The New York Times again reveals its allergy to honest reporting on racially charged topics

Even on simple and easily fact-checked stories, it hides crucial data that might explain racial achievement gaps. The habit isn't good for the paper, or anyone else.

On Tuesday, the New York Times reported black students had been largely shut out of New York’s top public high schools for next year’s new class.

In the second paragraph of its article on the racial gaps, the Times wrote:

About 62 percent of the students in the city’s public schools are Black or Hispanic. But at its eight most prestigious high schools, about 10 percent of the students in the incoming freshman class are expected to be Black or Hispanic... About 80 percent of the seats went to Asian and white students.

That gap sounds — at a minimum — racially problematic, though the Times then explained it comes from a 114-question test that is the city’s only criteria for admission to these schools, which include nationally known schools like Stuyvesant.

Still, the article’s clear implication: intentionally or not, the test helps white students and hurts black ones.

There’s just one problem.

Twelve paragraphs further down, with the article more than half done, the Times finally gave readers the truth: it is Asian students, not white ones, who are vastly overrepresented at these selective schools:

About 19 percent of all public school students are Asian, but they received 57 percent [emphasis added] of the offers for the specialized schools for the fall.

The Times never explicitly explained what this astounding fact means, so I will. White kids make up just under 20 percent of public high school students in New York City - and 24 percent of the students at top schools. They are essentially just holding their own, demographically speaking.

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Even the Daily News, a New York tabloid that generally leans left, presented the facts far more honestly than the Times, explaining at the top of its article on the gaps:

Black students received 3.5% and Hispanic students 6.5% of acceptance letters — broadly consistent with last year’s 3% and 6.9%…

Asian students received 56.5% and white students 23.5% of offers to specialized high schools, compared to 53.5% and 25.9% in the prior admissions cycle.

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(Correcting the record. With your help.)

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A test that hugely benefits one minority at the expense of another can hardly be called racist.

The real numbers suggest that the real story here is about Asian kids — many from lower- or middle-class backgrounds — outcompeting everyone else on a high-stakes one-shot exam that requires intelligence, preparation, and, ideally, parental support.

In fact, the Times itself grudgingly calls the test “a grueling assessment of students’ mastery of math and English that rewards multistep problem-solving skills and time management.”

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(“Asian and white” is doing a lot of work there)

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But hey, far easier to imply racism is what’s driving the gaps at the top of the article, while offering a more accurate though still incomplete picture lower down. That way the paper and its reporters can’t be accused of (entirely) hiding the truth.

The problem isn’t one article (though it is). The framing here shows the Times knows exactly what it’s doing, offering readers a convenient excuse for a racial gap they find unpleasant but cannot ignore.

Legacy media outlets from the Times to NPR to the networks have made this sort of racially tinged propaganda, particularly on education and crime reporting, a habit for decades.

It is no wonder that they have sparked a fierce and still growing backlash.