Paso Robles school board member calls systemic racism a ‘myth’ — sparking backlash
A member of the Paso Robles Joint Unified School District Board of Trustees has received backlash after he claimed that systemic racism is a “myth.”
Christopher Arend, who was elected onto the board in 2018, wrote a lengthy opinion piece about the alleged warping of the definition of racism that was published Sept. 2 on the website Cal Coast News.
In his 6,600-word essay, Arend writes that systemic racism is “nothing more than intellectual contortion intended to sow division in the United States of America while causing immeasurable harm specifically to the people who the political left supposedly wants to help.”
He also writes that “Racial prejudice can only be systemic if the system is designed to reflect racial bias, which has not been the case since the civil rights legislation in the 1960s, or if the system is controlled by individuals who act with racial bias, which is also not the case in modern America unless the political, economic and cultural elites are considered to be racially prejudiced.”
Arend told The Tribune that he used his experience as an international lawyer to analyze the definitions of the words racism and racist. Arend was an attorney in Frankfurt, Germany, for 19 years before he moved back to California; he now works as a translator of legal documents.
When asked for comment, Paso Robles school board president Stephanie Ulibarri and Superintendent Curt Dubost both stressed that Arend wrote the essay as an individual, not as a representative of the board.
“I would have preferred, perhaps, it wasn’t acknowledged at the end (of the opinion piece) that he is a member of the board,” Dubost told The Tribune on Tuesday. “He certainly was not speaking as a member of the board.”
Five community members called into the school district’s board meeting Tuesday evening to speak out against Arend’s opinion piece, saying it was “unacceptable” and “disrespectful.” They called on Dubost and the board to address the issue of systemic racism.
“I’m incredibly disgusted and disappointed by the racist content of this (essay). It’s unacceptable,” Cal Poly graduate and Paso Robles resident Shannon Gonzalez said as part of public comment.
“Your mission as the board is to deliver an exemplary education and a safe environment,” said Gonzalez, a former Paso Robles school district student. “I ask you as board members: how can you create a safe environment for every student, including students of color, when a fellow board member denies the existence of a major issue that students of color face in everyday life?”
Elena Garcia, a member of Paso Robles’ new diversity panel, said during Tuesday’s meeting that she was “ashamed” that Arend represents the community as a school district board member.
Addressing Arend directly, Garcia said, “Your thoughts are completely arrogant, out of touch and they lack compassion.”
“I’m concerned that you have a say in the lives of our children ...” Garcia said during Tuesday’s meeting. “Regardless of your opinion, that systemic racism is real and that Black and brown lives matter in Paso Robles and we will continue to speak out against against racism, arrogance and what you perceive as untouchable power.”
On Wednesday, Arend told The Tribune that he has spoken privately with members of the school board and community members about his essay, and that “they fully concur with what it says.”
During Tuesday’s board meeting, Arend said that “not one person (during public comment) had anything to say of substance against the article,” and that the negative reactions were “based on emotion.”
In his interview with the Tribune, Arend said that systemic racism is the phrase used as blame for issues such as the high incarceration rate for Black Americans and higher crime rates among the Black population when compared to the rates per capita of other racial and ethnic groups.
Arend said he does not deny racial and ethnic discrepancies exist in the economy and the law, but “to call them systemic racism is wrong.”
“They’re not a result of the old style racism of racial prejudice,” he said. “Those are deep-rooted social problems that have to be tackled by looking at the underlying causes.”
Research suggests that underlying causes of racial and ethnic disparities in economic wealth and opportunities are due to a long history of employment and housing discrimination.
“Of course, there’s social problems, there’s social discrepancies in all sorts of ways between various ethnic groups in the United States,” Arend said. “But I’m an older guy, and we used to refer to those things as social problems that had to be dealt with and we did not blame it on systemic racism.”
