Disparities In High School

351 Words2 Pages
It was my first day at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ). I entered the building and silence rippled through the hall and hung in the air like heavy fog until a sharp whisper cut through.
“It’s a black guy.”
Those were the first four words I heard in high school and those four words have stuck with me for the past three and a half years. TJ is no stranger to the issue of race; race has been a dark stain on the history of my high school, most notably when it came under investigation by the NAACP in 2012 for disparities in admissions. The disproportionately low number of black and Latino students – together which account for about 4 percent of the students in a county where they make up 32 percent of the student population-