How to Make Black Lives Matter at School, Ep. 253

By NYPL Staff
February 17, 2019
Brian jones, Xoya David, Joshua Brown, Jose Vilson, and Nikole Hannah-Jones

Brian Jones, Xoya David, Joshua Brown, Jose Vilson, and Nikole Hannah-Jones

 

Despite the fact that New York City is one of the most diverse places in the country, our school system is among the most segregated. As part of the nationwide campaign, Black Lives Matter at School Week, Schomburg Center's Associate Director of Education, Brian Jones organized a panel about this issue and how to challenge structural racism in schools. Featuring award-winning journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones, public school teacher, José Vilson, and two NYC high school student activists, Xoya David and Joshua Brown.

 

For more information about Black Lives Matter at School, go to www.blacklivesmatteratschool.com

 

Click here to find out how to subscribe and listen to the Library Talks podcast.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
 

[ Music ]

>> You're listening to Library Talks from the New York Public Library. I'm your host, Aiden Flax-Clark.

[ Music ]

So, today we're going to listen to a conversation that happened recently at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. And, I've actually got someone from the Schomburg here to talk about it with me, Brian Jones , who's the Associated Director of Education. Hey, Brian.

>> Thank you for having me.

>> The conversation that we're about to listen to was part of a week of action that was organized by a movement called Black Lives Matter at School. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

>> It's a national grassroots effort to change teaching and learning and challenge structural racism in schools. It started in 2016 in one elementary school, actually, and has grown in that very - in the very short time into a national grassroots initiative

>> And, tell me a little bit more about some of the specific changes in schools that the movement is calling for.

>> It has four demands. The demands are first of all to end zero tolerance discipline policies, which were responsible for funneling so many black students disproportionately by far into the criminal justice system. The weak demands, participants in the weak demand, the hiring of black teachers. We've seen horrible attrition of teachers, all teachers, nationally. The educational policy landscape has been really tough on teachers and on black teachers disproportionately, so we're losing black teachers and it's a problem. This year, they added simply put counselors, not cops. Too many schools have more of the latter than they have of the former. And, I believe the latest numbers I was able to find in New York City are that we have some 5000 New York City police officers working in schools and only 3000 guidance counselors. And, keep in mind, New York City has 1.1 million school children. So, many, many people are in schools where there are more police officers than guidance counselors. And, finally, it demands that we mandate in our schools ethnic studies, including black studies. And, I'd like to say more about that, because that very much connects to the mission of the Schomburg Center. You know, Arturo Schomburg was born in Puerto Rico. He's Afro-Puerto Rican. And, as the story goes, when he was a student, an elementary school student, he asked his teacher about when they were going to learn black history. And, apparently the teacher replied something to the effect of we're not, because there's no such thing. And, so years later, this curious student became a bibliophile, became somebody who with his own money, his own funds from working a regular job, began to amass a collection that proved his teacher wrong.

>> And, so one of the ways that the Schomburg got involved was to organize this panel, which you moderated. So, can you tell me who the panelists are?

>> Well, I think this was a really incredible group. I'm still constantly turning over in my head many of the things that they had to say. It was a very quotable discussion and I was thrilled to be able to moderate it. We invited a parent, a teacher and two high school students to speak about what it means to them to make black lives matter in New York City schools. The parent, who I invited to speak, is also an award winning journalist and recent Macarthur Genius Award winner, Nikole Hannah-Jones, who writes for the New York Times magazine and has written very [inaudible] poignant pros about her own decision making process as a black parent navigating the New York City school system and dealing with the profound inequalities and segregation, frankly, in New York City schools. She writes about the way in which and talks on this panel about the way in which we always think about this history of segregation as a southern, kind of Jim Crow thing with whites only signs over the door. But the most segregated schools in the country are here in New York City. Next to her was Jose Vilson, who is a well-known author and blogger and a teacher and an award-winning teacher. He's a full-time middle school math teacher. And, then also we had two high school students. And, I think that as Nikole Hannah-Jones mentioned in the beginning of the panel, you know, often there are a lot of educational discussions that happen without the students present. And, so it's very powerful to have them not only in the room or in the audience, but on the stage and they were amazing, as you'll hear. Their wit, their wisdom, the clarity of their messages. You know, both of these students are students in different schools in the same educational complex. And, right across the street from them is what they describe as a "white school" where they don't have the things that Joshua [assumed spelling] and the other woman's - the other student's was Zoya [assumed spelling], they don't have the things that they were dealing with like metal detectors, long waits in the cold, being yelled at and harassed, you know, at the very beginning of your school days, you're just trying to get to class on time. Your listeners should know that what they're going to hear in part are Zoya and Joshua talking about how they combined and got together across different schools, uniting different schools in the building, to challenge the policy of having metal detectors in the first place. And, they led a very successful campaign to get them out of the school.

>> Okay, Brian, well thanks so much for being here and for organizing this conversation and let's give it a listen.

