Saying the HISP program lacks diversity would not be untrue. Mocking the hypocrisy in that, considering the program’s focus is cultural awareness, is fair. Complaining about a campus culture divided between those in the program and those outside of it is valid. But asserting that the program created the racist sentiment and blatant ignorance displayed in the controversial “science experiment” isn’t right.
The Sacramento Bee’s media coverage of the Race and IQ project failed in tremendous ways. Primarily, the reporting failed to contact HISP’s coordinator, Ellen Wong, to get her side of the story.
The Bee told an incomplete story, that the racism of this student’s project was an extreme consequence of minority underrepresentation in HISP, because it strengthened their larger narrative about the issue of racism at elite high school programs.
Is HISP racist in the way it admits students? No. The underrepresentation of minorities is a systemic problem going all the way back to elementary school. It would be pointless to discuss the diversity issue without acknowledging underlying socioeconomic issues.
Elementary schools feed students to middle schools and these middle schools feed students to high schools. It’s evident, however, that elementary and middle schools with higher populations of minority students often do not have the resources wealthier and whiter schools have, limiting the competitiveness of their students. Furthermore, many of the campuses in less privileged areas fail to adequately notify their student body of magnet programs, such as HISP.
HISP used to promote themselves at every single middle school, until the district discouraged specialty programs from reaching out to schools. This elimination of recruiting is one of the systematic roadblocks to diversity in the program. Currently the only way HISP can reach these middle school campuses is by asking the administration to relay the message to its student body, or by word of mouth or distributing flyers. Ms. Wong annually emails every middle school’s administration with information about the program to encourage students from across the city to apply, but ultimately has no way of knowing if it’s distributed .
At a middle school like Sutter, it doesn’t matter whether administration makes an effort to announce the opportunity, as it has a tradition of sending kids to HISP. For those middle schools in less socioeconomically advantaged areas, which also tend to have large minority populations, this tradition does not exist. Word of mouth is not sufficient to get eligible students from these campuses to apply.
When seniors Amos Karlsen and Jonah Wiener-Brodkey researched HISP’s lack of diversity for their senior project, students explained they couldn’t apply for a program they didn’t know existed. The extreme scarcity of ethnically diverse applicants stems partly from certain schools not informing their students of the opportunity.
For over 15 years now, Ms. Wong has worked against the barriers that keep her program’s application pool shallow in diversity. These efforts include a discussion with SCUSD Superintendent Jorge Aguilar back in October, in which Ms. Wong proposed ways the city’s entire educational system could be shifted to create equity in resources and opportunity. One watching Aguilar’s video response to the racist “science experiment” condemning HISP’s demographics would have no idea such a conversation ever took place.
It is much easier to blame the program for its lack of diversity than it is to address the much deeper and difficult underlying problems. Still, the media should have done so when they picked up this story. Perhaps it was too complicated a situation for them to digest.
The student who created this “Race and IQ” project used the racial disparities within HISP to display an offensive and inaccurate ideology they already had. Though having more exposure to students of color in their HISP classes could have potentially changed their views, peers acknowledged that this student has long subscribed to this type of racist ignorance.
It is thus inaccurate to say HISP caused the beliefs underlying the “Race and IQ” project. Correlation isn’t causation. If anything, the program’s critical study of culture and world history could only serve to work against such abhorrent beliefs.