A new limited series about building a better school system, and what gets in the way. “Nice White Parents” — coming July 30 from Serial Productions, brought to you by The New York Times.
A new podcast just came out yesterday looking at the role of white parents in public schools (or one public school in New York in particular).
There are only two episodes out rn (the link I just shared leads you to the 2-3 minute blurb of the podcast) and honestly I got hooked after just 3 minutes.
Here is the skinny and honestly what got me !!!!!!!!!!!!! fuuuuuuuuuuuming
so basically right after segregation was banned (1957?) there was a school about to be built near a majority puerto rican and black neighbourhood - the projects. But a bunch of white families petitioned to have it built closer to them bc like "We want an integrated school! We want our kids to go to the same school as children of colour!! If you build it in the poor coloured neighbourhood it will surely be segregated and we want integration!"
So the school board was like "Aight that makes sense."
So the school was built in between the white rich neighbourhood and the poor nonwhite neighbourhood.
And then
NOT A SINGLE WHITE FAMILY PUT THEIR KID IN THAT SCHOOL.
LIKE. EVERY. SINGLE. WHITE PARENT. WHO WROTE A LETTER PETITIONING THE SCHOOL BOARD TO PUT THE SCHOOL IN BETWEEN THE NEIGHBOURHOODS INSTEAD OF IN THE POOR BLACK/LATINO NEIGHBOURHOOD SO THAT THEY COULD HAVE AN INTEGRATED SCHOOL ENDED UP PUTTING THEIR KIDS IN ANOTHER PRIVATE SCHOOL.
THERE WERE SO MANY LETTERS like heartfelt petitions of like "We don't want our neighbourhood to be a closed white enclave" “We want our kids to grow up around kids of colour and have diverse friends!"
Fake ASF
it’s a complicated topic tho bc it goes over what seems like White Saviour complex (rich white families put their kids in a school and uplift it and Before It Was Bad But Now It Is Good) and the thing is - to a degree, this is true. But we also know this by another name - gentrification. So this is like a weird form of necessary and desired gentrification (integration) so that we can also uplift the poor non white kids not getting access to quality schooling.
It’s honestly a wild ride and pls pls pls if you do listen to it message me about it bc it’s rly good and I wanna talk to you about it pls.
I recently began listening to Nice White Parents, a new podcast hosted by self-confessed nice white parent, Channa Joffe-Walt. It’s produced by the people in and around Serial, This American Life, S-Town and The New York Times. If you are familiar with those titles, you’ll know what to expect – in-depth, considered analysis of a heretofore, under-exposed social issue, executed with an East Coast progressive liberal stride; a pleasingly audible, irreverent gait and the swagger of emotional intelligence and self-aware humility. Through research, interviews and attaching herself to the Brooklyn School of International Studies for several years, Joffe-Walt tells the story of the New York Public school system and its apparent failure to meaningfully integrate itself since Brown v Board of Education made racial segregation illegal over 65 years ago.
In episode 2, Joffe-Walt tracks down and interviews some nice white parents from around the time the school opened in 1963. These people had written letters encouraging the school board to erect the school building closer to their own neighbourhood (and consequently further away from the darker-skinned families it was more likely to serve). They expressively emphasised their wishes to send their kids there and virtuously aid the process of integration, which they believed to be morally imperative.
But apparently, none of these letter writers subsequently sent their kids to that school. It remained, as anticipated, a predominantly non-white school. Laid alongside the tense machinations of the contemporary school’s invasion by a large new cohort of white parents and their issue, Joffe-Walt’s hypothesis is that white parents have always held liberal aims, and the clout to impose them, but do so with little consideration for their non-white counterparts or any real commitment to seeing through the incumbent practicalities. From the outset, this natural conclusion is persistently hinted at, not least from the podcast’s deliberately provocative title. Perhaps, on an individual level, this hypothesis contains some truth.
However, as the story extends, the blame gains weight and the theory mutates into a generalised accusation. Responsibility for the mediocre state of New York’s (and by implication, America’s) public schools is explicitly laid at the pale feet of white parents. It's an exposition of what is often described as “White Guilt” and its corresponding effort at contrition (i.e. the guilt felt from the inherited sin of one’s ancestors’ oppression of non-white people, primarily through slavery). While White Guilt might have its conceptual uses for a few people to come to terms with idea of race (although even there I am sceptical), its value as a wider social narrative is deeply unconvincing, and potentially damaging. Nice White Parents does a good job showing why.
