A high school teacher in Sacramento, California, faces backlash for a racist and discriminatory biology test. One of the questions detailed a Black student hypothetically having a “pimp walk” gene.
On June 12, Alex Nguyen administered an unusual biology exam ahead of the last day of school. While the final covered human reproduction, it verged into explicit and racist questions that listed many students at Luther Burbank High School by their names.
In one question, Nguyen stated that Black culture influenced the school’s student body “for some reason.” According to his logic, this culture also includes a “pimp walk” gene that could be potentially inherited.
“For some reason, the African American culture has influenced most of the student body,” read the question, as reported by The Sacramento Bee. “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 exam’s offensive nature extended to others as well. One question referred to students with certain traits, such as having crossed eyes, as “weirdoes.”
“In high school, there are individuals who are cross-eyed like [name redacted] and [name redacted], which is a dominant trait,” the question stated. “We call those individuals ‘weirdoes’ [sic]. So, if you crossed two weirdoes [sic] that are heterozygous for being cross-eyed, what is the offspring that would result?”
Multiple classes saw the exam until students reported the issue to administrators. Despite the school’s principal, Jim Peterson, collecting the physical copies, students in the next period also took the test with a projector displaying the questions.
“On one hand, it’s laughable with its grotesquely poor reasoning, and on the other hand very racist,” shared Chris Zamora, a fellow teacher at the high school. “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.”
However, Nguyen faced racism and discrimination accusations before. He allegedly called a Black student “boy” while also not accommodating students with learning disabilities. He was placed on administrative leave in light of this most recent incident.
In the aftermath, Peterson has apologized to parents whose children dealt with the racist and offensive material. However, students and their families await more accountability from Nguyen himself.
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