[ Applause ]

>> Thank you all so much for coming. So excited to have you and have this conversation. So, I actually wanted to start, before we talk about how we're going to tear it all down and transform everything, maybe a positive note, like a positive memory from when you felt like you did matter. Everyone here has been a student or is a student. Is there a moment when you felt like your life, yourself as a black student mattered in your schooling?

>> Yes. Actually, this moment right now having so many of my teachers here to represent me --

[ Applause ]

>> -- and [inaudible].

[ Applause ]

I think this is one of the moments that I feel like I matter as a student.

>> Awesome.

>> Yeah, so, first of all, what's up Arlo [assumed spelling]?

[ Laughter ]

So, I would definitely have to connect with Zoya, definitely saying that the support from my teachers, being that my school is passed predominantly white teachers, less than ten African American, Hispanic teachers, the fat that they actually sit down, have a conversation with me, not just about academics, but personally about my career, how I personally feel, it feels as if like they actually care about my life instead of, you know, you know, oh, well white teachers are just going to stick with the white kids. They actually care about, you know, black kids. They care about everybody, but the fact that they actually sit and have conversations with me makes me feel like my life matters.

>> Wow. Okay. Oh, hi.

[ Laughter ]

I'm in my [inaudible], don't mind me. It was actually in and at the school program back when I was part of the Boy's Club down in the lower east side. I remember being pulled to the side and asked do you want to be part of the secret club. I was like, okay, secret club, no problem. And, one of the first few things they were, you know, they start putting up the spreads, the cookies and the sodas and I was like, oh this is great, delicious, and then, of course, they're like, oh by the way, we're really black up in here and we're going to show your eyes on the prize. Oh, okay. Like, and if you're not schooled on like eyes on the prize and we're talking about like 1980s black, we're talking maybe 70s black, like folks who said, okay, we're actually going to show the unvarnished truth to these really prepubescent boys and some girls too. And, we just sat there and said, oh snap, this is what it means to be black in this country. Okay, like, I don't have the words, but I love this, like this is great, because I'm being taught things that didn't actually follow the curriculum. And, even though at the after school Boy's Club, like you say, well there's not a rigorous curriculum, it's like, well you gave me a lot of experiences that ended up being the seeds for the things that I am now and for that, I feel so, so blessed for all those after school folks. I'm thankful.

[ Applause ]

>> So, hey, everyone. Happy to see so many folks come out tonight for our kids and it's just an honor to be on the stage with two activist students, because you all are going to be the ones who change everything that we've messed up.

[ Laughter ]

So, it's interesting, because when I was thinking about the question, it was actually two of the demands that make black lives matter at school [inaudible] asking for that made me feel like I mattered as a student. I was bussed into white schools starting in the second grade, so a handful of black students, no black teachers, and when I was in high school, I got my first and only black male teacher and his name was Ray Dial [assumed spelling], and he taught the one semester of black studies elective that my high school offered. And, I took that class and I always liking it to - it's appropriate that we're here in Harlem, because I was always liking it to Malcom X when he's in the jail cell and Elijah Muhammad comes to him in a vision and it's like his eyes are open for the first time, that taking black studies was like I was seeing the world and my place in the world for the first time. And, I read, you know, he assigned me African Origins of Civilization, I mean, books that I didn't even know existed. And, I just remember at that point, one, understanding for the first time something that I had felt but didn't have the background to understand, which is that black people were more than something owning us, that we were more than white people freeing us, that we fought for our own liberation and that we had a history well beyond before we were brought here to be enslaved, and when I think about it now, I'm like of course, but I had never been taught that. And, I immediately got radicalized after taking that class, because then I was angry, because I understood, like, you mean all this time, someone could have told me that I mattered and no one thought that this history was important for us to know? And, it was that teacher who then sent me on the path of becoming a journalist, because he was a black teacher. Black teachers kept their real with us, right. We could have all these conversations with them after class when we didn't like the way things were going at school or we felt discriminated against or mistreated, particularly as black kids being bussed into a school that wasn't ours. And, I complained to him one day that our high school paper never wrote about kids like me who rode the bus every day to come into this school. And, he told me, if you don't like it, either join the paper or shut up and don't come complain to me about it anymore. And, I joined my high school paper and that is actually what set me on the course to become a journalist. So, without him, maybe I wouldn't be on this stage today. And, it was definitely having a black teacher who was teaching me black studies that made me for the first time in my entire education think that I mattered.

[ Applause ]

>> So, let's stay with the topic of black teachers for a minute. Jose, what - do you want to say something about EduColor, you know, you're part of this - you're the Executive Director of an organization that's all about teachers of color and, you want to say something about why that group came together and what it's about?

>> Okay. Well, I'm going to put it this way. You could necessarily have a school that is a whole lot of black teachers with black [inaudible] of color and you could have [inaudible] of color all the way up until the Chancellor, right, and you could still have white supremacy reign all throughout that whole system into your way.

