South Philly High Back In The News
By wchung | 22 Feb, 2025

School of Hard Knocks: South Philly High remains a danger zone for innocent Asian students.

Okay, not the mainstream news, but the race-aware and Asian-American blogospheres. It looks like there’s trouble stirring in South Philadelphia again and it isn’t of your garden variety schoolyard bully punking on the Asians but a full-fledged mindless beat down of anyone of Asian descent. This isn’t good.

I wrote on the school before because it had made the news for the anti-Asian violence but at that time, there was a feeling of hope that things were soon going to change for the better. With the media coverage, the administration was bound to help alleviate the situation. When I didn’t hear anything for a couple of months, I assumed that things had settled down and the Asian students at South Philly High were finally able to just live the typical high school experience.

Things have certainly done quite the opposite. There’s been a downward spiral in race relations, the administration has not done enough to protect the Asian students and now there is a sizable group of Asian students that won’t come back to school until things change for the better.

Last week a group of black students, apparently responding to an incident where a group of Vietnamese students jumped a black student, decided to assault Asian students, regardless of their involvement to the previous incident. Randomly targeted Asian students were left with welts and bruises that shouldn’t be part of the high school experience. Asian students fear walking the hallways of South Philly High alone, choosing instead to walk in groups, because of the fear of the consequences of getting caught alone.

The student body at South Philly high is predominately lower income. The Asian students there are mostly students from overseas that struggle with English. The differences are very obvious and the cultures clash but certainly not to the level of hatred that is exhibited at South Philly High right now. I once heard the statistic that a minority group isn’t considered “threatening” to the majority until the minority population comprises about 20% of the population, which is the statistic that is currently in effect at South Philly High.

I was lucky enough to grow up in a population where the Asian/Asian-American population comprised less than 3% of the population, the bulk of which was my extended family. I didn’t see it as a lucky break until now because I certainly struggled with my identity as an Asian American growing up. When I moved to CA, I saw high schools with an Asian population of 60-70% and wondered what it would’ve been like to grow up under those circumstances. Growing up in an Asian-depleted population as a childhood and living in an Asian-saturated population now has given me two very different worldviews, but both worldviews have been comfortable. The life that the Asians at South Philly High are living is something that I can’t imagine but I’m hoping will change soon.