California high school biology final includes racist questions, targets students

A Luther Burbank High School freshman was surprised to read his full name included on a biology final. Not only that, but he was being ridiculed.

“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?”

Many students in the class were targeted by first and last name on the exam. Teacher Alex Nguyen chose to describe these students by their ethnicities and physical features, and then paired them up, posing questions about what traits a theoretical child of these two students would have. On one question, the teacher wrote a disclaimer, saying “in no way do I promote students being sexually active,” but the student’s parents and other teachers at the school said that the implication of any sexual relationship between students is inappropriate.

The student, whose parents requested The Sacramento Bee not name him, is half-Black and half-Mexican. He shrugged off the question where he was disparaged, but another question shocked him for its racist overtones against African American students at Luther Burbank.

The question starts by discussing the high school’s diversity and noting that so-called African American traits have infiltrated students of other races.

“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 question goes on to refer to the dominant trait as walking with a limp and the recessive trait as normal.

Around 10 minutes into the two-hour exam period, the student said that Principal Jim Peterson arrived in the classroom, had a private conversation with Nguyen and collected finals. After the principal left, Nguyen continued with the same exam but put the questions on a projector and had the class write their answers on their own sheets of paper.

The next day, the last day of school, the student noticed that there was a sub for Nguyen’s class. He also found out that he received a zero on the test, which earned him a D in the class overall. This was an atypical score for the student, who made the honor roll the previous semester and always seeks to keep his GPA up so that he can remain competitive for college sports.

His parents, Adriana and Shawn Allen, have been in contact with the school about contesting the grade, but in the meantime opted for him to enroll in summer school to make up for the grade. They did not want to risk the possibility of the D sticking on their son’s transcript, which would prevent him from being college-eligible and playing baseball at one of his dream schools.

Despite being targeted on Nguyen’s exam, the Allens’ son said that he doesn’t want to see Nguyen be fired. However, he would like to see accountability in the form of an apology to the students of Luther Burbank at large, especially because the questions on the test targeted nonwhite students, who make up 97% of the student population.

“I’d want him to apologize to Burbank as a whole, because that’s the majority of our kids,” the student said. “So for him to say those things, it’s pretty messed up.”

Further troubles with the teacher

Luther Burbank students have two exam periods per day during finals week. According to a district spokesperson, three classes were given the exam before Peterson was made aware of it on June 12. He pulled the test from students at the beginning of the following period, the class which included the Allens’ son. District spokesperson Al Goldberg said that administration was not aware that the test was administered via projector after Peterson pulled the papers from students, and that they will be investigating.

Goldberg said that due to the test being pulled, “there were challenges with the grading process,” which the district staff is working to correct. “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 have not yet heard from administrators about their son’s test.

Nguyen, who has been a biology teacher at Luther Burbank for at least 10 years, was put on administrative leave, according to Goldberg, beginning June 13, the last day of school. An investigation into his conduct is still underway. Nguyen has not responded to the Bee’s request for comment.

Peterson emailed the parents of children affected by the test, according to Goldberg.

The Allens said Peterson called them and personally apologized for what happened. They hadn’t seen the test until a Bee reporter shared pictures with them.

When the Allens’ son first told his mom about the final, she thought, “no way would a teacher do that.” But when she saw the question in which Nguyen disparaged her son she was offended on his behalf, especially because she thinks the comment was related to a learning disability he has.

This wasn’t the first time the Allens had problems with Nguyen. Throughout the year, Adriana Allen said she struggled to get in contact with him about her son’s 504 plan, which guarantees him specific accommodations, such as being able to redo assignments. She finally had to reach out to a resource specialist teacher to ensure her son’s disabilities were being accommodated.

The Allens’ son also had trouble communicating with Nguyen about missed classes due to sports. He played on the varsity baseball and freshman basketball teams, and said Nguyen reacted with animosity and sarcastic comments when he was told about these excused absences. He believes that this conflict is one of the reasons he was named on the test — he noted that the other students targeted were ones Nguyen commonly had problems with.

Another question targeted two students who got in trouble for sleeping in class, again asking students to speculate about what would happen if these students were to have children.

