[MUSIC PLAYING]
One of the earliest lessons that you
are taught in this society is that education
is the great equalizer.
And we are taught to believe that
what also makes America exceptional is
our public education, that we were one of the first nations
to begin adopting a system of common schools
that would be funded for and by the public.
But the darker side of that story
is that, from the very beginning,
with the first public schools being established
in Boston, Massachusetts in the 1800s,
we have never intended Black children
to receive the same type of education as white children.
In fact, for the vast history of this country,
it was illegal for most Black children
to learn to read and write.
And when we began public schools,
Black children were at first prohibited
from those public schools.
And then, of course, legally segregated
within those public schools.
So I, of course, didn't know any of that history
when I was in second grade and all of a sudden my bus ride
started getting a lot longer and all of a sudden I
wasn't going to school in my neighborhood anymore.
But I was going to school across the river,
deep in the white side of town, in someone else's neighborhood.
I didn't realize at the time I was part of a voluntary school
desegregation order that my hometown implemented
to avoid being sued by the Justice Department.
And I wouldn't realize that really until I was an adult
and really began reporting on school segregation myself.
But the impact that that program had on me is clear.
I went from some of the lowest performing
schools in my community to the highest performing.
And me being the same child, I suddenly
got access to the best teachers and the best instruction
and the best facilities.
And I can't say for certain whether I
would have found the success that I found if I had remained
in my segregated, under-resourced schools,
but I can tell you that, based on the data and statistics,
it would have been far less likely.
I started my career covering a very segregated school
system in North Carolina and really
seeing up front and close and personal how segregation still
existed, even though we say that it was prohibited
by the Supreme Court in 1954, and how Black children still
don't get the same resources as white children
unless they're in schools with white children.
I remember being a young reporter
and seeing all of these people who
were advocating on behalf of Black children
in these segregated schools.
And you would ask them, well, where
does your child go to school?
And every last one of them would say
that their child didn't go to school with the kids
that they said they were fighting for.
And they always had a good reason, a legitimate reason.
But I also understood that that really came from a belief
that some children were more worthy than others, that there
was a fear of Black children, and that we somehow
believe Black children are simply deserving of less.
It's easy to have values when you don't have to live them.
And it's easy to say what you will do when you don't
have to make that decision.
Fast forward some years after that, I was a parent
and I was in New York City.
And even though this will seem shocking to many people,
though not to people who have been paying attention,
New York City has some of the most segregated schools
in the country.
And now I had to decide whether I was going to live my values,
which is I don't believe that those of us who have resources
should be taking our children away from the kids who don't.
And I chose, and then told my husband
that this is what we were choosing,
to put our child in a segregated, high-poverty
school.
Public education has been such an important part
of my job and my personal and moral philosophy
that I could have chosen any number of things
for my daughter's education.
And I have the same desires for my child as anyone else.
I want my child to be healthy and successful and happy.
But we chose to put our child not in a private school.
We chose to put our child not in one
of the handful of sought-after public schools.
We decided to enroll our child in the type of school
where we felt we could be most of service to that community.
And that was a 90% Black and 90% free
and reduced lunch or poverty school.
And we made that decision because we felt it was right.
We truly believe in the idea of a common good
that it is not just about getting
your own individual advantage, but in investing
in your whole community and using
whatever assets or privilege you have for the benefit
of those who don't have it.
It has not been easy.
There's a reason why school segregation is immoral.
We are now in our seventh year at that school.
And there have been times where I certainly
understand other parents making another choice.
But I also believe that my daughter is getting as much
out of that school as we think we might be giving that school.
And I think we can't all continue to say, oh,
that problem is really hard.
I wish someone would do something about it.
And the reason that that is necessary
is we don't have to be told that concentrating poverty is toxic.
We know that in neighborhoods.
We know that in classrooms.
And we also know that Black children
face a double segregation.
They are concentrated both by poverty,
and they are concentrated by race.
And that allows us, then, to systematically deprive
those schools of the resources they
need because those schools don't have the power
to advocate the way that schools that
have white parents and wealthy parents
can advocate for resources for their kids.
So I was both writing about segregation as a journalist
and experiencing segregation as a parent.
And it was through my reporting, trying
to figure out why do these racial disparities
in achievement exist, I know you all
know that Black people are not inferior.
You all know that Black children are just
as capable as anyone else's child of achieving.
And you all know that Black people value an education
despite what our country says, that somehow, miraculously,
we're the only people in the world
who don't value an education.
We know all of these things are true.
And yet the achievement gap persists
despite us understanding that Black children are just
as capable, as motivated, and as valuable.
So I just started researching why.
And what the research pointed to was racial segregation.
And that if we want equality in schools,
we have to integrate our schools.
And the data is very clear.
For a very brief period of time, when
we started to integrate schools, largely because federal courts
were forcing schools to integrate,
the achievement gap was cut by half in a short period of time.
And then as soon as we started resegregating schools,
that achievement gap has risen.
And the data is pretty indisputable.
The more Black a school is, the less likely
that school is to have the same quality of teachers,
the same quality of instruction, the buildings are older,
the technology is less, the resources are less,
it has fewer higher-level classes.
So we know that race and resources are aligned.
And the one tool that's been shown
to break up that caste system is school integration.
And that's not because sitting a Black kid next to a white kid
magically makes that Black kid smart or motivated.
But what it does is what it did for me.
