Teacher Alex Nguyen at Luther Burbank High School in Sacramento, Calif. is under fire for including what’s perceived as inappropriate and racist questions on a biology final exam given last month.
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According to The Sacramento Bee, several students in the class were identified by first and last name on the test. Nguyen chose to describe the students by their ethnicities and physical appearances. Then, he paired them up and asked questions about what traits a possible child of these two students would have.
One of the most shocking questions on the test was about how Black people have affected other races with their “traits.”
“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,” the question began. “What is the result if you cross (student name) homozygous dominant Latina with a homozygous recessive Hmong like (student name)?”
The question stated that the dominant trait was walking with a limp and the recessive trait was normal. Nguyen also made fun of another student and included their full name in the question: “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?”
Ten minutes into the final, Principal Jim Peterson went to Nguyen’s classroom to pull the test. However, after Peterson left, Nguyen continued the same exam but instead put the questions on a projector and requested the class write their answers on their own sheets of paper. District spokesperson Al Goldberg said that the investigation into Nguyen’s conduct is still underway.
Goldberg also explained that because the exam was pulled “there were challenges with the grading process” and that district staff “will evaluate the exams of the students who received the test and our Academic Department will contact students whose final grade has been impacted.”
Nguyen has been placed on administrative leave and his conduct is being investigated.
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