{"id":355575,"date":"2026-09-24T11:08:27","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T11:08:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/355575\/"},"modified":"2026-09-24T11:08:27","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T11:08:27","slug":"nikole-hannah-jones-new-york-school-dilemma-is-shared-by-black-parents-everywhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/355575\/","title":{"rendered":"Nikole Hannah-Jones’ New York school dilemma is shared by Black parents everywhere"},"content":{"rendered":"

It has been almost four days and I\u2019m still experiencing restless sleep after reading Nikole Hannah-Jones\u2019 essay in The New York Times, \u201cIn Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?<\/a>\u201d Trained as an English teacher in New York City, I\u2019m a Black woman who taught for 10 years at a school similar in all ways but one to the middle school where Hannah-Jones sent her daughter. Hannah-Jones\u2019 bright, ambitious teenager accused her mother of intentionally sending her to \u201ca bad school\u201d when her class privilege could have bought better options.<\/p>\n

I taught at a school founded by a white woman philanthropist who wanted to give students who lived north of 96th Street in Manhattan the \u201csame\u201d educational opportunities her own children had. Her privilege brought with it funding and resources that other schools in our district struggled to access. Although I taught mostly in the middle school, I joined my high school colleagues in boasting of our 100% high school graduation rate and 100% college acceptance rate. We knew we were doing great work. We also knew we were an exception to the many schools failing Black and brown students across all five boroughs.<\/p>\n

We knew we were doing great work. We also knew we were an exception to the many schools failing Black and brown students across all five boroughs.<\/p>\n

At the heart of Hannah-Jones\u2019 essay is a mother with a long, distinguished history of writing about school segregation<\/a> and how it operates<\/a>, trying to articulate the deep, relentless and intentional segregation of New York City public schools \u2014 and who wanted to protect her daughter from the social isolation and racist microagressions she says she experienced when her parents sent her to an all-white school.<\/p>\n

As her daughter\u2019s middle school principal, Emily Paige, frames it: Segregation in New York City schools is a Venn diagram of race, class and ability. While Hannah-Jones agonized over the racial segregation she was trying to challenge with her choices, I reflected on how often teachers and parents applaud the majority-Black and -brown schools that triumph over racial (and, somewhat, class) segregation by leaning into the segregation of students by ability.<\/p>\n

\tMore articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\"\"\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tKeturah Kendrick\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\tKeturah Kendrick is a former New York City educator who currently lives abroad. She is the author of \u201cNo Thanks: Black, Female, and Living in the Martyr-Free Zone.\u201d Her work has also appeared in Newsweek, HuffPost and USA Today.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It has been almost four days and I\u2019m still experiencing restless sleep after reading Nikole Hannah-Jones\u2019 essay in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":355576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-355575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=355575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/355576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}