Across the country, roughly 60 percent of students in gifted programs are white, though white students make up only 46 percent of today’s student population, and only roughly 9 percent of students identified are Black, though Black students make up 15 percent of the nation’s students. But as soon as the conversation about the need to increase the representation of Black and Hispanic students in gifted programs really took hold, there arose a counter conversation about whether we even need gifted programs.
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If you’re ignoring a particular subset (Black and brown gifted students, in this case) because you don’t want to address the specific nuances of race—or worse, acknowledge your own racism or explicit bias—then you are not serving all students.
Read Executive Director Autumn A. Arnett’s op-ed in The Grio.