Being Part of a Biased Past

Van Nuys High School was a step away from my predominantly private school education since the beginning, but even as I transitioned into this more culturally diverse class climate, and into this seemingly new and open-minded micro-society, I was still unlearned of its deep rooted institutional racism until I learned a thing or two in my sociology classes here in college.

When I transferred to VNHS, my parents’ first idea was to put me into the magnet program, a type of focused-learning institution that separates kids and gears them for higher education from the residential students who were mostly Latino and who enrolled into the school as locals of the same community. Being Asian, I didn’t second guess my parents’ decision—after all, it sounded pretty interesting that I was getting into Performing Arts (I couldn’t get into Math and Science because apparently the school had already filled quota: a number that was dominated by Asian students primarily).

Fast forward to my senior year graduation. Everyone was in glossy red and grey caps and gowns. The stadium lights illuminated the main stage where graduates were to receive their diplomas. What I noticed now in retrospect was the absence of the rest of us. Where were the rest of the seniors in residential? All I saw in the neatly arranged seats in the wet grass of the football field were us: the whites, the Asians, the handful of blacks and Latinos—magnet kids no doubt. Now as I learn in my sociology classes, it comes as no surprise the sheer difference and the realities of high schools in the United States.

In 2011, it was reported that in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the graduation rate for white students was 70.7% and drop out rate 21.1%. For Hispanics it was 65.5% and 20.1%, for blacks it was 60.6% and 24.7%, and for Asians it was 85.2% and 9% respectively. When looking at the statistics for enrollment based on demographics for VNHS, 62% of the students were Hispanic and the rest of the pieces were under 15% per demographic, which means that the majority of my senior year classmates were Latino students that didn’t make the cut for that year.

If I look back into the different memories I had of that high school, I remember clearly that most of us magnet kids stuck with each other. We were put into the nicer classrooms with better qualified teachers who taught our AP classes, and I barely had any residential students in most of my classes if there were any at all. During nutrition, lunch, and after school, I saw the rest of the non-magnet students hung out with each other as well, except that they weren’t in their classes, or they were enrolled in lower division courses or metal shop or auto shop courses.

Come to think of it, when I entered the registrar’s office to pick a magnet program, I didn’t have to prove anything to get in. The lady saw that I was Asian, picked up the Math and Science catalog for me, saw that the program was already full, and instead placed me in another program. I was easily filtered out of the residential program. Separated. I wasn’t enrolled in any vocational programs. I feel that unconscious bias played a huge role for me that day, and it most indeed does everyday for the rest of the students who absently get placed in tracks that predetermine their chances for success.

In this day and age, institutional racism still plays a role in separating us within racial spheres that serve the interest of those in power. Since overt racism, or any kind of conspicuous racism for that matter, has been outlawed, the elite class made institutions work in a way that worked around those laws to appear non-racist, but when looked at from a sociological standpoint, the outcomes of such institutions still prove to be racially biased.