies Against Racism” was filed. posted online and signed by more than 8,000 people. The comments section contained stories of alleged discrimination. One person wrote, “I don’t want my alma mater to scar black and brown people the way it scarred me.”

Around the same time in 2020, the Instagram account “Oaks Christian Stories” was created and acquired dozens of messages with detailed accusations of racism and sexism.

Oaks Christian wasn’t the only one under scrutiny that year for its treatment of black students and other students of color. Other prominent private schools in the region faced a wave of criticism online as personal stories emerged from students and alumni describing encounters with racism and prejudice. Administrators at those schools took the bills seriously, hosting town halls and implementing new measures such as anti-bias training for teachers.

Rob Black, Oaks Christian’s principal, pledged that year to strengthen the school’s anti-harassment and anti-discrimination policies. He said he wanted to “acknowledge where we have been wrong and failed to understand many of the issues that Black students at Oaks Christian School may have faced,” according to a statement emailed to parents.

“Racism is evil and has no place at Oaks Christian School. We must be more than non-racist – we must be actively anti-racist,” the June 2020 email said. “A racist act against one Black student was and is an offense against every Black student, and that cannot stand.”

Based on what the student said he experienced, the promises and anti-racist policies ring hollow to him.

For years, he said, he felt isolated because he believed no one could help him, which affected his ability to focus on his studies. He has been in therapy to deal with the emotional damage, his mother said.

“He was always very outgoing and friendly, but he started to become a lot more introverted,” his mother said. “He just seemed sad and didn’t want to talk.”

When she heard about the situation during his freshman year, his mother said, she wanted to transfer him to another school.

“I blame myself. How did I miss this? How did no one from the school tell me what he was going through? I sent him to a Christian school for a reason, you know? And I was shocked, shocked and hurt that the school hurt him,” she said.

By filing the lawsuit, the student said he realizes retaliation could occur.

“I’m bracing myself for it to happen – I’m going to have to go through it so no one else will,” he said. “There has to be a change.”

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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.