Anti Asian bias in Seattle School leadership and advocacy community
Deciding to write this post has been difficult as it leaves me exposed to a lot of the inter-parental bullying that happens in the SPS city-wide advocacy community, but given the data I’m seeing I feel compelled to put it in text. If you don’t want to read, play with the graphs here. If you want to connect with others about Asian advocacy, fill in this form here.
The “Well Resourced Schools” plan has a disproportionate impact on school communities that have a higher percentage of people of color. The impact is clearly visible if you make a graph ordering schools in each region by % of [demographic] (example: NW region % Asian) and look at which ones are being closed or having their program reconfigured for them. In particular, though, in every closure region except SE, the schools with the highest percentage of Asians are consistently being closed/reorganized.
When I first graphed this (see below) and saw it, I felt so sick to my stomach I had to close my laptop. The demographic impact looks so blatantly racist I could not believe it.
However, in the following days and weeks, what felt even harder was the silence about this topic. For all the statements of anti-racism and equity that the loudest advocates use to push their ideas and beat down dissenters, not a single one has noticed or spoken about this.
No one from the School Board. Not President Rankin or Director Briggs who recently ran campaigns highlighting their keen attention to equity. Not the Seattle Council PTSA whose current and former executive board members frequently bandy about the phrase “equity-lens” while also reacting immediately to micro-aggressions on FB forums with fast, strong, condemnation. Not even the district staff itself — though that surprises me less as they’re attempting to sell a plan. No detectable discussion anywhere.
No one noticed. Which implies a lack of representation in leadership because, wow, anyone well connected to the impacted groups would have felt the targeting.
The roots of this resounding silence is major racism here. And it seems to be perpetuated by a number of folks who — I believe authentically — identify as anti-racist.
It is entirely possible to be anti-racist and racist.
Anyone who doesn’t understand this, didn’t understand the meaning of “we are all part of a racist system.” Anyone who reacts with “how dare you criticize [blah]. They’ve had a history of [blah]” didn’t understand the previous statement either and is exhibiting a form of Advocate Fragility (I can’t call it White Fragility cause not everyone is white. Turns out White Fragility isn’t just for white people anymore).
What graphs would lead me write something this provocative? See my walk through below or play with the interactive graphs yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Disproportionate impacts on Asian communities
The following are graphs of all of Seattle’s elementary and K-8 schools, grouped by closure region and sorted by % of students identifying Asian. Data is from the OSPI 2023–2024 Enrollment Report Card.
When reading the graphs, remember that each school a community and that a closure or massive program reconfiguration entails the dissolution of a community.
Though this section is focused on the “Asian” population, what we are graphing here more generally is how many communities of color are being dismantled.
The Shocking Observation: In every closure region except SE Seattle, the schools with the highest percentage of Asians are consistently more targeted for closure or reconfiguration. Red bars are schools being closed or reconfigured.
This is the visualization that made me crawl into bed for a day. The divide we’re seeing is actually a north Seattle vs south Seattle demographic divide.
Here are the graphs with NW + NE and then SW+SE. Central is already shown above.
You can infer that the top 5 highest % Asian school communities in North Seattle are likely freaking out about being dismantled while in South Seattle, the impact is more diffuse.
How have we gone so long without our leaders (who so regularly wear equity on their sleeves) reacting and reaching out to these communities to offer support? How much Asian representation can there be if they are blind to this? The answer: very little.
Vivian Song, the only Asian on the school board, was bullied out–there’s a story if you dig for it. There are no Asians on the Board or among SPS senior staff.
Worse, there is a “black-white” understanding of racial dynamics in Seattle (see The Racial Triangulation of Asian Americans from 1999 by Professor Clare Jean Kim). This leads to non-conformant views by Asians being othered as ‘privileged, white-adjacent,’ and therefore dismissible. It goes beyond Seattle Public Schools. You may have noticed it recently in stereotype-reinforcing arguments used in various forums and in media like the Stranger when criticizing or attacking Asian political candidates.
Yes, there is some truth to many Asians being white-adjacent. Being an Asian, native Seattleite, and a techie, that partially applies to me. This doesn’t stop people from telling my family, “Asians don’t belong in Ballard” when we walk around. It doesn’t lessen the sting of being one to two degrees away from a constant stream of people assaulted for being Asian in America.
Ignoring, othering, or devaluing Asian experiences because they’re too white-adjacent to be truly anti-racist isn’t anti-racist. It’s simply racist. And classically so, in its easy-to-understand discrimination based on race. It’s triangulation, using othering to say Asians are not authentically part of a culture or movement.
It becomes structural racism when people with influence do this othering and follow through with biased policies and proposals. And we are supposed to be fighting structural racism.
What about other demographics?
Maybe you don’t think the school experience for Asian children in Seattle is a priority. Given the silence on this, the current Seattle School Board clearly doesn’t. Asians are not the only ones being dismissed, silenced, and hurt.
