Marysville strike wasn’t race related

Published 9:00 pm Monday, December 29, 2003

I read with great interest the letter from Priscilla Benfield (“Race: You better believe it plays a role in things”) and felt compelled to share my thoughts on this topic as well.

I, too, was in the 1998-1999 senior class at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, and to say that no racism happened is ignorance at its worst. This is the school where students were suspended for putting pictures of Southern lynchings on the covers of their notebooks, and where white/native relations aren’t at their peak.

At the same time, I have to agree that the teachers’ strike was not about race, but about an anti-labor superintendent and an anti-labor school board. Linda Whitehead’s race played no role, and to insinuate it did is inappropriate and wrong.

While Marysville schools have a culture of hate and fear toward minorities, I find it next to impossible to believe that teachers went on strike based on the superintendent’s race.

Marysville