[ Applause ]

A lot of what EduColored folk notice, and by the way, EduColor ends up being like this collective of different folks from all across the country and like 90% of us had been fired at some point in time. And, if we haven't been fired, then we got a teacher improvement plan or not so board certified teacher improvement plan. You all put it together. And, it's interesting because what I see too often when it comes to black teachers specifically is that, you know, you ask us to come to the places that reflect us the most, right. Okay, cool, so we do that. You ask us to work with students who look a lot like us. Great, we will do that. And, then you ask us not to be ourselves in the very spaces where we could totally make an impact with our kids. You constantly ask us [inaudible] double down on the awfulness or you ask us not to be restorative about the way that we work, you ask us not to have a relationship with our kids, you ask us not to admire folks like Malcolm X and Ida B. Wells, you ask us not to bring up any blackness at all. You ask us to just be drones for you because you need us to raise your test scores, even though the tests are often racist and eugenicist and all those other stuff, right. So like, all the while, like, us being black teachers, we're being retraumatized because we were once black students and unfortunately and, you know, I much respected [inaudible] way because I'm just like, oh my gosh, you all are so awesome. You know, I wish I had that sort of activism in me, because I'm thinking about all the other colleagues of mine who we went through this experience and, you know, we made it out and we said we're going to come back to teaching, but here you are. As adults, we were trying to change this system and you still have us redoubling down the awfulness. So, as your color came out of that as a positive movement to fight back against a lot of this and, of course, we join up with any number of folks in NYCoRE, any number of you all who are doing this.

[ Cheering ]

I see you.

[ Laughter ]

NYC [inaudible] whoop-whoop. All you all, right. It's really about this work and it's not just - so, you could - again, you have to make sure that it's not just about of color. It's got to be of conscious, people who really want to develop this in a way - and, again you could even have the most, the blankest curriculum possible, but if those pedagogies and relationships are not black, then you ain't going to get the results that you really want, which is better human beings, not just testosterones, all right.

>> Yeah.

[ Applause ]

And, you were referring to the NYCoRE, the New York Collective of Radical Educators, and we should also give a shout out to --

>> All day.

>> -- the Movement of Rank and File Educators, both of which were --

[ Cheering ]

-- are represented here tonight and helped organize the week. So, thank you. And, we also, as you mentioned, have these two amazing student activists with us who were part of a campaign to kick metal detectors out of their school. You want to say something about how you - how did you get involved in this or how did this become an issue for you in the first place? You had an experience.

>> Okay. So, it started off as a normal [inaudible] getting our school, but then it escalated to cops sexually harassing students and commenting on the way they're dressing. And, students started getting tired of not, like, just being in the school area and stopped, just stopped coming to school. And, at one point, we were just tired of it and we decided to have a meeting, the entire campus, because we have six schools in our building. All six schools came together and had a meeting and we discussed that we would have a student walkout. And, that walkout happened the day after we had that meeting and 300 students walked out, along with faculty members. And, it was amazing how administration supported the students and walked out with us. And, the week after we met with the head of school safety, we had a meeting with him and it was really a very horrible meeting. He sat there and he was trying to convince us that we needed metal detectors for our safety, but it really wasn't. He felt that because our school is predominantly black and Latino and we felt very criminalized walking into the school every single day and having to go through scanning. It was just a really hard situation.

>> Yeah, so, when Zoya talked about the meeting that we had before the big protest, that's when I first got involved and it was, like she said, it was all the - majority of students from all the schools in the building just to give our opinions how we feel with NYCOU and that was the organization that came in. So, when I went there, my initial thoughts was like, okay, you know, some metal detectors, you know, let's keep us safe, whoopty-whoop. And, when I went there, it was like, it had more impact than I thought. I thought it was just going to be like, okay, a bunch of students screaming about how they don't [inaudible] in a bucket. But when we actually sat and had the conversation, they were like, Zoya said, there were people that said, you know, I was, you know, cat called by an officer, I was suspended because I had a butter knife, I had steak in my bag and for steak, you know - well, not a butter knife, a steak knife. You all know steak is tuff now a days --

[ Laughter ]

>> -- so, the fact that - and she was talking about how [inaudible] that they have very important examinations and it contributes towards your grade and then - she's a senior, so you know, when your grades go down, the cops just stop looking at you and, you know, Hispanic, African Americans, when they stop looking at you, you're done. Like, [inaudible] a glance by a college, that's a blessing in itself. And, then the other response in the testimonies, I was initially - I was like, wow, you know, I'm grateful that I never had to experience anything like this, but hearing it from other students, that's when I was like, okay, you know, I was the chosen from MBA, so that's when I got involved with the [inaudible].

>> And, you were saying that students have different feelings about this. I remember when I was an elementary school teacher, you know, the issue would come up and we would talk about it and my classes would always be split, like people would really have heated debates about this metal detector. It wasn't obvious to everybody that we should get rid of them. What did students say about other ways to be safe? I mean, what did they - how did the debate come down about the issue of safety?

