By Jahaura Michelle
A California high school teacher is on administrative leave for posing racially motivated questions to several students on a biology final last month.
According to the Sacramento Bee, a freshman at Luther Burbanks High School, who is half-Black and half-Mexican, was shocked to find his and several classmates’ names mentioned disparagingly in a series of test questions.
“In high school, there are individuals who are cross-eyed like (the name of a fellow student) and (the name of the student previously mentioned), which is a dominant trait. We call those individuals ‘weirdoes’. So, if you crossed two weirdoes (the two students named again), that are heterozygous for being cross-eyed, what is the offspring that would result?” one question reads.
The test questions referenced non-white students by their first and last names, described by teacher Alex Nguyen based on their physical attributes and speculated about their potential children. Moreover, the question that particularly stood out to the mixed-race student made racially discriminatory claims about Black students at the high school.
“For some reason, the African American culture has influenced most of the student body. How? In African Americans, they have a gene for the pimp walk, which is dominant. What is the result if you cross (student name) homozygous dominant Latina with a homozygous recessive Hmong like (student name)?”
The student said that Principal Jim Peterson entered the classroom 10 minutes into the two-hour exam to speak with Nguyen. Peterson then collected the exams and left, prompting Nguyen to continue by displaying questions on a projector for students to answer on separate sheets of paper, the Sacramento Bee reported.
The following day, the student showed up to class and noticed a sub had filled in for Nguyen. He also raised concern after receiving a zero test score on the now-controversial exam. To maintain his eligibility for sports, he typically earns good grades. However, his parents, Adriana and Shawn Allen, enrolled him in summer school to prevent the D grade from affecting him in the future.
Peterson was made aware of the test questions on June 12 after students from previous periods raised concerns about it. He then decided to collect the paper exams during the same period the student was in, per the Sacramento Bee. District spokesperson Al Goldberg said an investigation has been launched against Nguyen after he continued with the exam on the projector after the paper ones were removed.
Goldberg revealed there were issues with the tests after they were collected.
“There were challenges with the grading process,” he said, adding that the district is working to correct them. “We will evaluate the exams of the students who received the test and our Academic Department will contact students whose final grade has been impacted.”
The Allens and their son have expressed their views on Nguyen and discussed whether or not he should remain employed at the school where he has worked for the past 10 years. Both Shawn and the teen expressed that they wouldn’t want the teacher to lose his job; instead, they believe he should apologize to the students and undergo mandatory racial sensitivity training.
“I’d want him to apologize to Burbank as a whole, because that’s the majority of our kids,” the student told the outlet. “So for him to say those things, it’s pretty messed up.”
His father shared similar sentiments, saying, “In this day and age, I don’t want anybody to get fired from their job,” he said. “But if there’s some sort of discipline, a class that you could take to better yourself, especially working in a school with the diversity that they have, because you have to know how to deal with all kinds of different cultures and people. … You should have an understanding that your words can hurt people, and put them in a position that they don’t want to be in.”
Meanwhile, Adrianna believes the school should set an example with Nguyen, emphasizing that if the roles were reversed, they would “discipline” the student for harassing the teacher.
“Because if it were a student, they would have disciplinary action against them, so you have to lead by example,” she said. “It’s not OK for a teacher, an adult, to talk to students like that or call them out in any kind of way. You should be setting the example, so you should be disciplined for that.”
