<p>I am looking for your opinions on this matter. My H.S. is a public school in a rather privileged part of NY (average area income: 110k/year), it has an ESL program, Spanish classes for native speakers, several clubs that promote diversity, gay pride, etc.</p>
<p>This question is really about the teachers not the school, and this has been really bugging me for quite some time, I have been in ESL classes in which nobody got an A or A+, and even though I did all the work neither could I; When I went to mainstream classes I noticed that my white/Asian peers even though did the same quality work I did still got a higher grade, for example in my computer graphics class, my white/Asian classmates get A+s while me and a friend (who's a black Hispanic) got a B+ while doing HIGHER QUALITY work. Another thing I have noticed at this school is that in Varsity and Junior Varsity teams the athletes are predominantly white and Asian (my school is 66% white, 16% Asian, 16% Hispanic, 2% black) A friend of mine who is a rather low achieving Hispanic ESL student tried out for the varsity team and even though he was one of the best he still was put into JVII. Now this is a top ranked H.S. that sends a lot of students to top schools across the nation. So my theory is that teachers and coaches often think that Hispanic and black students are not going to college or are going to CC or Technical School, so they don't give any 'boost' to them because they assume these students don't need it, while at the same time they think that giving a lower grade or not putting a white or Asian student in an official team will be like ruining their life because then they wouldn't be able to go to the college of their choice. Also I didn't want to say this before to not sound anti-Semitic, but a lot of the 66% of whites are Jewish. So what do you think teachers and coaches at my school seem biased or not? What about your school?</p>
<p>EDIT: I forgot to mention that in the Spanish for native speakers classes my school offers students are not given credit if they earn less than a B+</p>
<p>You are not privy to other peoples’ thoughts, so there is no way to determine if the other people are really racist. In addition, you may also be suffering from confirmation bias.</p>
<p>bump, because I am curious.</p>
<p>@IceQube Could you explain to me how you arrived to the hypothesis that I am biased?</p>
<p>[Confirmation</a> bias - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias]Confirmation”>Confirmation bias - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>I think he meant that you only take in information that seems to favor your opinion. I would venture to say that is it possible that your work is not better, but rather you only think it is because you are a human and thus regularly support your own ideas over others? Also, are there any minorities that are doing well at your school, even if it isn’t every kid? The native speaker’s thing makes sense to me. If you are a native speaker, then you should be able to prove how effectively you speak your language, that is how it is at my school as well.</p>
<p>How can you be sure that you or your friends did higher quality work? Maybe your definition of “higher quality” is different from that of the teacher’s? What is so surprising about a school that is predominantly white and asian having mostly white and asian students in their sports teams?</p>
<p>If they’re white, there’s a good chance they’re racist. (Because if a white person is not actively anti-racist in a world of white supremacy, they’re racist. End of story.) Whether that’s directly affecting your grades, there’s no way for us random CC users to know.</p>
<p>“If they’re white, there’s a good chance they’re racist. (Because if a white person is not actively anti-racist in a world of white supremacy, they’re racist. End of story.)” </p>
<p>I hope you are being sarcastic…</p>
<p>I’m with cardoza on this one… drinkyoupretty, I hope you’re not being serious. In my opinion, if a white student is constantly making corrections to other people’s language to not sound as racist, then that’s doing more harm than good.
Anyways, if your school is only two percent black, that might be the reason as to why not as many people are achieving a higher status in something at school-because there are not as many. I don’t really understand a lot of your reasoning though. Maybe it is because I am from a separate part of the country/different high school setting. But, it does not feel as if you’re being targeted… My school is predominantly white. Now, your school might be different. But, I know that mine is not a high performing school. We have not sent a kid to an Ivy in over forty years because they force EVERYONE to take the SAT to graduate. Thus, us kids who score over a 1600 on the SAT are screwed over by the average SAT score at my school, which is a 1260. As I said, the majority of the kids are white at my school. The few minority students we have (and by minority I mean every other race other than white) are given more chances to prove themselves and are given even more resources to succeed because of the fact that many of them come from even more underprivileged houses. What I’m saying is, look at the setting you’re in. Now, look at what you wrote. Since you’re a minority student there are already many things against you, but that does not mean that your teachers are purposely giving better grades to other races or the upper hand to white students.