>> It definitely wasn't easy, because we have this program in our school called Advisories, which all the students meet with a specific teacher and they're with the same students for four years. Some of you might know about it. And, they're in the advisory sessions, it was, like you said, it was like majority, those leaning, you know, let's get them out of here, but the other half was like, you know, let's just keep it, you know, I don't see nothing wrong, yah, yah, yah, we'll keep it safe, you know, there have been less fights [inaudible]. And, then when it ultimately came to combining the perspectives and submitting them to, you know, submitting them to the higher powers, it was more of a, how do I say it - I'm not trying to use the wrong words, it was more of a, you know, collective, because the strength in the numbers and - you repeat your initial question. I'm sorry [laughter]. I'm sorry, because I'm just --

>> No, I was just asking about how people thought about the issue of safety.

>> All right. Yeah, that's what you said.

>> Yeah.

>> So, the other alternative was like, oh, you need to get the school safety out of here, bring more counselors. That's one of the mandates that they had because we do have NYPD officers walking around our buildings. And, to some people, it's like, you know, it's their first tine going to a school in like Manhattan, they're not used to school safety and things like that and they was like, you know, let's just get them out, let's get more counselors in. And, then other adults who really thought into it, like myself, they was like, it starts at home, so you need to start connecting with the kids and their communities to kids at home, because it's one thing to go to school from 8:45 to 3:15 every day, five days out of the week, but then those other two days, those hours when you're not at school, what happens? And, then that's when the drama starts to manifest, because now social media is everything. That's how, oh he said this, she said this, over snatching over Facebook, and then there's no one to really be the counselor at home or in the community like, you know, don't have this spirit manifested in your system, like don't go to bed at night saying, all right, when I get to school tomorrow, [inaudible], you know, and then that's when they run to school. That's their only safe haven and then when the detectives came, it was like all hopes was lost.

>> Yeah. I was trying to find the latest statistics about New York City and the latest numbers I was able to find is that they have 5000 NYPD officers in the schools right now and about 3000 guidance counselors in the whole system. And, that's for 1.1 million students, 3000 guidance counselors. Do you want to talk a little bit about the campaign that you're on?

>> Okay. So, the campaign for our school we started the first week in December when we first got the metal detectors. Just a shout out to Malala [assumed spelling]. She was the founding member of our group and she was the person who brought all of us together and started the first protest. This was the first day that we had scanning and this was how it looked like. Students were standing outside in the cold. There was a long line all the way to the end of the block trying to get into school. And, then the first Monday, this is when we decided to have the first protest at the end of the block of the school. And, [inaudible] provided us with materials and things we needed to do this protest. And, we continued almost every day until we finally got the meeting with the head of the DEO. And, he just kept saying that we needed it and it was the end of discussion. When we were talking to him that day, I remember him looking at his phone while we were in the meeting and him saying, oh well, you just need it cause I say so. And, it was like talking to a wall. Like I'm saying something and it just keeps reflecting back on me. And, during that entire meeting, they were looking at each other and he kept saying that oh, he has to go, he has this meeting to go to, and he personally told us that he'll be looking at his phone not because it's not important to him, but because he has more important stuff to do. I was like wow. Later that week, we had the sitting in our school for March for Our Lives and we also sat in to protest. Our group also went to DC to support March for Our Lives, which was a really good thing for us, because it kind of opened our eyes more and kind of made us focus on something else other than the metal detectors and this is how we started focusing on more stuff and opening our doors to being more supportive to more movements. This is our logo. We have shirts made that we sometimes wear around school.

>> Go back to Friday for a second. I just want to point something out. So, basically on Friday, this is when the support for the teachers came in in terms of the DOE has certain guidelines for teachers as if, you know, you can't really walk out on the job to support a protest or things like that and [inaudible], so the fact that teachers from our school put their jobs, their careers in jeopardy to support students, that felt, you know, that felt very heartwarming to myself and to students. And, there was about a good 4 to 500 of us outside. We walked out during the middle of the day and, you know, it was strength in the numbers. The fact that there are students that actually cared that they didn't see in the meeting on Thursday, that they didn't hear from when they had the meeting with the head of school safety, the fact that you showed, you know, we came out in a force, that we made it on the citizen app, like, you know, that's not really, you know, a good thing to make on the citizen app, but the fact that, you know, crowd control, you know, is strength in the numbers and it's crazy because you've never seen this anywhere within a New York City public school like in [inaudible] history until like now, well and the March for Our Lives, but that was kind of before. Yeah, we did that.

>> I would just like to add, I don't know how well this protest was planned. The original - it was not a riot. Malala was actually arrested for being - they said that she started a riot, but students weren't behaving in any type of way that would make you think that we're violent and everything. We were just walking around the block calmly. We chanted our, like whatever we were chanting, and it was so beautiful to see so many students walk out. And, this protest was planned the day before and to know that so many students could have walked out and supported us and we had some of our principals walking out with us. It was really great.

>> I imagine, because you walk around like mad about things or angry about the way things are in the school and then suddenly when people walk out with you in huge numbers, I mean, it must be really transformative.

>> But there was that one knucklehead that like standing on top of the police car.

[ Laughter ]

We was like, you know, besides that, it was just like, it was a smooth --

[ Laughter ]

>> -- like --

>> There's always that one.

>> Yeah, there's always that one person, but it was a smooth transition, like it was a smooth transition.