“Here at the wonderful school of LBHS, we have certain students who love to sleep in class. I even see students fall asleep during exams! Can you believe that?! I don’t like it when students sleep in class… it’s rude! So, WAKE THE #$%K UP! Well, through much study, I have concluded that the gene for falling asleep is dominant. Not only that some students sleep, they snore in class. This too is a dominant trait. What are the possible offspring if you cross a homozygous sleeping, heterozygous snoring student (student name) with a homozygous attentive, non-snoring (student name) student?”

“(When I saw that) I was like, so it’s not like you’re joking about it. You’re being serious about it, because that’s what they really do,” the Allens’ son said. “That’s how I knew he was not playing around.”

Shawn Allen is proud that his son was mature enough to shrug off being insulted but said that it was troubling that a teacher felt it was appropriate to say that about any student in such a public way. He was concerned about how these types of comments could affect other students who were struggling with mental health issues, bullying or problems at home and how a teacher targeting a student could open up the door for kids to bully that student, too.

“Maybe I’m upset with you, and I know I can’t verbally say what I want to say, so I’m going to take it out another way — that’s what he did,” he said. “So I’m just going to put it in the final, and it’s going to spread, so now your peers look at you and they’re going to be saying, ‘oh, you’re the weirdo.’”

“And students are already being bullied by other kids, so to be bullied by a teacher when that’s who is supposed to protect you from a bully, that’s big,” his wife added.

Their son also said that he believes there was a racial component to who was being named on the exam, noting that the majority of the students named were non-white. He also recalled Nguyen angrily had called a Black male student “boy,” a term that has been aggressively used toward Black men and boys since the eras of slavery and segregation.

“This kid was not doing his work, and then (Nguyen) specifically points them out and says ‘get back to work, boy.’ And I was like, ‘yo, that’s sounds racist,’” he said. “It’s like, talking to him like a slave or something. … You should know the history of it because you’re an adult and went through history class and all that.”

Racism on campus

Word about the test spread to the rest of the student body and to other staff members by graduation on June 13. Luther Burbank social sciences teachers Erinn Leone and Chris Zamora were horrified to see the questions that inappropriately targeted students. Zamora, who teaches history and ethnic studies, said that the “pimp walk” question was reminiscent of early 20th-century debunked race pseudoscience, which reasoned that undesirable traits in Black people could spread to non-Black students, like the named Latino and Hmong students referenced in the question, through recessive genes.

“On one hand, it’s laughable with its grotesquely poor reasoning, and on the other hand very racist,” Zamora said. “That somebody felt so confident in their racism, so confident with memorializing their racism this way into written words on an exam, is incredible to me.”

Leone worries that Nguyen may not face serious enough repercussions for his actions. Leone spoke about a racist incident she experienced in an interaction with a fellow Luther Burbank teacher. After the human relations department investigated the event, the other teacher was back teaching, without any sort of mediation or restitution between the two employees. She expects the same to happen to Nguyen.

“It’s an open secret that racist things will happen on our campuses and they’re going to be swept under the rug,” Leone said. “It’s not unique to the science department, it’s not unique to Luther Burbank. I have relationships across the district, and time and time again when these things happen, little action is taken to actually address it or condemn it or try to restore the harm that has been caused by it.”

Peterson rejected that there was a culture of racism at Luther Burbank and affirmed his commitment to equity on the campus.

“As a site leader, I have always condemned and will continue to condemn racism in all its forms,” he wrote. “The vast majority of our staff are culturally responsive, culturally sensitive, and committed to providing a safe learning environment for our students. However, I believe we still have significant progress to make in realizing our mission of disrupting barriers for all our students and the community they represent.”

Despite their family’s experience with this teacher and the test, the Allens said their experience at Luther Burbank High has been largely positive, especially compared to their experience with one of their older children at another high school in the district. They said, overall, the school administration has been attentive to their family’s needs and that they are satisfied with the way Peterson addressed this incident. However, they would each like to see accountability come from Nguyen and the school. Adriana Allen thinks that he shouldn’t return to campus.

“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.”

Shawn Allen agreed with his son that Nguyen owed the student body an apology, and that he should go through anti-bias training so he can learn how to better serve the diverse school population.

“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.”