Writing in The New York Times, journalist and 1619 Project creator Nikole Hannah-Jones recently copped to the fact that she sent her daughter to poorly performing New York City public schools out of an ideological commitment to ending what she sees as structural or systemic racism, among other ills.
asserted
she → write → ills
She notes that she and her husband, who are both African American, attended integrated schools and benefited from the experience.
asserted
who → note → experience
Which helps to explain why her husband was at first steadfast against her plan.
asserted
husband → help → plan
"As I told Faraji my plan, he slowly shook his head no.
asserted
he → tell → head
He wanted to look into parochial schools, or one of the 'good' public schools, or even private schools.
asserted
He → want → schools
But Hannah-Jones ultimately won the argument by standing firm to her political commitments.
asserted
Jones → win → commitments
"I understood that so much of school segregation is structural," she writes, "a result of decades of housing discrimination, of political calculations and the machinations of policy makers, of simple inertia.
asserted
she → understand → inertia
But I also believed that it is the choices of individual parents that uphold the system, and I was determined not to do what I'd seen so many others do when their values about integration collided with the reality of where to send their own children to school."
asserted
values → believe → school
"In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?
asserted
I → fight → Own
" has become a viral sensation in large part because Hannah-Jones fully and openly documents the undeniably substandard education her daughter was receiving at places like P.S. 307, which is currently allocated at least $43,927 per pupil according to city databases (the amount is higher still if certain related costs like transportation and lunch programs are included).
uncertain
costs → become → transportation
And because she includes not just her husband's initial misgivings but her daughter's unmitigated anger when she realizes her education was being sacrificed on her mother's ideological altar.
asserted
education → include → altar
"Did you know my school was bad like this when you decided to put me here?" the daughter, Najya, asks early on.
asserted
daughter → know → me
Later in the piece, Najya, now 16 years old and attending a competitive public high school of her own choosing, tells her mother, "Sometimes I wish instead of always thinking about other kids, you would have thought about me.
asserted
you → attend → me
I never really got the education I wanted."
asserted
I → get → education
In an episode of the popular radio program This American Life, Najya is harsher still, saying, "There's no benefit that came out of you putting me in those schools.
asserted
you → say → schools
Could you tell me a benefit?"
uncertain
you → tell → benefit
Oddly—and unconvincingly—Hannah-Jones attacks "school choice" throughout her story, as if it is the problem rather than a solution for students trapped by limited educational opportunities.
asserted
it → attack → opportunities
I'll come back later to some of the ways in which I think Hannah-Jones' analysis is deeply mistaken, but for the moment, I want to explain why the story struck me with such intensity, even though I graduated high school fully 45 years ago (!) in 1981.
asserted
I → come → 1981
It's because my parents, just like Nikole Hannah-Jones, sent me to clearly inferior schools because of a misplaced sense of duty borne out of the past.
asserted
parents → send → past
Ironically, this didn't mean sending me to rotten public schools in a big city but to mediocre Catholic schools in the New Jersey suburbs in the 1970s.
asserted
this → mean → 1970s
My father and mother were born to Irish and Italian immigrants in the 1920s in New York City (father) and Waterbury, Connecticut (mother); their families were struggling long before the Great Depression hit and stayed that way until sometime after World War II.
asserted
Depression → bear → II
My parents married in 1950 and lived in Brooklyn but didn't have kids for almost a decade (the youngest of three, I was born in 1963).
asserted
I → marry → 1963
Like many New Yorkers, they moved out of the city toward the end of the 1960s, buying the one house they would ever own in Middletown, New Jersey, about 50 miles away from Manhattan and then on the very edge of commuting distance.
asserted
they → move → distance
My father was a high school dropout and worked as an officer manager for a shipping company.
asserted
father → work → company
My mother graduated high school in 1945 on a business track and worked as a bookkeeper until she had kids.
asserted
she → graduate → kids
We had enough to eat, but money was always palpably tight, even after my mother went back to work when I was around 10 years old.
asserted
I → have → work
On a few occasions as a teenager, I paid utility bills out of my savings from after school or summer jobs to avoid service interruptions (my deeply embarrassed folks always paid me back).
asserted
folks → pay → me
My parents bought a car about once a decade, and it was always a stripped-down model.
asserted
it → buy → car
(For reasons that remain obscure to everyone but the salesman, they bought a 1979 Chevy Malibu that did not have even an AM radio, much less air conditioning.
asserted
that → remain → radio
Through my whole childhood, we went on exactly two vacations (a four-day trip to Washington, D.C. and a weeklong stay at a beach cottage in Lavalette, New Jersey, a 35-mile drive from my hometown).
asserted
we → go → hometown
Unlike some of my friends' parents, my mother and father had no expensive hobbies, but even still, especially during the peak stagflation years of the 1970s, more than a few Christmases were as sparse as the branches on the artificial tree we used for about 20 years straight.
asserted
we → have → years
Despite their own lack of education, they made it clear that my siblings and I would go to college but also were upfront that they would not be able to pay for it.
asserted
they → make → it
The one indulgence—if that's the right term—they insisted on was sending my brother and sister and me to St. Mary's, the local Catholic elementary school, even though the public school, Middletown Village, was closer and better appointed along virtually every conceivable dimension.
asserted
school → insist → dimension
When it came time to attend high school, they sent my brother to the expensive and highly regarded all-boys Christian Brothers Academy.
asserted
they → come → Academy
That was a real reach for them, but so was Mater Dei, the now-shuttered parochial high school my sister and I attended.
asserted
sister → shutter → them
(They breathed a deep sigh of relief when I told them I didn't want to attend an all-boys school.)
asserted
I → breathe → school
I know it was a reach for them because about two weeks before my graduation in 1981, I was called down to the principal's office, where I was told that I owed $950 on a $1,000 tuition bill.
asserted
I → know → bill
My parents, it seemed, had paid a $50 deposit the previous August and then kept deferring the bill.
asserted
it → seem → bill
If the account wasn't settled, the principal said, I couldn't get my diploma or walk during the ceremony.
asserted
I → settle → ceremony
I scoffed at the news and told the principal that there must be some sort of mistake.
asserted
I → scoff → mistake
…and 39 more, not listed.
The Aporia