>> Right. Right. What would you say to other high school students who may be in the audience or to their teachers, what would you say to other teachers in other schools or where actually there's the same issue, where they're being harassed on their way into school? How do they even begin to do something like this at their school?

>> I would say the first thing you need to do is find people that relate to you and find a safe space that you can sit down and talk and just put all your ideas out there. And, you also need at least an adult to just not directly look over you, but just to be there and support. And, we also give guidance if you need any tips or any type of help. You can also contact the [inaudible] and NYCOU. They will help you with certain information on how to create a student protest and, yeah.

>> And, also way to do - for the students out there, listen here. When you do organize, it's always important to get the other side of the argument too, because it's one thing to have, you know, everybody saying yes, yes, yes, but when you have those little sprinkles of no's, then you'll have a stronger argument when you do like events like these where you're talking and combatting - not combatting, but like when you have meetings where people in power who do disagree, you have those who, you know, can give advice and give evidence as to strengthen your claim as to what you want to do.

>> Absolutely. Thank you so much for coming and for sharing this story.

[ Applause ]

It's really important.

[ Applause ]

[ Cheering ]

Wow.

[ Applause ]

Just imagine, I mean, just imagine how high school and school might have been different for you if they had had this kind of thing going on when you were a high school student. I mean, really, it's amazing. One thing that - when you were speaking, one thing that kept coming up again and again was saying there's a white school across the street where they didn't have this. I just wanted to kind of throw that to you, Nikole, the fact that people can just kind of speak that way, like there's a white school. It's known as a white school. Why do we have schools that are known as white schools and other schools that are not known as white schools?

>> That's a real question?

[ Laughter ]

I mean, in true black folks have been fighting to make black lives matter in schools since we started coming to schools in the 1830s. When we started coming to schools in the 1830s in Massachusetts, in order to get white buy in to pay taxes for schools, black children were excluded from those schools. The first desegregation lawsuit in the history of our country happens in 1850 in Boston, not in the south. So, this is the oldest battle and historian James Anderson says that from the beginning, we've always had two philosophies of education, one for democracy, which is the education that white children get, and one for oppression, which is the education that black and brown kids get. So, it's not an accident, clearly. We live in one of the most diverse cities in the world and the most diverse city in the country and we have the most segregated schools in the country. And, that is because we have a school system that caters to the white middle class, that even though we say we have a system of school choice, choice benefits white parents and middle-class children. So, it's not surprising. We say that any kid can go to any school in the city, but then we put up all of these barriers. You have to test in, you have to have a portfolio, you have to interview in person, you have to interview in person during the hours when your parents are at work. So, we set up barriers to produce exactly what we produce. What that does though, is in some ways it could be demeaning to our students, but it can also be empowering, because when you have completely segregated systems, our children get conditioned to think that the things they experience in school are normal, and so they don't question why they have metal detectors, because every kid they know goes to school with metal detectors. But when you can see right across the street that those kids aren't having to wait in line for the cold to get through metal detectors. And, often, these metal detectors make kids late. School starts late, they're late to class, it takes away instructional time. When you go in just about any New York City public school, the first thing you see when you go in the door is a police officer, that sets the tone for what the school is supposed to do. And, so I think that that has actually - the segregation makes it very clear what we're trying to do, which is black children are to be contained and controlled and we're going to set the message from the moment you get to the schoolhouse that this is what is to happen inside the school. And, when you think about - when we think about where the most violence occurs, right, and who is going in schools and shooting schools up, and who is going in schools and killing multiple children in our schools.

>> Exactly.

>> Yeah.

[ Applause ]

>> Those are not the demographic schools that have metal detectors, that have children being padded down as they're going into class every day. That sets the tone. So, then when the kids get - after standing outside for 20 minutes, they've been padded down, they've been treated like criminals as they're going into institutions that are supposed to educate them, then when they have an attitude in the classroom, we say it's because they don't care. Then, when they automatically are not in the mood to learn or had we tell them what to do because they've been demeaned before they even enter the building, then we say that they just don't value their education. But the truth is, our schools tell them that we don't value their education and they simply react to that. So, I think, you know, we have segregated schools because the majority of white people want it that way. And --

[ Applause ]

>> Yeah.

[ Applause ]

I want to pick up on - I want to pick up on something you said about how this battle - you located the start of it in Boston --

>> Yes.

>> -- in the 1830s. And, I think there's a certain dissidence. I know when I began teaching elementary school in Harlem, I was struck by how segregated the school was and yet how high the praise for the civil rights movement and the story that we tell and that everybody in New York City learns as this like struggle to defeat southern Jim Crow. But there's less education about the northern system of Jim Crow or an examination of whether or not that still persists or exists. This is a northern story that you're talking, yeah.

>> Of course. I mean, the hypocrisy of white northern liberals, right, has no bounds. Let's be honest.

[ Applause ]

It's like the old adage though, we know who's writing the history, who's telling the stories. When Brown v. Board of Education comes down from the Supreme Court, white northerners applauded the ruling because they thought it applied only down there.

