Peanut butter and jelly is "racist?"

[frazzled]

9. They should have called it "culturally biased"

instead of racist. But I get the point.

Back in the late 1990s, when high-stakes exams were introduced in the state I lived in, my volunteer duties began to include tutoring kids who had failed these exams more than once. (Their ability to get a HS diploma depended on them eventually passing it.)

The majority of students in this category were non-native speakers (at that time, predominantly Southeast Asian: Hmong, Vietnamese, Cambodian). I spent 7 months or so with one of my tutees, a Vietnamese girl who had reading difficulties, in addition to an English vocabulary deficit and, admittedly, some attitude problems. But we worked hard all year on the reading, and her attitude--and ability--began to improve. I was really hopeful she might be able to pass this time.

A week or so before the exams were to be administered, the teacher handed me a sample test to work on with her--it was the reading passages and questions used the previous year. My pupil and I sat down together to look at it, and both of our jaws just dropped. The two passages were: a satiric op-ed from a local newspaper, written by a doctor, titled "Lo-Fat Twinkies." The other was a piece describing a "knotty-pine lodge," with all its trappings. I couldn't believe it. I was furious. My student had no freaking idea whatsoever what a Twinkie or knotty pine was. It made her confidence level sink and her fear factor rise immediately. This put her at a huge disadvantage compared to her "American" peers. I felt a near-year's worth of effort had been thrown down the drain.

So I get it. To use PB&J as an example of lunch in a culturally diverse school setting may well be culturally biased.