New York City is one of the most diverse cities in the world, yet generations after Brown vs. Board of Education, many of the Big Apple’s schools remain hopelessly segregated by both race and class.
Matthew Diaz, Youth Director of National Outreach for the Committee on Resource Allocation for IntegrateNYC4Me, and his Executive Director, Sarah Camiscoli, are on the front lines of the issue of school equity, with Matthew currently a junior at The Bronx Academy of Letters. For the last two years, they’ve been working to have the needs of current and future students in New York and across the country heard and addressed to ensure an equitable education.
Hebh Jamal grew up in the Bronx but attended an elite public high school in midtown Manhattan. That experience gave her a sense of just how big of a difference five miles can make when it comes to schooling – and it prompted her to start asking questions about race, class, and enrollment. Eventually, she teamed up with a youth-led group called IntegrateNYC, and together, they found some answers.
Now, Hebh is an activist on a mission to integrate the nation’s most racially segregated public school system. This present fight echoes of a similar one, six decades earlier.
For many women and girls, Nov. 9 was a primal scream kind of moment.
Hillary Clinton conceded to Donald Trump after an election cycle that churned up issues of misogyny, sexual assault and “locker-room talk.” It was a day that a woman with experience in government and international affairs lost a job to a man with none.
In her concession speech, Clinton addressed girls in particular.
“Never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams,” she said.
In the post-election world, girls and young women must believe in their value and power with even more conviction, all while girding themselves for encountering sexism, said Shauna Pomerantz, an associate professor focusing on girlhood and youth culture at Brock University in Ontario. She co-authored the recent book, Smart Girls, which delves into what Pomerantz calls the myth of post-feminism.
New York state’s top policymakers are wading into a heated debate about how to integrate the state’s schools. But before they pick a course of action, they wanted to hear from their main constituents: students.
At last week’s Board of Regents meeting, policymakers invited students from Epic Theatre Ensemble, who performed a short play, and from IntegrateNYC4Me, a youth activist group, to explain what it’s like to attend racially isolated schools. New York’s drive to integrate schools is, in part, a response to a widely reported study that named the state’s schools — including those in New York City — as the most segregated in the country.
A group of students wrote letters to the leaders of the high schools they are leaving behind, and they were blunt. Despite attending different schools with different academic rigor and student populations, they focused on two themes: the racial makeup of their schools and inequity.
“I remember a teacher saying he wouldn’t learn to say the correct pronunciation of my name and another one going as far as to call me an illegal refugee within school walls,” said Yacine Fall who is Muslim, born and raised in Harlem. She attended Beacon High School in Manhattan.
