Phillip Philbrick had the attention of everyone in the room, if only for three minutes.

“We should never be treated as, ‘You’re white, you’re African-American, you’re Asian’,” he said at the Oct. 25 school board meeting.

Philbrick is one of many parents who are confused and frustrated by last week’s hostile environment at Todd Beamer High School that involved a police altercation with a student on Oct. 18, a Black Lives Matter campaign on Oct. 21 and the school board meeting four days later.

Philbrick’s 14-year-old son, who is mixed-race African-American and white, attends Todd Beamer High School and was put in a difficult situation during the campaign. Students on Oct. 21 urged other students to wear black and sport stickers made by the Black Student Union in a show of support of the Black Lives Matter movement.

“When he comes home to me and says, ‘Dad, are you bad?’ that should never be a conversation I should have with my son,” Philbrick said. “Never. It should never be an issue whether he is white or black.”

Philbrick said his son shouldn’t have to ask which ethnicity is more important, nor should he be told he has to dress in black and then told he’s not black when he doesn’t or “because he’s not dark enough.”

Philbrick said he believes it’s paramount to have conversations about racism in school – that it’s not a conversation that should go ignored, but he disagrees with how the events at Beamer unfolded.

“I don’t want it to see it be one [ethnicity] versus another,” he said. “That’s not acceptable.”

Philbrick said he teaches his son to treat everyone equally and hopes others do the same.

“He was quite frustrated with the Black Lives Matter movement because they created that divide,” Philbrick said about his son. “Especially the second day after they had the rally. He said, ‘This is wrong – they’re presenting an image that one ethnicity is bad … why should I look at you like you’re a bad guy because you’re one race?’ It’s frustrating for him.”

The national Black Lives Matter movement was created not to divide, according to the organization, but to unify those with a mission to “work for a world where black lives are no longer systemically and intentionally targeted for demise,” Philbrick said he knows what it’s like to feel different. He grew up in Rainier Valley and was one of two white students at Whitworth Elementary.

“I always felt like an outsider,” he said.

But as he grew up, he became involved in the debate team and a school-based rainbow coalition that emphasized everyone together makes up the world and stressed that it shouldn’t be one race against another.

“It should be equal for all of us with respect and love,” Philbrick said. “And I know that’s what we fought for. I know that’s what all the movements fought for, which is to be equal, and that was not an equal scenario.”