Last Wednesday, I sat in the audience at Albany High School’s graduation. I expected the usual mix of pomp and circumstance — proud families waving from folding chairs, students crossing the stage to applause. What I didn’t expect was to be moved by the speech of a young graduate.
The salutatorian, an Asian American student, stood at the podium and spoke with quiet conviction. Earlier this year, during a varsity baseball game, he and a teammate were targeted with anti-Asian slurs — taunted and dehumanized from the opposing dugout. The incident was caught on video and circulated widely. But the real story wasn’t the ugliness of what was said, it was the courage of his response.
He didn’t name names or assign blame. He didn’t raise his voice. Instead, he stood before his classmates, faculty, and their families and spoke about the contradictions within us — the instinct to divide, and the parallel desire to belong. He didn’t call for revenge. He spoke about resilience. About the possibility of moving forward without denying the pain.
What struck me most was that he didn’t try to protect himself or his reputation. He didn’t ask for sympathy. He asked us to reflect on who we are, and who we’re trying to become. That’s what real leadership looks like.
After hearing him speak, I wanted to understand more, not just about that game, but about what led to it, and what happened afterward. What I found wasn’t just troubling. It was systemic.
What West Contra Costa School District doesn’t want you to know
According to public reporting and direct accounts from the community, this wasn’t an isolated incident. Over the past 12 months, there have been at least three other reported episodes involving the same school, Pinole Valley High.
On April 16, during a game against El Cerrito, similar taunts were reported.
On March 7, during a junior varsity matchup with Bishop O’Dowd, varsity players watching the game reportedly yelled racial slurs at an O’Dowd outfielder, with two parents going on record.
“After news stories appeared across major Bay Area media outlets, I began receiving unexpected calls from parents sharing disturbing experiences their children had while playing against Pinole Valley’s baseball team,” said Anatalio Ubadle, an El Cerrito parent. “One parent described an April 2024 game against DeAnza High School, where a Pinole Valley player pushed down a Black Athlete, and others used the n-word toward DeAnza’s Black players. After the game, a Pinole Valley player who had been ejected entered the DeAnza dugout and physically assaulted one of their players. Despite emails from DeAnza parents to school administrators, I was told that nothing was ever done.”
During a varsity baseball game, the student and a teammate were targeted with anti-Asian slurs from the opposing dugout.
Families raised concerns. School officials were notified. But each time, the response was either delayed, diminished, or invisible. The only confirmed action from the West Contra Costa Unified School District has been the removal of a single spectator and a required sportsmanship recertification. Nothing more.
This isn’t a series of unfortunate moments. It’s a pattern. And patterns, left unaddressed, become culture. When that culture is one of silence and denial, the harm doesn’t just persist, it hardens.
What makes this worse is the vacuum of accountability. To date, no district leader has publicly acknowledged the full scope of what’s happened. No real consequences have been issued. Again and again, the focus has been on optics—not on the students harmed. That’s not just a failure of oversight. It’s a failure of courage.
What real leadership looks like
And yet, in the middle of all this, a student stood up. He didn’t lash out, he told the truth. He didn’t posture, he asked us to look inward. And in doing so, he reminded everyone what integrity looks like: not perfection, but honesty. Not blame, but clarity.
He spoke about why, even when it’s hard, we have to keep choosing hope. In his own words:
I wanted to stay quiet and move on. I could have let things be. But I kept coming back to the idea that the only way things will get better is if we believe that things can be better. So maybe being human means living in contradiction. We want to be kind, but we mess up. We want to belong, but we leave others out. We get it wrong but keep trying to make it right. Being human is living in that tension between who we are and who we’re trying to become. That is what I hope we carry with us as we graduate. Not just our grades or our accomplishments, but that quiet, stubborn belief that the world can be better than it is.
His belief that we can be better should not rest on young shoulders alone. That responsibility belongs to the adults in the room. To those entrusted with the safety and dignity of every student. To the people who are supposed to protect not just the district’s reputation, but its values. And to those who have promised, in word or policy, to lead us away from hate and racism.
I didn’t leave that graduation reassured by how the adults had handled things. I left reminded that the real courage in our communities often comes from the youngest among us — those still willing to believe that honesty matters, that dignity matters, and that we can be better than we’ve been.
We have a choice in how we respond. We can keep managing naked racism like a public relations issue or we can face it for what it is: a moral failure.
Last I checked, we are supposed to live in a country where a person is judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. Please let me know if that has changed.