To Be Black at Stuyvesant High

New York Times ^ | February 25, 2012 | FERNANDA SANTOS

[reaganaut1]

...

When the bell rings and the school’s 3,295 students spill out of classrooms into the maze of hallways, escalators and stairs like ants in a farm, blacks stand out because they are so rare. Rudi was one of 64 black students four years ago when she entered Stuyvesant, long considered New York City’s flagship public school. She is now one of 40.

Asians, on the other hand, make up 72.5 percent of Stuyvesant’s student body (they are 13.7 percent of the city’s overall public school population), a staggering increase from 1970, when they were 6 percent of Stuyvesant students, according to state enrollment statistics. Back then, white students made up 79 percent of Stuyvesant’s enrollment; this year, they are 24 percent, and 14.9 percent systemwide.

Hispanic students are 40.3 percent of the system. Currently, they make up 2.4 percent of Stuyvesant’s enrollment, while blacks, who make up 32 percent of the city’s public school students, are 1.2 percent.

New York City has eight specialized high schools whose admission is based entirely on the results of an entrance exam, a meritocratic system that does not consider race or ethnicity.

...

No one claims that the disparity is caused by overt discrimination. But in a school that is devised to attract the best of the best, parents and educators alike find the demographics troubling. It has become a question of perception as to who belongs.

...

Many Stuyvesant students start preparing for the exam months, even years, in advance. There are after-school, weekend and summer classes run by large companies like Kaplan and Princeton Review, as well as by neighborhood outfits like Aim Academy, in the predominantly Chinese enclave of Flushing, Queens, and the Khan’s Tutorial branch in nearby Jackson Heights, home to thousands of families from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

[Boogieman]

Cry me a river. I attended a high school where I, as a white student was in the minority, and nobody ever seemed concerned about our plight, even though it was one of our city’s “flagship schools”. I’m also pretty comfortable speculating that, nowadays, it is a lot harder being a white kid in a sea of black kids than it is being a black kid in a sea of white kids.

[reaganaut1]

It’s all explained here, in statistical, data-driven, nonPC terms: http://lagriffedulion.f2s.com/

Yes, I like that site.

[EEGator]

As in the ‘stans and India?

[EEGator]

Sorry, just read it. That’s what I get for jumping to conclusions.

[Jack Hammer]

“New York City has eight specialized high schools whose admission is based entirely on the results of an entrance exam, a meritocratic system that does not consider race or ethnicity.”

The race pimps will find a way to f*** that up.

[PeteB570]

South Asia is mostly India and Pakistan.

So I would assume since it’s a public school and not one run by the local Mosque where the Muslims would go - most of the kids would be Dot Indians - not Feather Indians :-).

[ken5050]

I graduated from Bx Science in 1964..there were THREE male blacks in the school..and ALL were on the basketball team..

I played varsity for three years..and gawd..we were awful..back then we were in Bx Manhattan Division 1, along with Clinton, Taft, Morris, among others...I think my three year record was 11-46...

[ken5050]

Suggest, if you have the time, to read the comments..over 130..on the Times website..very interesting, especially if one considers the what the Times’ target audience is assumed to be...one can deduce that conservatives CAN find a receptive audience in liberal areas..

[Mrs.Liberty]

re: the comments-—Someone named Trishalish claims the decline in the number of black adn latino students is Bush’s fault..

[Right Wing Assault]

Another teacher and I from the midwest visited Stuyvesant about 12 years ago to see their science facilities and courses offered. (We couldn't find the place since it is about 10-stories high, and in our opinion couldn't possibly be a high schoool. Inside, there was an escalator. It also had a view of the Statue of Liberty from some windows.)

Here it is in the foreground, complete with pedestrian bridge. And escalators.

When we came to the school and saw the kids going in, we wondered how the school could excel based on the nasty looking kids going in. They looked like the dregs of teenage society. We were almost afraid to go in.

After being greeted by numerous smiling, polite students who were not yelling, screaming, running around, using obscenities, and who were happy to talk to us and help us, we were puzzled. We later asked a teacher why the kids dressed like gang members. The reply was, "If they look out of place in the city, they get beat up, so they have to blend in to survive."

[Rooivalk]

Don’t be fooled into thinking that Asians are super brains. All they do is practice how to take tests and APPEAR smart. When the chips are down they are just mindless clogs in the machine

[21twelve]

“When the chips are down they are just mindless clogs in the machine.”

I worked for awhile at a mine in Indonesia, and the managers said the same thing. “Almost seems like they have all the books memorized, but don’t know jack on how to use it to solve real-world problems.”

One of the Indonesian managers (mining engineer) came out to look at a rig his guys had been using. It was blowing steam out the radiator cap. I was about 30 feet away watching the hilarity as his guys didn’t know what to do, went to get their boss, etc.

Well the boss comes out and walks straight to the open hood of the truck and starts to raise his bare hand towards the radiator cap! I yelled out “Bahia” and he stopped. (One of a few words I knew - “Danger”). Then pantomined that the steam would be hot. (A mining engineer!!??)

[Right Wing Assault]

All they do is practice how to take tests and APPEAR smart.

Yeah, right. "Practicing" for entrance exams and SATs requires some initial information and ability to build upon. No amount of test prep classes will get an average or below average student into Stuyvesant or any other great school unless they get in by affirmative action.

[LdSentinal]

There are escalators on every floor. It sucked when they broke down during the school day.

And we had also had window views of the Twin Towers, just three blocks south of the high school.

[Robwin]

Ok, as I understand it whites make up 24% of this school’s student population. I assume “whites” includes Jews, a great many of whom live in NYC and who at least used to set great store by education, much as the Asians do today. So I must ask that given whites are outnumbered 3:1, has there been a major cultural shift among Jews in NYC of late?

[Right Wing Assault]

When we were looking for a place to park, we found a crappy looking lot for city cars. It looked as if most of them were out for the day already, so we parked there and got away with it.

I remember being in traffic right next to the twin towers and commenting to the other guy with me that a few years ago they tried to blow the place up with a bomb in a van. I said, if we had been there then, it would have been really wild.

Little did I imagine that if we had been at that same place for 911, we would have had debris falling on us.

One other thing, the kids going into Stuyvesant didn’t look too bad. We also visited the Bronx School of Science that day. THOSE were the kids that looked scary. But they were very nice kids, too.

[James C. Bennett]

According to US government forms and employment records, Indians technically fall under the ‘Asian’ category because of geography.

[EEGator]

You are correct,I was wrong. Mea culpa.

[James C. Bennett]

Dig into the comments on the NYT article, and you find this gem, LOL!

LauraCalifornia

FLAG

“I am a white mother to a black child. The everyday racism of her grammar school is utterly shocking. The teachers are unconscious about their years of bias — they call on white boys most, then Asian girls and boys, then white girls, then brown kids — boys before girls. This has been the pattern since kindergarten. Almost all of the kids of color are sent to “resource room,” where they are given candy and video games while the rest of the class works on math. (Some boys from India escape this fate). There is one African-American teacher (a woman)

in a school with 600 kids. The “selection” for academic excellence begins early. It is a scandal.”

[denydenydeny]

“parents and educators alike find the demographics troubling"

Note the language. They're not troubled by, say, the pathologies that create the complete contempt that so many African American and Hispanic families have for learning, but simply by "the demographics."

This is how policies which randomly dumps black faces into such environments regardless of qualifications, are born: To make liberals feel better about themselves, here expressed as "be less troubled."