I had the privilege of attending the Color of Education event this week. I’m still trying to digest everything said by the wonderful Nikole Hannah-Jones. She was blunt and funny about a subject that most people dance around. She spoke about race and integration.
I encourage all of you to tune into Public School Forum’s Education Matters this weekend. She will be the keynote guest. I encourage all of you to check out her writing on your own. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/12/magazine/choosing-a-school-for-my-daughter-in-a-segregated-city.html
I’d love to tell you all that I made some conscience choice to enroll my son in a diverse school. I didn’t. Nor did I painstakingly look at test scores and demographics. I was blissfully unaware of it all. My husband and I bought a house in ideal location that was near both our workplaces, and had a basement. We both hated the idea of wasting our lives sitting in traffic. As luck would have it, we ended up in a diverse public school.
Also, despite the fact that my kid’s school is only 35% white, our PTA board is almost all white. This is problematic and something we should all look at. One key thing pointed out in the lecture was that integration is the sharing of power. I need to work harder in my own life to make this happen.
You see, we were all tasked to take our knowledge and do something, to answer the question; what now. I’m beginning by writing this post. I’m starting by acknowledging that too many times we dance around the question of integration. I’m not a good dancer anyway.
I’m going to be blunt. We have a crisis on hands. It’s in our North Carolina borders. It is happening in Charlotte-Mecklenburg. The NC General Assembly passed HB514. This allows for municipalities to open their own charter schools. This is segregation.
So one small but yet significant thing we can do in November is vote. Vote those who voted for HB514 out. We need to hold our legislators accountable. We need to add integration as a goal for our schools across the state. Below is the votes for both House and Senate.
I apologize that there is no possible way to truly capture all that I’m feeling about hearing Nikole Hannah- Jones speak. Perhaps as time continues I will be able to put more pieces together. For now. I ask us all to do what we can now, and that for all of us is vote.