[ Laughter ]

Then, Kenneth Clark, who is one of the first PhDs in Psychology from Columbia or the first says hold on a minute. Have you seen New York City schools? In many ways, black children in New York City were testing lower than black children in the south because they were receiving such an inferior and segregated education here. What we're not taught is the largest mass demonstration for civil rights in the history of out country occurred in New York City in the 1960s when black and Puerto Rican kids, a half a million, decided they would not attend school to protest the conditions of their schools and segregation. Why is that not part of the story of the movement?

>> Right.

>> It is because we want to believe in our superiority. Let me tell you, the most integrated part of the country in terms of schools has been the south for the last 50 years. The most segregated part has been the northeast and the midwest. And, if you think about it, you know. Name your northern industrial city that has no white kids left in the schools. Newark, Philly, New York City, Chicago, Milwaukee, Detroit, go down the list.

>> Yeah, and they're often the schools that are named after the civil rights legends.

>> Yeah.

>> Are the now the - the third [inaudible] Marshalls --

>> Yes.

>> -- and Martin Luther Kings are the most segregated schools.

>> I [inaudible] feel like that's just a troll, right, like we're going to name it after you now that we've left it behind and destroyed everything, now we'll put your name on it. So, it is - white people who are in New York City public schools love the bragging rights that you get from being able to say I'm a public school parent. But when you look at the schools that their children attend, they don't look like the public schools. Right. They are almost entirely low poverty and very heavily white in a school system that's only 15% white. That's a choice. So, what I always say with my work is I'm actually trying to - I don't write to Trump supports. I write to white liberals and ask them to actually live the values that they say they have.

[ Applause ]

>> So, how do you all see this? What is your school? Is your school a black school, is it a mixed school in some way? You see this what you called a white school across the street, what's your school? And, you're in two different schools in the same complex, a complex named after Bayard Rustin, by the way.

>> My school is a very mixed school, but it's morally predominantly black and Latino.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah.

>> My school is predominantly black and Latino. You'll see a handful of white people, but all the teachers are majority white.

>> You can literally count the amount of white people that are in my school.

>> Wow. And, what about your school?

>> Which school? My own, right? Okay. Because, by the way, like my son is here. He's 7 years old. Hi.

[ Laughter ]

And, my son's principal is here --

>> All right.

>> -- and I see her over there. Hi, Jane Watson [assumed spelling], how are you? So, of course, I'm going to be like super frank, right.

[ Laughter ]

My own school is mostly Latino, mostly Dominican, so like hybrid Dominican, so [inaudible].

[ Laughter ]

And, of course, it's all the [inaudible] colorism and all that other good stuff too but, you know, having an actual black presenting, black Latino person in that school, you know, means that black lives do matter in that school when they are present within that black person. I'll leave it at that.

[ Inaudible Responses ]

But then my son's school, you know, Luz [assumed spelling], my wife, she's right over here as well, like we had this discussion about being, like, having our child to go to a public school that was truly representative of the demographic of Harlem, right. So, like you read Nikole Hannah-Jones's story and, of course, she's the homie, right, so she's going to write the words. And, then I read them and I'm like, okay, so Luz, what are we going to do and she's like, like you're smart. I'm like, no, you're smarter than me, so there's that. And, at some point we just say, you know what, like we're going to trust and we're going to have some faith because there's two things that I know to be true. One is that like Luz and I are pretty damn good educators, so when we walk in, we know what the pedagogue ought to look like, and then two, if we don't like it, then we - the public school has more transparency and more a democratic sort of way for us to get feedback. In other words, we'll be up in the principal's office if we need to be, you know what I mean [laughter]? She knows [inaudible] oh my gosh, Jose I'm sorry. But yeah, like that's the thing. A representative, like, yes, we need a school like that in order for my son to feel like yes, I'm around black people, I am a black person and like we need more of us to be able to say we need a really education and we have enough people whoa re adults who say yes, let's invest in us.

>> And, now we have a Chancellor who is a man of color, who's speaking as a man of color, talking about equity, talking about the question of segregation in schools, organizing anti-biased training for educators, what do we all think about this? Do we feel like there's something that's changing for the better? What is - what's happening --

>> I think [multiple speakers] --

>> -- with these policies? Are they working?

[ Laughter ]

>> I think it's somewhat working so far in a way, but we - I think just the new prospective is going to help make things better, I hope. Yeah.

>> It's a step.

[ Laughter ]

It's a step because, like, first of all, like, [inaudible] to him, but it's like, you know --

[ Laughter ]

but it's like, you have - because when he first got in, you see him going to all these different schools. You know, he visited every borough school in every borough and it's like, you know, you have kind of bigger problems on the table, my friend. Like, you know, you can visit different schools, you know, they have excelling stem programs, they have excelling music, art, aviation, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you have kids that actually have potential, but you're not noticing it. You're too busy, you know, with the paparazzi shooting at this school --

[ Cheering ]

[ Applause ]

-- when at a campus like ours, like our futures are being shut down because of things that you're supposed to be potentially over controlled. You're supposed to be the Chancellor over the decisions that occur between the NYPD and the New York City Department of Education. So, you know, it's nice to take pictures with airplanes, but you know --

[ Laughter ]

-- like, where are you and hopefully, I mean, hopefully it could be that his agenda is so crazy he might touch upon it later which, you know, de Blasio said that - we know de Blasio.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

So, hopefully he'll come visit us later in terms of, you know, he'll speak upon this issue in terms of metal detectors in schools, but until then it's, you know, congratulations, but I can't talk to you.

