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School Colors

S2 E2: Tales from the Southside

School Colors

Brooklyn Deep

Politics, Education, Government, News

5656 Ratings

🗓️ 30 November 2022

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

District 28 is both diverse and segregated. There’s a Northside and a Southside. To put it simply: the Southside is Black, and the further north you go, the fewer Black people you see. But it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time, Black parents in South Jamaica staged an epic school boycott that led to the first statewide law against school segregation in New York. The Southside hosted two revolutionary experiments in racially integrated housing. So what happened between then and now?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Parent after parent after parent, they were complaining and they were screaming.

0:05.0

They were not just talking.

0:07.2

They were screaming at them.

0:08.9

I had never seen anything like that before.

0:13.0

And with every parent, I disappeared more and more from my chair.

0:18.0

I was like in front row.

0:20.1

In 2019, school district 28 was chosen by the

0:23.9

New York City Department of Education to go through a diversity planning process. District 28 is in

0:29.6

Queens, often tied as the most diverse place in the world. But almost anyone in the district will tell

0:34.8

you there's a north side and a south side.

0:38.1

At the first public meeting about this diversity plan, parents from the north side of the district showed up in force to express their opposition.

0:44.9

I do know that there were people in the room who were supportive of it.

0:49.5

It was just we were a minority, maybe, I don't know, two, three people, five at most.

0:56.0

Simone Dornbach was one of those supportive parents.

0:59.2

Simone is white and lives on the north side.

1:01.3

She's a social worker and a mediator.

1:03.4

She once worked on a National Reconciliation Conference in Uganda to bring people together

1:07.5

after a civil war.

1:09.0

And still, she was shocked by what she saw that night in District 28.

1:13.1

And so I didn't speak, and I was so glad,

1:15.3

because I just felt like I am the only person in here who actually think this is a good idea.

1:21.5

And that was really, for me, the moment when I got scared.

...

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