In the podcast, anecdotal evidence is drastically extrapolated to justify White Guilt. Unless backed up by unequivocal data, it is inherently flawed to base so much on interviews with a handful of people in their 80s about a letter they wrote in the 60s, and (in episode 3) a now middle-aged woman about her perception of school when she was 13. Equally so is to use the example of a single New York school to imply that nice white parents are universally responsible for all the failings of American public schooling. A quick empirical comparison with countries unburdened by America’s racial psychosis would almost certainly reveal this argument to be fundamentally false. I hazard to suggest that Joffe-Walt set out, either consciously or subconsciously, to prove the theory of Nice White Parents, and has therefore fallen into the trap of verification bias.
Of course, the truth is likely to be far simpler – green, cheddar, dead presidents and moolah (which middle-aged white people in American disproportionately possess). Better schools arrive from broad, deep and perpetual community investment – from good, affordable housing and well-paying jobs to well-paid teachers and decent facilities. That means higher taxes on the wealthy and better provincial management. If a completely non-white school district received $50 billion to invest in their community with educational improvement as its ultimate goal (that or the abolition of private schools), I suspect the idea of nice white parents would quickly evaporate.
It is plainly a damaging distraction to focus on the role of supposed-predisposed-racism of well-meaning, middle-class people, who simply want the best possible education for their children. Instead, the message for the “hereby accused” should be to use their numerical majority and voting power to advocate for systems that would reduce inequality, regardless of race. In this respect, it strikes me that wealth is a sacrosanct subject in America, something that one can never apologise for having too much of. Quite the opposite – the culture is built on celebrating those who hoard capital. Is it possible that Americans are taught never to apologise for having money, so those who see something wrong develop other issues, such as race, for which they can atone?
More deeply, the podcast reveals how the White Guilt narrative is in ideological conflict with the very wrong it is supposedly trying to right. Taken to its conclusion, it inevitably reinforces the idea that white people are innately superior, and race is the primary determining factor for success in American life. In the context of the podcast, it is applied to suggest that New York public schools are destined to fail their students unless white kids and their parents get involved. It is gloriously ironic that condemning the influence of white parents on public schools serves to reinforce the supposed inferiority of non-white participants in the education system… because of their lack of whiteness. At the end of episode 3, Jaffe-Walt lays this out:
Nice white parents shape public schools even in our absence, because public schools are maniacally loyal to white families even when that loyalty is rarely returned back to the public schools. Just the very idea of us, the threat of our displeasure, warps the whole system. So “separate” is still not equal because the power sits with white parents no matter where we are in the system. I think the only way you equalise schools is by recognising this fact and trying wherever possible to suppress the power of white parents. Since no one is forcing us to give up power we white parents are going to have to do it voluntarily, which, yeah how's that going to happen? That's next time on Nice White Parents…
(Consider replacing every mention of “white” in this excerpt with “affluent”. Would that not feel infinitely more true?)
In fairness, the honourable, “anti-racist” intention is clear – in order to defeat “white supremacy” white people need to accept their inherited and systemic superiority and eliminate it. Sadly, any idea centred around race – whether malicious or well-intentioned – is bound to collapse under even the slightest pressure. To be truly anti-racist is to recognise that race itself doesn’t exist (other than as an abstract concept that, having infected people’s perceptions after four centuries of concerted, localised propaganda, must be eradicated). Race has no basis in science or nature; it cannot be quantified in any reasonable, measurable way. Simply, it is a lie; invented to excuse the exploitation of others for the purposes of wealth-generation. To base one’s actions on it in any way is to take a leap of faith into a void with no landing. Race is a malignant, empty God; belief in which is destined to lead to malignant, empty behaviour. “Racism” and “Anti-Racism” (as it is currently understood) are therefore both empty, malignant religions, practiced in service of a non-existent deity.
Notably, there are still two episodes to go (released August 13th and 20th). Either might serve to recover some balance. But by episode 3, the stage is not only set for this conclusion to be drawn, but the 1st Grade nativity is in its final scene and the wise men are long since gone.
All that said, if you let the incessant racialization of all things drift past you rather than choking on it, as plain entertainment – storytelling rather than journalism – it’s still an engaging listen; well-constructed and convincingly told. Furthermore, on a non-racial level (if you can somehow listen beyond it), the podcast does have some value, since it reminds me of something I have long half-joked about – that parents (of all stripes) are the worst.
Aside from the obvious, complex Freudian reasons, on a socio-political level, when a choice arises between a laudable, achievable change and putting one’s own children at a perceived disadvantage in order to effect it, a parent will choose its child’s advantage almost every time. No matter their colour, few parents will sacrifice their own child’s prospects – even minutely – to advance the hypothetical children of someone else, or society more widely. Parents are company directors whose primary obligation is to their miniature, genetically-derivative shareholders – they’ll only vote for large-scale change if it is net-profitable or government-imposed.
