Over the course of the past 13 years I’ve seen how ethnically divided honors and AP classes are. Fortunately for me I have never been questioned if I “did belong” to the right class or felt inferior than everyone else. For me it was knowing that so many ethnic people have the potential to be in the honor/AP classes but couldn’t because they didn’t reach the qualifying mark. The students who you knew, If they were given a chance would put in the work to succeed in these classes. My APUSH class was quite diverse probably the most I’ve seen in a while. I was in CILA so it’s not I’ve been the only minority in my class before but when I stepped outside of Spanish class the diversity went away. When I got to APGOV my senior year they added an extra teacher and what I saw in APUSH the previous year was no longer there. I was one of two black people in my class, the other being my best friend. And we were the only AP Gov class the new teacher had. I thought they added an extra teacher so that they expand the diversity and add more students to an advance class but that didn’t seem to be the deal. If you walk into any advance class and ask how many students went to ALMS, almost 80%+ of the class would raise their hand. It really goes back to what elementary/middle school you went to bc that more than likely leads to which students are in these advance classes.


Ekemini Etor

New Rochelle Resident