Opinion: Choosing a School When Race is the Main Concern

When I sat down with Nikole Hannah-Jones, a staff writer at the New York Times magazine, to talk about segregation in New York City schools, I thought we would have a casual, candid conversation as two black women, working moms with young kids enrolled in Brooklyn public schools. We have both written and reported extensively on race, gentrification and the concept of diversity as it applies to New York City so I was looking forward to it.

But, once we started talking, I realized for the first time since finding an elementary school for my son five years ago, that this conversation will never be casual. Candid, maybe. But it is an issue that is far too serious, too critical and too emblematic of systemic racism in America to ever be a casual conversation.

A little of my story: my husband and I live in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with our son who identifies as black and biracial. He has gone to school out of zone at P.S. 261 since first grade; it feels bittersweet to be talking about his fifth-grade graduation. We chose P.S. 261 because the school we were zoned for, and where he attended pre-K and kindergarten, P.S. 84, was undergoing a change that happens often in gentrifying neighborhoods: new families, mostly white and affluent, change a school in the name of "progress," often marginalizing and displacing families who have been there for years. We did not want to participate in that.

Besides, among the more than 15 public and private schools we looked at, P.S. 261 was what I considered to be the most mixed, racially and economically, of the lot. And it still is, as represented by my son's set of friends. I am grateful for that, and I hope he carries the belief that different perspectives grow individual minds and create change — even more than his multiplication skills — into middle school and beyond.

But we didn't come to this choice easily. And my husband, a white college professor, would likely still argue that resources and quality of education were more important than social development. I don't disagree entirely, but I also think the cultural standard of an "excellent" education is somewhat overrated, especially if you're black. So much emphasis is placed on education as the way out (of what, I often wonder) for black kids, but study after study indicates that even the black children who commit themselves to focused learning, are disproportionately punished, suspended, underestimated and excluded.

I wasn't concerned that with a professor father and a writer/producer mother my son would not get a comprehensive education. More importantly, I wanted him to be around black and brown peers, to cultivate an ease of proximity around the culture and race with which he identifies, exactly what I did not have during my own childhood.

I was adopted into a white family, raised in an all-white town, and was one of literally a handful, at best, of black people within a 25-mile vicinity. The first time I heard the N-word was from the fifth grade class bully, a white girl who lived in open squalor. She was poor and mean and illiterate, but even that was better than being black. Last week, my son asked me if it would be okay for him to use the N-word with his black friends, the way it's used with an "a" at the end, the way his black friend from a working class family uses it, the way hip-hop artists use it. I was struck by his sensitivity to both my feelings toward the word, and the cultural context in which it might be acceptable to use.

That, to my mind, is precisely what a properly diverse, racially conversant school environment fosters. 

Still, as I talked with Nikole, I wondered whether I had made the right decision for my son. At one point in the elementary school search, I considered sending our son to a predominantly black and brown school. If it came down to it, I argued, I would rather send him to an all-black school than an all-white school with a smattering of black and brown kids. Then we found P.S. 261 with its truly mixed student body and teaching staff, a black woman principal and a very strong curriculum. But how did it get that way? And at what cost to the students at the all black school we turned our backs on?    

These are the questions Nikole had too. She made the alternate decision to send her daughter to a predominantly black and brown school, and listening to her explain why made perfect sense to me.