It made sure that I was getting the same resources
that those white kids were getting.
And we've never assured that, outside of integration.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When I hear middle-class parents,
white parents, Black parents, say
that they want integrated schools, what that often
means to me is they want a carefully curated integration.
That they want schools that have a little bit of this
and a little bit of that, not too much
Black, not too much poor, schools that
look like the United Nations.
The problem is that in a place like,
let's say, New York City or Chicago or Philadelphia,
where the white population is so small,
the only way that you can get schools that still maintain
a white majority is to ensure that a whole bunch
of Black schools have no integration at all.
And folks are largely willing to make that bargain
because having a United Nations school makes them feel good.
And they can brag and say, I'm a public school parent,
even as their schools don't look like the public,
even as their schools screen out most of the public school kids.
So what they essentially want is to have a private school
education on the public dime.
They don't want schools that are publicly funded
and look like the public.
My work is trying to convert people
who say they're progressive, who put the Black Lives Matter
sign in their yard, and yet would never, never put
their child in a school that is majority Black
and that has large numbers of poor Black children.
I'm trying to get those people to live their values.
I understand that, of all the civil rights values,
schools and housing are the most intimate.
These are the areas where we are the most personal, who
lives next to us and who is going to sit next to our child
in a classroom.
And so that's often where progressivism stops short.
We feel, as parents, we have the right and maybe even
the obligation to try to secure every advantage
for our own children.
But we have to understand that that comes at a cost,
and that we are deciding that some children are worthy
and some children are worthy of being sacrificed.
And in a country built on a system of racial caste,
we already know whose children will be sacrificed,
because they're the same time children who have
generationally been sacrificed.
Equality and advantage are antithetical to each other.
You can't say you believe in equality
and yet seek to advantage your own children
at every step of the way.
And I would ask you middle-class parents,
what do you really think that you have to lose?
You can still give your child every advantage, tutoring,
trips, taking them to plays, arts,
you can still give your child every advantage.
And yet, so many want to take the advantage of the best
public schools on top of that.
I think, if that's the case, we should just
acknowledge that we don't actually believe in equality,
and stop pretending otherwise.
But if you say you believe in equality,
then your schools need to actually look like the public.
And then you also shouldn't move to extremely white places
where the public looks like private school too.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
We have to put a stake in the ground
because there are few institutions
in our country more important than education,
particularly when it comes to our children's well-being
and societal well-being.
My daughter's getting ready to go to middle school
now which, of course, for any parent is a very scary period.
But our daughter will be going to a neighborhood middle
school that does not screen students out.
And I hope that I am teaching her my own morals
and my own values.
For us Black parents, it is particularly important.
I live in a low-income Black neighborhood by choice.
I could live elsewhere because of our income.
I could send my child to a different type of school
because of our income.
We're taught in our communities, from a young age,
that success means getting out, right?
Go to school, get your education,
and then get out of here.
That's success.
I think we have to send a different message
to our communities, that success is getting your education
or starting your business and then staying
in your communities and sharing that advantage
with your communities.
That's the value that I'm trying to live.
And that's the value that I'm trying to teach my daughter,
that she doesn't have to separate herself
from her people, that she doesn't
have to feel like she's exceptional, that we all
come from the same folks, and some of us
have been luckier than others, and so we have an obligation
to repay that debt.
I think it's important to understand
I don't think I'm making a sacrifice for my child.
I think that I am giving my child a life's education.
I think I am teaching her to be humble.
I think I am showing her that a child having less wealth
than you doesn't mean that that child is
less intelligent than you or has less to offer.
I don't believe that I've sacrificed my child at all.
And I think we have to stop thinking about it in that way.
Because what message are we sending to these other children
that our child being around them is sacrificing our own child?
I was that kid that other parents
were afraid to have around their kid.
And I can tell you, I was smarter than all of their kids.
I just needed to be in an academic environment that
would nurture that intellect.
So I think because I was the person
from the wrong neighborhood, I was the person
that those parents didn't want on that bus,
coming around their kids, I have a deep understanding of the way
that we label and box and demean our children
when all our children want is to be invested in,
the way that we invest in children whom we value.
So I don't think that my daughter is sacrificed at all.
I think that this is making her a better human, a better
person, and a better member of her community.
And I also don't believe in the idea of setting my child up
to compete.
Compete for what, and against whom?
I want my child to find success in the way
that she thinks success is important.
And I really take my philosophy from this
from the Black experience, in that we always understood,
because of our singular experience in this country,
we can rise to the highest echelons.
But when we go out in society, we're still Black.
And they don't care what your pedigree is.
They don't care how many degrees you have.
They don't care how you talk.
They will put you in that same box.
And so, why spend your whole life
trying to be distinct from a people
instead of working together to uplift all of your people?
Because us more so than any other racial group
in this country, we rise or fall together.
You can't have that separation.
So I see the philosophy of HBCUs, lift as we climb.
I don't want my daughter to try to compete with her classmates.
I want my daughter to rise and help her classmates rise.
And I hope that they will help her rise.
And that's the type of child that I'm trying to raise.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I think we have been caught up in a society that is intensely
individualistic, that believes that only some of us
can make it, and that we see competition as a virtue.
I am personally a competitive person
in that I personally want to reach my highest potential.
But I don't think that my reaching my highest potential
has to come at the cost of someone else reaching his
or hers.
And that's how I want to raise my child.