School Colors Episode 7: "The Sleeping Giant"

Code Switch

NPR

Society & Culture

4.6 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 June 2022

⏱️ 60 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In some ways, this entire season was prompted by the parents who organized against diversity planning in School District 28. So in this episode, we're going back to that one ugly meeting, where they unleashed their fear and anger into the rest of the community. So who are these parents, what do they believe and why? Moreover, why were they ready to fight so hard against a plan that didn't exist?

Transcript

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0:00.0	Peace y'all. We're coming to the end of this season of school colors and we'd really like to hear from you.
0:06.0	Have you heard something on the show that's moved you or changed the way you think about race, class, power, and schools in your own life?
0:13.6	This goes out to everybody, but especially our friends and queens.
0:17.8	Give us a call at 929-483-6387 and leave us a voicemail.
0:25.4	You might even hear your voice on the last episode.
0:27.5	All right, on with the show.
0:31.2	So right before we started, I was telling you how there was this diversity plan that was supposed to begin, but that it didn't because of the pandemic.
0:38.8	So you hit you this is me tap like, never and I'm very much into
0:46.4	failure what's going on with school. I was going to my community and nothing.
0:52.4	You mentioned your main Baptiste and her son Elias at the end of the last episode.
0:56.3	I spoke to them in December 2021 more than two years after this proposed diversity planning process set off a firestorm in district 28.
1:04.7	But Chermaine had never even heard of it. I have nothing from it from anybody at all. Nobody at all. Nothing.
1:11.3	You just you just telling me this is the first time I heard it ever.
1:15.2	I didn't tell her much, but what she heard she took personally. I felt like they don't want my son around.
1:21.6	And then I even want to give him an opportunity.
1:23.6	Why? Tell me why? Why you don't want my son to be in in in that school or you know what I'm saying? Why? What is a threat?
1:35.2	You know what I'm saying? I don't understand what why I would love to be in that meeting to like ask the question.
1:43.0	What's the problem? I explained to her some of the problems parents raised at a dramatic meeting of the Community Education Council or CEC in December 2019.
1:52.5	If we're going to be honest here most families in Riga Park and Fouar Stills are not going to put their kids on extensive long commutes.
2:00.0	So the pledge representing a sub-part school it just doesn't make any sense. I foresee additional traffic, more pollution,
2:07.2	kids getting home later, having to do their homework still, less time to rest,
2:12.0	less time to spend time with the family, less time to socialize.
	...

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