In the plans for North Seattle, we can also see a trend of targeting for higher percent Black/Africa-American, Hispanic/Latino of any race, or Mixed Race schools. ( Unfortunately, graphs for American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander are excluded from analysis as the numbers are so small that they would be misleading).
Note also that “Two or more races” is a tricky category. I cannot find the citation, but as I recall someone got a public-record-request from the district showing that many of those students in this part of Seattle are actually part Asian which makes the Asian targeting look even worse.
For completeness, here is the graph of closures ranked by %White. You can see the distribution of school closures is more even.
Again I keep asking, how was this missed?
Only 5 of the 30 schools in North Seattle have over 15% Black/African-American population. We are closing the largest of those and moving the next one down. How has no one called out this impact on 2 distinct Black communities?
The targeting in North Seattle continues if we lower the threshold to over 10% Black/African-Americans. 11 of 30 schools in North Seattle fit that description. Of those, 6 are slated for closures or moves. That’s over half the schools with any significant concentration of Black / African-American students. Why?
The traditional PTA advocacy roll-up structure, whose members regularly pound on people online for using the wrong words, is not getting up in arms for an actual structurally racist policy. Why?
“All Together for Seattle Schools” had to form in order to give a voice to some of these folks? Why?
After staring at these graphs and watching discussions for the past 2 weeks, I think understanding may start from examining the long running argument about option schools.
Stereotypes about Neighborhood School vs Option School
Let’s hit the hot button topic about option schools. There is a common stereotype that option schools are privileged and more white than the integrated neighborhood schools around them.
Given that 22% of our schools are option schools, you are going to find examples where this is true. And maybe if you are traumatized by experiencing some of those dynamics, you will overgeneralize to thinking it must be true across the whole city.
The problem is Seattle has a history of redlining.
This means that the idea of an “integrated neighborhood school” is laughable for various portions of the city where entire neighborhoods are basically white. This causes the socio-economic relationship of option schools to neighborhood schools in these regions to be REVERSED from the stereotype above.
This is the situation in NW Seattle. If you plot the schools by % white, only 7/16 schools are < 50% white. 5 of those are option schools.
So if you make any policy that does anything negative to ALL option schools in the city, the experience for NW Seattle — a sizable chunk of the city — is that you will have targeted the LEAST WHITE schools and you will look like you are enacting a racist policy.
Even Salmon Bay isn’t really an exception. Every school it is nearby is basically just as white. In that area, Licton Springs at 44.5% white is significantly more integrated than its peers schools which range from 69% to 73% white.
This is the interaction of redlining and policy that many people seem to forget.
An equity-furthering policy based on experiences in one area, when applied uniformly over a redlined city, will almost certainly be equity-reducing in another.
Let me say it again: Because of redlining, any enactment of city-wide policy based on an understanding of race/economic dynamics in one section will almost certainly have the opposite effect in another.
Our city is complex, and things are entangled.
How did we miss this horrid racial targeting?
I came up with these stats 2 weeks ago.
It was nearly the first thing I looked at and it took me 15 minutes for the first cut at the graphs. I knew to look because the school list felt like it hit the most integrated schools I knew.
After graphing it the first time, I spent a week attempting to validate them because I was so shaken by how blatant it looked. And it’s not just race. If you play with the interactive graphs, you’ll see disturbing clustering across many OSPI categories that I have not managed to discuss.
If it took me 15 mins 2 weeks ago, why did no one on the Board or in the major advocacy orgs (with the exception of a parent in All Together for Seattle Schools coming to similar conclusions a few days ago) scream?
I have worked in government before and believe deeply that anyone who stays in civil service or runs for office truly wants to do good. It’s just too abusive of an environment to be in otherwise. So how could so many people who talk equity, social justice, or African American Male achievement in nearly every sentence miss something so big? Why are they silent?
I wonder if it’s because they live in similar parts of Seattle and things look okay for them.
Geographic Concentration of Power and Influence
Measuring such concentration is hard, but let’s try.
I am going to point at SCPTSA because they are the most influential advocacy group (both Chandra Hampson and Liza Rankin who’ve held president and vice president roles on the board over the past decade came from them) and because there is an easy visual to show, but they are not the only ones here to worry about. Every organization has a natural tendency to cluster.
During the end of last school year there was a big ugly kerfuffle about the SCPTSA election. Folks can dig into the sordid details of that ugliness if they want, but post election, Tara Chace put together a map showing the home-school representation of the two competing executive board slates which really stuck out to me. Here is the picture included with permission.
With the exception of a small overlap in SE Seattle, notice these groups are nearly clustered and that the blue and red groups live in different parts of the city? In particular, notice that the strong East-West split of north seattle adovcates — a pattern I didn’t even realize until writing this post.
It’s not hard to see how these sets of people could have totally different understandings of what the biggest problems are and what the solutions should be.
Our advocacy community is split in half and that split hurts our ability to find solutions that work for the whole city.
As is, you can see a huge cluster of influence in NE Seattle. Note also that current President Liza Rankin, former President + Vice President Chandra Hampson, and newly elected Evan Briggs all cluster around NE Seattle.
