FCPS Needs to Take Steps to End Liberal White Supremacy
By Harry Jackson
We have a race problem in Fairfax County under the guise of ‘anti-elitist’ and equity. We first saw this issue manifest in September 2020. The school board entertained changing admissions to Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ) with a ‘merit lottery’ that would limit applicants via each regional geographic pathway. The biggest losers with such a proposal, the Asians, as those schools with the highest Asian populations, and traditional feeder schools to TJ under the previous merit-based process, were grouped. The winner, Caucasians, would have made a plurality at the school. Back then, we saw white progressives aiming for the Asian community and were willing to use Black and Hispanic children as a foil. Indeed, they even used the endorsement of the Fairfax NAACP as relevant community support, which unbeknownst to many at the time, had been flooded and taken over by white woke racists.
Fortunately, the school board did not pass the merit lottery, nor was its adjusted plan. The current admission process is still racist, as a federal judge decided in 2021, and we await the resulting opinion of the 4th Circuit on the matter. Anti-Asian racism is a national issue and was at the root of admission changes at TJ and Lowell High School in San Francisco, CA, and Stuyvesant, High School in New York, NY. Interestingly, when these schools were majority white, some lamented the lack of underrepresented minorities. Still, when these schools became majority Asian, Blacks and Hispanics' needs were no longer ignored, and Presto! Under new ‘equitable’ guidelines, the number of Asians admitted to prestigious schools reduced while the number of whites, blacks, and Hispanics increased.
Our current school board has made little effort to hide its disdain for those in the Asian community. They partnered with an activists speaker that vilified the community and former Superintendent Scott Brabrand to openly state that ‘the problem is the Asians,’ and falsely accusing families of spending over $15,000 a year on test prep to current TJ Ann Bonitatibus shaming Asian parents, telling them to ‘check their privilege,’ and stating the ‘demographics of TJ should meet the demographics of the county.’ What did she mean by the last statement? That TJ was too Asian, and she wanted to make it more white, with a sprinkling of Black and Brown, and didn’t matter where the Black and Hispanic students came from, just that they were there (one will note that most of the Black and Hispanic students admitted to TJ are from outside the Advanced Academic Pipeline, where there are enough Black and Hispanic students to fill an entire TJ cohort).
Now we have the revelation that eighteen area high schools deliberately withheld notification of the National Merit Awards for the senior class of 2021. Those advocating for equity can no longer claim they are doing so to provide opportunities to others but to limit the success of those along racial lines. The FCPS school system delayed informing these families of these prestigious honors that their children could have included in their college applications. No other areas aoudn the county has ever done such an act or would think it conscionable to delay notifying mostly white, black, and Hispanic families of an award that is often the difference maker for high-performing students competing for admission to elite colleges and universities. Students are awarded scholarships based on this award. With school tuition ever increasing, where students can rake up over $100K in debt, scholarships from these awards allow them not to delay other things in life, such as getting a graduate degree, getting married, and starting a family. They are now deliberately harming the future opportunities of children simply because they are Asian, and this problem will not get better with time.
We need to get rid of this school board, and we need to stop pretending that FCPS cannot build a high school in Western Fairfax. We all know the reason for the delay. It's because those neighborhoods in the area without a high school for Rachel Carson Middle School are mostly Asian and the last thing the current school board wants to see is an epicenter of success and excellence that may look predominately Asian.
The other races should not find solace in the current school board either. Gifted Black and Hispanic learners have been marginalized, and the school board has done nothing to combat the increase of human trafficking in the county that has impacted Hispanic children the most, nor has it done anything to improve the quality of education for black children.
We do not need equity as a cudgel against Asian American students.
Dr. Harry Jackson is a cybersecurity and technology expert and candidate for Fairfax CountySchool Board. He can be reached at FriendsOfHarryJackson.com.