And of course, parents should pay their kids the maximum dividend. Who else will? A parent is legally and morally obliged to do the best for the young life they are charged with defending. And therein lies the joke. Parents are the worst only because they are ubiquitous. They created you, me and everyone else. We all had them, and most people end up being one. It is therefore less of a criticism than an inevitable, evolutionary truth – just one we should probably be more honest and upfront about. Unknowingly, underneath (and in some ways, because of) its misguided, exhausting racial handwringing, Nice White Parents just about makes this point.
Listen to Nice White Parents here or wherever you get your podcasts.
...she suggests, we should be looking at who is benefiting from the status quo, and thus has an interest in impeding change. Enter the nice white parents of the title, whose actions, Joffe-Walt argues, consistently conflict with the progressive values they claim to uphold. (via Chana Joffe-Walt: Nice White Parents | Guernica)
"Nice White Parents" is the best podcast of the year, according to "TIME": http://bit.ly/3aIiUre It explores the segregation in New York City schools, which is ironic, since so many New Yorkers describe themselves as liberals who welcome diversity.
“Nice White Parents” - Podcast Review and Thoughts on Allies and Perception
“Whenever people have asked me podcast recommendations this year, I’ve been forced to admit that I “don’t listen to serious podcasts anymore.” I really just couldn’t handle it.
However, I’m also a woman of simple tastes: I see something new in the “Serial” feed, I listen to it.
“Nice White Parents” by Chana Joffe-Walt (spelled nothing like how she says it on her podcast 😅) is not a “Serial” podcast, but it is investigative, illuminating, and infuriating in its own way. I spent some time this summer attempting to find and listen to podcasts about social justice, racial inequity, and BLM, yet most were disappointing or not as educational as I had hoped they’d be. In contrast, I found “Nice White Parents” fascinating and relatable.
Because, of course, I have “nice white parents” who were afraid of sending me to the “wrong” public school. And, thanks to the decisions they made for my education and me, I was able to spend a year working at one of those “bad schools.”
The focal point of “Nice White Parents” is the School for International Studies, a public middle school in New York. It had several names as it went through several massive changes in how it was viewed by its community. It has gone from failing and in threat of closing, to housing two separate “schools” within it, to being the “hot” school to attend, before finally becoming a potential blueprint for how to integrate a school. The driver of a lot of these changes were the titular “nice white parents,” and the history detailed in this limited series was a surprising deconstruction of school segregation and the role of white or privileged allies in social movements.
A key theme I’d like to hone in on is perception: how do people perceive the schools in their communities? How do they perceive the role of public schools in our society? How do parents perceive what is best for their kids? And how do they perceive themselves as proponents for racial equity or as perpetrators of an unequal system?
In this podcast, when (white) parents judged the South as being “backwards” because of segregation, they wrote letters to the school board championing integration. Yet, when it came down to it, many ended up perceiving the diverse schools as not being able to provide a quality education to their children. When they perceived that their local school was still not good enough, they sought to open new (integrated?) ones or develop new programs--such as the French program detailed in the first episode. And, when those programs end up being mostly white they don’t really see it as “segregation” until it’s put in explicitly racial terms.
At the same time, there was little concern for how their actions were perceived by the non-white community members. One particularly poignant moment was the interview with a Latina mom in the final episode who just wanted her school to be less crowded. Instead, the meeting she attended was solely focused on “diversity” and “equity”: what the white parents perceived as most important.
There were a few weeks this year when I made an effort to “educate” myself: I listened to “Codeswitch,” “Silence is Not an Option”, and “Reply All”, read NK Jemisin, Jacqueline Woodson, and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and had discussion groups--with nearly all white participants. I’m not saying that listening to and reading BIPOC voices isn’t helpful and important to understanding and participating in this movement, yet I think it’s also equally important for allies to be critical of what that “allyship” actually means to us.
I’ve struggled with my role as an ally in the past. As I alluded to, I served a year with AmeriCorps at a high school that was probably 50% black and 50% Latinx. A major part of our training, maybe even more so than how to teach, was how to practice empathy, how to recognize systemic racism in our country and schools, and, most importantly for me, how to be an ally. It was far from easy. (And that’s not even getting into whether being Jewish means I’m white or not... and this blog post has rambled on long enough!)
I have put my money where my mouth is--I spent ten months working in that school--but I can’t shake the nagging little itch that someday when I have kids, I’ll take a look at a school like the one I worked at and another like the one I graduated from and most likely choose the latter, just as my parents did when they chose to send me to a private school for kindergarten through eighth grade.
At the same time, I know that that’s many, many years down the line, and I know that things change. That middle school my parents were so reluctant for me to attend was the one my sister graduated from! I wonder what it was that changed their perspective? What will it take to change mine?
In my experience, part of being a white parent is rarely being asked to account for what we have, or how we got it. Rarely being treated as a demographic.
Chana Joffe-Walt, Nice White Parents, “‘We Know It When We See It’”