Given this concentration, let’s look at racial demographics for closures look for NE Seattle (again American Indian / Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian / Other Pacific Islander graphs are elided since the numbers are too small).
If you ideologically believe HCC and Options schools are inequitable** and should be destroyed then overall the graphs don’t look too bad! Especially since “Sandpoint” is a “just” a location move.
(**Note that ignoring that HCC/Option school in NE Seattle also means you ignore the impact on the 3 schools with highest % Asian. Here is the uncomfortable truth: you cannot be against Option schools and HCC w/o also supporting the dismantling these Asian communities.)
Since the center of influence in advocacy is STRONGLY clustered in NE Seattle, it suddenly becomes quite easy to see why response is tepid. Things don’t look so bad (except for the % Asians numbers) so then you probably wonder if everyone else is freaking out because they’re just too delicate or worried about losing their privilege.
This unconscious bias likely gets reinforced too because the folks in the affected communities that are most effective at speaking out likely won’t be the immigrants, the English language learners, the families with refugee histories whose families are afraid of public challenges to authority. No, it will be someone that fulfills some privilege stereotype.
In this bubble, it’s actually possible for every advocate to truly be trying to do their best to help equity but to have created an echo chamber where it is possible to accidentally devote a huge amount of energy to focused on controlling the 0.5% of the district budget that is PTSA funding instead of heeding the calls from option schools in March that knew they were being targeted for closures since their waitlists were not moving leading to a situation where the largest % Asian and % Black schools in North Seattle are targeted to have their community dispersed.
The racism that will occur here is not from advocates trying to preserve privilege. It will be from from advocates picking the wrong priorities because there isn’t enough representation in the advocacy community collaboratively find the right ones.
Side comment about Asian concentration in Option Schools and HCC
When you look at the graphs, it’s impossible not to notice that there is a correlation of higher % Asians and options schools + HCC.
Nearly everyone just leaps to the racist stereotype about Asians being good at tests and trying to hoard privilege.
I have an alternative possibility. If you live in this part of Seattle, where nearly every single school around you is 70% white, what would your world look like? Maybe a bunch of your friends say “apply to this option school” or “go for HCC” or “get into the DL/I program” because its “so much better.”
Why do they think it’s better? Maybe it’s because it’s finally a community where you and your kids actually see people like yourselves at school events. Maybe you can walk in the hallways and have a chance of hearing people speak your languages around you. And maybe that is an unconscious incentive to try to cluster here.
Maybe it’s actually a little of each. Or maybe one drew you and the other convinced you that you should never leave.
So when we as a city decide these programs are privileged (maybe they are) and mark them for destruction, what would have been the alternative reality for those families as they are dispersed and scattered back into the 70% white schools. What’s the impact on self identity?
I’ve got a trend going here of making seemingly contradictory statements but here’s the crux: you can be equitable and non-equitable at the same time.
The problem I have, and where I see racism, isn’t with having to make hard choices. It’s with choices being made without these complexities even being aired or discussed. And it’s also with choices being made TO a community rather than WITH a community, because some set of people in power apply a stereotype and create the policy equivalent of saying “all look same.”
The word inclusion is used a lot, but it’s often meant as a measure of how many best practices one puts in. I look at it differently now. Inclusion isn’t about best practices. It is about how many people who have changes made to them cannot find access to power so they may be heard.
By that definition, I think we do not have a very inclusive community.
Where to go from here
I don’t know how to get out of this mess but there are a few things that are very clear to me now:
- The topics here are complex and most actions have multiple possibly contradictory impacts.
- It is possible to be anti-racist and racist at the same time.
- Representation of impacted communities is hugely lacking on the school board and among the leaders of the advocacy community.
- The word “equity” can be used to legitimately defend the oppressed while ALSO bullying others into following policy that is based on a narrow (and sometimes upside down) understanding of the city.
- Fighting for equity and bullying are two different things. Bullying needs to be stopped and the word equity needs to cause introspection, not silence.
- If you are Asian and you feel othered in your interaction with Seattle Public Schools and the advocacy community, that’s because you are being othered and targeted. Time to stand up, organize, and assert the right to take up space, and find a way to evolved the advocacy so that we and everyone else are included.
— References
- Graphs: https://www.sps-by-the-numbers.com/analyses/2024-school-closure-demographics
- OSPI data set: https://data.wa.gov/education/Report-Card-Enrollment-2023-24-School-Year/q4ba-s3jc/about_data
- Option schools knowing their waitlist were held up: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQrjsk1LAHLaLf8kQtoVoVh9NBmL5dycckZ-QHJq7cmtGcRTCNJo786j9f8qi6hlAeWLZcBdWYnDRAn/pubhtml#
- The Racial Triangulation of Asian America (Claire Jean Kim, 1999): https://library.fes.de/libalt/journals/swetsfulltext/6859319.pdf
- Also a shout out the group of about ~10 parents who have helped me cross-check, proof read, and generally support this. Most don’t want to be named because of the aforementioned bullying that co-opts and misuses the word “equity.” That bullying needs to stop now.
