Students are accusing Boston Latin School, one of the top public high schools in the state, of fostering a racist environment, The New York Times reported.
This news follows a video posted by two Boston Latin students, Meggie Noel and Kylie Webster-Cazeau, urging their peers and Boston Latin alumni to spread in the hashtag #BlackAtBLS to raise awareness of racism at the school.
One tweet recalled one Dorchester student’s encounter with another — “You live in the ghetto part of Dorchester. I live in the nice part.” Another black Boston Latin graduate told The Boston Globe that other students wore white sheets to intimidate him when he ran for class president.
Add this rampant racism onto the fact that Boston Latin School’s black population size has been on the decline since 2010, and it’s no surprise that some parents are considering sending their children elsewhere.
State data show that 8.5 percent of Boston Latin students are black, and nearly one-half of students are white.
After Boston Mayor Martin Walsh visited the school Wednesday, a spokesperson for the mayor told the Boston Herald that he is advocating “an informal district-wide review of Boston Public Schools.”
It’s good that the Mayor Walsh is investigating the entire Boston Public School district instead of just Boston Latin School. Deep-seated race issues like this tend to manifest themselves in more than one place.
But the issue of racism in Boston schools harkens back to Boston’s busing crisis in the late 1960s and ’70s. Though the government tried to desegregate schools by busing black students to mostly white schools, it actually just shipped students all over the city instead of fixing the system itself. Accepting more black students to the Boston Latin won’t answer the more complicated question of why there aren’t more black students at the school in the first place.
Enrollment in Boston Latin School is dependent on an entrance exam required of all potential students. Though test scores prove that all admitted students are equally qualified to be at the school, there’s still discrimination among students. By definition, bullies exploit what sets their victims apart, and in this case, it’s race.
But children aren’t born racist. These attitudes come from the environment they’re raised in, whether it’s the household where they grew up or their experience at school. Because of this, parents need to be involved in the process of fixing Boston Latin’s racial climate. They’re a part of the problem, so they need to be a part of the solution.
College campuses are places where discussions about race generally seem to come to the forefront of public discourse, but if Boston Latin School is any indication, these discussions need to come out of the woodwork earlier. Children shouldn’t go all their lives thinking casual racism is OK.
A 1998 court order banned schools from taking race into account when admitting students, but how would you feel if only 8.5 percent of your fellow students understood how you felt about being marginalized?
Quota systems may not be a viable solution, but when a school’s acceptance is based on testing, it’s likely that minority students could have fewer resources compared to their white peers when preparing for an entrance test.
In a second YouTube video, Noel and Webster-Cazeau said even after Boston Latin School’s Black Leaders Aspiring for Change and Knowledge gave a binder full of racist tweets to the school’s headmaster, the issues “continued to persist” at the school. That goes without saying, and the administrators must condemn these actions.
It took two high school seniors almost 18 years to publicly speak out about racism in the education system, even though they’ve probably experienced it their whole lives.
Likewise, younger students who grow up in this environment see racist things happening all around them and might assume that that’s just how things are.
This is a public school. Boston residents are paying for this to happen. Parents are paying taxes that go toward a school in which black students feel unsafe.
Hopefully the district will allow for more dialogues between students and administration in the future. If not, then a student ruckus is the only solution.
That is not the problem at all.
Look at the facts I know. #1. Boston Latin receives many financial gifts. Wealthy people donate stock to this school.
#2. Chestnut Hill is part of Boston Public schools? If this is true. It allows students to take a test for this school.
#3 The smart black and latino students are assigned to the other Latin and the school.
It is not only these schools, but any great public school in Boston.
It is usually mostly white.
Our system welcome new people to Boston. But we forget to embrace people born here.