[ Laughter ]

>> Okay.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

>> This you can tell folks don't have no job.

[ Laughter ]

Look, he don't even want to say nothing.

[ Laughter ]

[ Inaudible Response ]

So, one, he hasn't been - he has not been in the job very long. This is a million student system with Mayoral control. I think that the Chancellor - the new Chancellor came out and called directly things that no one would say directly before. He called a segregation. He said that Brown v. Board has been the law of the land for 65 years, why do we still have segregated schools? I think that was very powerful, being that we had a Mayor who would not utter the word whatsoever, who said that, you know, the housing choices of wealthy people are more important than equity for our kids. So, I think that that matters, but I also think we know, you know, having a person of color atop of white supremacy institutions did not change that institution. We saw that with Obama, right?

[ Applause ]

And, one can look at the very small changes being suggested for a small number of schools called the specialized high schools and how even black elected officials soon coward when there was a little bit of pushback and those schools are affecting just a handful of students. So, the battles are going to be very, very challenging. I think we have to be realistic. Who holds the powers in these schools and I think you do have a Chancellor and I think you do have a Chancellor who wants, who actually believes in this, who speaks very bluntly, but can he actually change the system unless you somehow get white support to do what needs to be done. And, as someone who has been studying this history going back 300 years, I can tell you counting on that support is a [inaudible] probably not going to happen. It'll be interesting to see how long he lasts, let's put it like that.

>> Okay. Okay. So, before we throw it to the audience in a moment, I just want to maybe for a minute just dream big. You had a blog post about what kind of schools and like dreaming big, afrofuturism and both of you, and you Nikole, have written about how the real promise of public education is about redistribution, about giving up advantage and that sort of thing. What's on the top of your list of things that have to change either in your school or in the system as a whole [laughter]?

>> Okay, so at the risk of another teacher improvement plan --

[ Laughter ]

Hey, yo, I told them about that too. So, I started teaching at a time when you had a quasi-illiberal building there who pretended to care about our struggle in a real major way, whose top educator decided to go to a network of schools that wants kids to pee in their pants for test prep, like, okay, and said oh, all of our schools should be like this one that's heavily funded by hedge fund managers, right. And, of course, there was the 99 days of like the person who didn't know what they were doing at all and just had to insult black parents. And, then like you had the one person who after some amount of years said, oh I'm an educator now because, like, duh, I've been here forever, even though he's really never done that work. So, to say that we've made progress, okay, like, we have somebody who can actually say black lives matter, okay, so we've made progress, okay, fine. And, yet something tells me that in District 6 - that Chancellor watching [inaudible], right, you still have a sense of testing that has been deleterious to costume environments and school environments [inaudible], so we're talking about like oh, if you don't meet these goals, then your school is not good, oh I'm going to totally say what's got to be on your lesson plans, your do nows have to look like this, your lesson plans have to look like this, oh but you can be as creative as you want.

>> Right.

>> Except if you're [inaudible] this, right? You can have, again, you can have any number of people of color all throughout these schools and yet you don't want them to be of color because you're just like, well, we've got to do it like the white schools do it in order for us to be better. It's like, what does better mean to you, bruh? And, more importantly, how are we going to finally find some liberation with it in our systems to be able to say, we actually don't need these tests to tell us whether or not we have good kids, that we have good folks that really want to do this work. So, in places like Washington Heights where you have all this gentrification, where you have all this like, you know, we have a lot of incarceration, we have a lot of kids who are coming in from any number of countries like - this is the place where Trump hates and [inaudible] again, right, like we need to mention that. It's worth saying to ourselves like the kind of schools that we want don't necessarily rely on these ridiculous test scores. We instead we need spaces that actually want to build up kids the way that we have, not just my two fellow panelists over here, but also any number of kids who have super-duper potential to be able to do like really awesome things with their lives.

>> Right.

>> That's kind of where we're at in all of that.

[ Applause ]

>> What do you want to change?

>> I would definitely change the curriculum in my school. Like --

[ Applause ]

-- just to educate students more on their culture and just give them more prospective on how the world actually works. Like, if you think about it, they'll teach you how math, like, they'll just throw math at you, like, I'm going to really need this in the world - yeah, you're going to need, but not that much [laughter]. They're not going to tell you --

[ Laughter ]

[ Inaudible Responses ]

-- they're not going to [inaudible] tell you that - they're not going to show you how, like, you're going to actually need - they don't show you actually what you need in the world. They're not going to tell you that when I apply for this job, they're going to look at maybe I didn't take this specific class in college or maybe I didn't graduate high school, they're not going to tell you that everything - they're going to - a bunch of people that are going to hire you are just going to look at you based on your skin color or your knowledge. They don't teach you the specifics. They need to be more in-depth on how things actually work. They need to actually tell you the truth instead of jut throwing things at you that you don't directly actually need. They just give you all this stuff, kind of like just to throw you off so when you actually get out there, you're just not ready.

