‘They can’t silence us’: Instagram accounts recount racism at elite US private schools

Sikkiim Hamilton (pictured) helped create the @blackatoakwood Instagram account, highlighting racism at North Hollywood’s Oakwood School, where she was once a student. — Los Angeles Times/TNS

LOS ANGELES: Black at Harvard-Westlake. Dear Flintridge Sacred Heart Academy. Black at Oakwood School. Oaks Christian Stories. Dear Polytechnic School. These are among the Instagram accounts linked to some of L.A.’s most elite private schools – but created by students and alumni who are going public with personal stories of racism that have otherwise gone unheard.

In an outpouring born of the national Black Lives Matter movement, these private school letter-writers talk of their encounters with bias, exclusion and microaggressions at schools where annual tuition can run as high as US$40,000 (RM167,740), and class sizes can be as low as 15 students.