An Argument

Ira Glass (0:00)

Hey, The Life Partners. Do you remember that the other week we gave you early access to tickets for this live show that we're doing in Los Angeles on October 9th? And do you remember that you most likely do not live in Los Angeles? Okay, good news. We're going to live stream the show for all the Life Partners. That means you. No extra charge, nothing. We just want to do it as a thank you for supporting the program.

And basically the show is, I tell stories on stage, and then after every story, Vic Michaelis and a crack team of incredibly funny comedians will improvise scenes. We're doing it Friday night, October 9th, 6:30 PM Pacific, 9:30 PM Eastern, to sign up for this live stream. You have to sign up. Just go to thisamericanlife.org/livestream.

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Okay, here's today's program.

Hey there, everybody. Ira Glass here. So our show today is something that producer Chana Joffe-Walt has been collaborating on with reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. And Nikole's version of this story, which is in The New York Times Magazine, is something that many, many people are discussing online right now. And I just want to say that if you have seen that article, there are a lot of things in what you're about to hear that are not in the article. Particularly, you'll get to hear at length from Nikole's daughter. And there are things that commenters are raising online that get interestingly addressed in our version. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry. All of this will become clear. And with that, here's Chana Joffe-Walt talking with Nikole Hannah-Jones. These are recordings made as Nikole was in the process of writing that article.

Chana Joffe-Walt (1:43)

I'm going to make sure we're recording.

Nikole Hannah-Jones (1:44)

All right.

Chana Joffe-Walt (1:45)

Has it been ten years since you've been in here?

Nikole Hannah-Jones (1:47)

I'm trying to think when I, I'm like damn, I know it's been a long time. How long has it been?

Chana Joffe-Walt (1:53)

That's Nikole. This is a ritual I find myself in with some frequency at my age, beginning social interactions with an accounting of time that inevitably leads to a conversation about the kids, where they were then and where they are now.

Nikole Hannah-Jones (2:09)

My child was just getting ready to start school, and now my child is a sophomore getting ready to celebrate her sweet 16 That is wild. Really 16 She will be 16 next month. Yeah, time.

Chana Joffe-Walt (2:25)

Nikole and I spent a lot of time talking about our kids 10 years ago, and talking about schools. We were reporting together on education, specifically on inequality and systemic racism in American public schools. How decades of policy choices have left public schools deeply unequal, many schools completely neglected.

Meanwhile, Nikole and I had little kids. In our own lives, the conversation among parents was how to game the system to be sure that your children do not end up in one of those schools.

Nikole Hannah-Jones (3:02)

Literally, every middle-class parent, no matter what their race was, was like you have to put her in Talented and Gifted prep courses because they test that for, and you have to decide if you're going to put her in private school but you're definitely not going to put her in the neighborhood school and I lived in the heavily black high-poverty neighborhood.

Chana Joffe-Walt (3:24)

These questions, what are you going to do about school, started right out of the gate.

Nikole Hannah-Jones (3:29)

I mean, my response was, she's one and people would look at me like, oh, you're so naive. I remember people being like, you silly woman and people actually felt that that I was like not being a good parent, frankly.

Chana Joffe-Walt (3:45)

This intense, often judgmental scramble is something parents in places all over America do. But in New York City, where Nikole and I live, it's arguably the most extreme version. Parents have spreadsheets of schools, endless advice. You're going to want to avoid this school, apply to this program, maybe move to a different neighborhood. Any contortion makes sense, not even to strive for an elite school, but to avoid a, quote, bad school. What were the bad schools? Well, New York City has one of the most racially and economically segregated school systems in the country. The, quote, bad schools that families with options tried to avoid were disproportionately black, Latino, and poor.

In her reporting, Nikole had seen that black students all over the country are concentrated in schools like this, where they're less likely to have the best teachers, or curricula, or facilities. And one reason that happens is that wealthy and middle-class families like hers opt out of those schools.