>> That's right.

>> Thank you.

[ Applause ]

>> I think we have enough time, I just want to [inaudible] two things, like the funding and the curriculum. So, in terms of curriculum, I think [inaudible] of the mandates was to change the way, change the black history and I say this not to throw shade on my history teacher, but we've learned about slavery a million times already, because [inaudible] teacher, you know, he has the voice, okay ladies and gentleman, today we're going to learn about slavery. We learned about it since third grade, what else is there to know? Because if you just - if majority of the history class throughout the year is focusing on our oppression and the negative aspect of us and not focusing on how we combatted it, how we're making progress, the fact that I see, you know, pictures of Nat Turner and pictures, graphic pictures of things that happened in the past and I don't see the 44th President of the United States tells me something. So, change the curriculum for one, that's all I'm going to say about that before I get into a sermon about it. And, the second part about the funding, like Jose said and like I said earlier, there are a lot of kids with a lot of potential. If you notice within the past what, five, six years, there has been a huge push on [inaudible]. You've seen the commercials, you've seen the programs, you've seen the sponsorships. Amen, halleluiah, that's a nice field to work in when you get older, but some people were not just, were not really interested in that. For me, I want to be in the Arts, I want to do theater, music, business, you know. Why are we focusing on sending kids to camps, overnight camps to learn about robotics, engineering, and things like that, putting all this money in, but somehow, the art program gets cut, the music program gets cut. And, then you're funding now more and more kids are going to [inaudible] classes and less and less kids are getting a chance to actually express themselves.

[ Applause ]

[ Inaudible Response ]

>> Oh, what would I change?

>> Yeah [inaudible].

>> I mean, you'd have to destroy the whole system and start anew, really.

[ Laughter ]

[ Applause ]

>> I was waiting for you to say that.

>> I mean, in some ways, I'm being flip, but in some ways it's true. Our schools are producing what they are designed to produce.

>> Yeah.

>> And, our children since black kids started getting access to common schools, have been educated to serve and not to lead, and I think in many schools that's what our schools are doing right now. With that said, there are some big things you could do just to make them more equitable. That will likely never happen, but you said what do I want. We have to stop funding schools by property tax, by local property tax.

[ Applause ]

If we are going to concentrate poverty in schools and put into schools kids where 90%, 95% of kids are poor, then you have to give those schools five times as many resources.

>> Right.

[ Applause ]

We're not doing that. So, we're putting all of these kids who have additional needs in the schools and then those schools are getting less funding, they are getting less of what they need, not even the same as other schools, so I think we really have to make that commitment. And, honestly, we cannot continue to allow schools in a majority black and Latino system to be majority white and wealthy. We just can't. It's not equitable, it's not fair, it teaches our kids that they don't matter as much, it teaches white kids that they matter more. And, I think that we have to find the courage to do what's right. And, what's right is that - we actually have a beautifully diverse school system. We have a school system that is about 40% Latino, about 27% black, about 14-15% Asian, and the same white. If our schools reflected that, that would be an amazing looking school district.

>> Yeah.

>> Instead, black kids who are not even the largest ethnic group are the most segregated of all kids. And, they're the most segregated away from schools that have opportunity of all kids. This is a system that was designed to ensure our kids cannot compete, that our kids will not learn to think for themselves. I'm just going to - now see, I'm about to give a sermon. I'm going to cut it short [laughter]. One of the reasons we don't learn our history of resistance is because when you learn that history, you start to resist.

>> Yeah.

>> Right.

[ Applause ]

When you learn that John Lewis [assumed spelling] was a high school student when he stood up for the first time, that you think about yourself as a high school student and you say I can stand up, I don't have to put up with these things anymore. But when you're only taught that you were enslaved and you waited for someone to liberate you, then you're going to sit and wait for someone to liberate you.

>> Yeah.

[ Applause ]

So, one, that's why having black teachers, but black teachers who'll also teach our kids about being black.

>> Yeah.

>> Because just having a black teacher in a classroom, I can tell you, my daughter's school is a majority black school, but I don't know that we could have had a black lives matter at school week out of her school. We have to have schools that liberate our kid's minds, that do not teach them not to challenge their circumstances. And, that is one structural change where if you never integrate our kids, teach them to liberate their minds, and everything else will come after that.

>> Right.

[ Cheering ]

[ Applause ]

[ Music ]

>> Okay. So, that was Brian Jones who's the Associate Director of Education at the Schomburg Center speaking with Nikole Hannah-Jones, who's an investigative journalist for the New York Times, and Jose Vilson, who is a math teacher and education activist, and high school students, Zoya David and Joshua Brown. If you want to learn more about black lives matter at school, you can go to blacklivesmatteratschool.com. Library Talks is produced by Schuyler Swenson with editorial support from [inaudible] and myself. And, our theme music was composed by Allison Layton-Brown.

[ Music ]