And anyways, NBA and college basketball is made up of mostly minority kids… I don’t see why a coach would not want to give every person the opportunity to succeed-especially if he or she is a minority.
And I’m sorry if some of this didn’t make sense… I’ve been doing math and english homework all day and it’s so difficult to even spell words right now haha</p>
<p>Another thing I forgot to add above is that my H.S. offers 3 course levels for math and science (honors, regents, and regular) Teachers didn’t recommend me for honors classes even though I got really high grades in the regents classes (my Hispanic and black friends had the same problem), I had to ask my GC to ignore their recommendation and put me into honors classes, and even then they put a lot of obstacles along the way, I had to get a signature from my parents, take several tests and pass the class’s regents exam with an outstanding grade. The thing is that some of my white friends getting a B+ on the class got recommended for the honors class, while I getting an A+ did not. Also the low achieving whites are recommended for ‘regular’ classes, which in reality are joke classes, but they still have the name chemistry or physics in it so it’s treated by colleges as a regular class instead of like an “adapted” class; The low achieving minorities are recommended to elective science and math classes like marine science, forensic science, financial algebra, which are treated by schools as inferior.</p>
<p>And now in response to:
@cardoza, No my work was clearly of higher quality than theirs, several of the kids in the CG class often asked me for help, given that I had previous experience using the programs. The kids who got higher marks put a fraction of the assigned time into their work, and played video games the rest of the assigned time for all their projects while I made every second count while working on my projects. In my other classes it’s the same, I can tell because I am friends with nearly everyone in all my classes and often ask for their papers.
No, not many minorities do well at my school. My counselor who’s in charge of most Hispanics and all ESL students only has 16 seniors, meaning a lot of them are held back, drop out, or go to alternative schools like BOCES.
And I agree w/ you in that native speakers should be held at a higher standard, but this should be equal for everyone, the other language classes don’t do this although these classes are mostly taken by native speakers, for example Hebrew is taken mostly by people who speak the language at home.</p>
<p>@aldfig0, As I said before I often see my classmates’ work and I can tell who put more effort into their homework. And what is surprising is that there is about the same number of Hispanics and Asians, but you only see the latter group in Varsity or JV teams and the former group in JVII or lower, and I can tell that many deserving Hispanics and Blacks have been put into JVII instead of Asians and whites that played worse.</p>
<p>Amount of time does not amount to success. Maybe this is your problem. It doesn’t matter if you tried harder, only if your actual work is better. I can do less work than someone else and get a higher grade. Maybe the B+ kids show higher test scores or greater aptitude than you. It isn’t just the specific grade that gets a person into a class, at least at my school. You still challenged and got in. Wouldn’t, if they were racist, bar you from getting in no matter what?</p>
<p>I agree with a lot of the things the other posters said. Deeming your own work to be above average is pretty normal. I often think my work is above average, but my teachers don’t always agree… Also, the sports thing seems pretty normal considering the racial percentage stats of your school. As someone else also pointed out, sports teams usually want black students for the basketball team, Hispanics for the soccer team, etc. due to stereotypes about those groups, regardless of whether they are true or not. So, I don’t really think that coaches are targeting anyone in particular. I also agree that you might be quite biased. Are there any other factors that you may be overlooking that are contributing to the issue? Correlation does not always equal causation… To the same point, do you think that you may be stereotyping this “privileged part of NY” as being racist? I think this is what Drinkyoupretty was sarcastically trying to articulate. </p>
<p>I think the best coarse of action for you to take is to talk to your teachers that were hesitant to put you in honors classes and ask them “why?”. Find out what their reasons were. You may be surprised to learn that you weren’t doing as well you thought you were or that your teachers were unsure of whether you would be able to handle the work or not. I wouldn’t mention that you suspect that they are racially biased but just be professional and adult-like in trying to find out what your weaknesses were/are. </p>
<p>Also, I work for a company that creates ESL curriculums and trains ESL teachers so I know quite a bit about it…</p>