By Jenny Sokly

People have been talking about West Oakland for decades. Unfortunately, what they have been saying isn’t good. West Oakland has long had the reputation of being one of the biggest gang ghettos in California. Its streets are filled with drug addicts, murder and unspeakable violence is committed regularly. Many people say the streets are filthy and teenagers hang out, too stupid to stay in school, stealing for fun, doing drugs or getting pregnant.

Is this a fair representation of all of West Oakland? Certainly not says a group of teenagers who are trying to make a difference through a program to combat stereotypes called Y.E.L.L., an acronym for Youth Engaged in Leadership and Learning. Sponsored by the John W. Gardner Center, some twenty young people aged 15 to 21 have been involved in Y.E.L.L.’s 2003’s program, “Don’t Believe the Hype!” Stereotypes of the community have become a bad self-fulfilling prophecy. Hey, who is going to raise the bar for these kids? Listen up - these young people are fighting back.

“I think that sometimes stereotypes don’t only come from the people that are living inside the community,” said a focus group participant “but sometimes from people outside the community.” Being a young African American man in West Oakland has other challenges. “I was stereotyped by the police,” said another student who was in their focus group. “They pulled me over because they thought I was selling drugs and I had to tell them I wasn’t.”

Even teachers at schools in West Oakland think that the stereotypical hurdles that kids in this community have to overcome are enormous. “We are talking about all the challenges that all students face,” said an English teacher. “Many of the students face peer pressure - the peer pressure not to cheat, the peer pressure not to be smart, the peer pressure not to be successful in the conventional pathways.” Another teacher concurred. “These stereotypes affect these youth and it creates a mentality of lower expectations - that they’re not smart and that affects me, too,” she said. “That affects me a lot.”

Youth from Y.E.L.L. are starting to stand up for themselves. Working with adult mentors they are quickly learning that many of these historical stereotypes that have been blown out of proportion by the media are just false. Graduation rates are going up. This year alone there were over 100 students graduated as compared to 41 students just two years ago. McClymonds High School has the lowest drop out rate in the district and during the school year 2001-2002, student attendance increased by 40%. Additionally the GPA for ‘Mack’ students has increased. The number of students on the honor roll jumped from 33 in 2000-01 to 117 in 2002, and the SAT 9 testing (what the state of California uses to measure student achievement) rose from 62% to 84% in 2002.

“We know we can’t stop stereotypes,” said a YELL participant, “but we can try to get the media to stop showing the negative stories. Stereotypes affect us and other students because we are from the community. Some of the stereotypes I hear are people in West Oakland do drugs and are violent and are not good in school. They also say people of color are not good at anything but basketball and stealing things from people and from stores. I am not saying that West Oakland is a very good place to live, but it is not as crazy and as dirty as people say.”

Y.E.L.L. is trying to spread the good word about the neighborhood by sharing their passion about their community. Twenty high school youth from West Oakland conducted focus groups during the school year 2002-2003. To get as many people involved in the focus groups as possible, these kids wrote and then passed out and hung flyers to get people in the community to participate. They developed questions that were used to spark discussions having to do with stereotypes. They made a film, wrote a magazine “YELL It Out!” and developed a website devoted to the coverage of their activities. The website can be found at www.yellitout.com,

Y.E.L.L.’s focus groups brought students together with teachers so that together they could begin to construct a positive interactive environment. Meaningful and powerful statements were shared and in so doing, the participants learned that they weren’t alone - they needed to keep their heads up together and ignore the wrong hype. “If you don’t listen and prove the stereotypes wrong, you will start to think differently about your community and yourself,” said a focus group participant. Teachers felt better knowing that students were encouraged to work hard because they had dreams of a future and students felt their teachers’ desires to want to help them achieve.

The other cheery result of this initiative was addressed to the media: “People from the media - know your topic well before you cover it. Show people both sides of a story and don’t add drama to a story just so more people will pay attention. Cover positive things and you’ll feel better about what you are doing and possibly, just possibly give people in our community something to stand up and cheer for.”

Students in West Oakland working to dispel stereotypes.