898: An Argument

Nikole Hannah-Jones made an argument 10 years ago in The New York Times Magazine that became famous. She wrote about choosing a public school for her daughter, Najya, in one of the most racially and economically segregated school systems in the country: New York City. Nikole chose a regular public school, one that most wealthy and middle-class parents wouldn’t consider, and she challenged other parents to do the same. She revisits that argument, and that choice, in a series of conversations with producer Chana Joffe-Walt and with her daughter, Najya, who’s now 16 and has her own very different views. Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners https://thisamericanlife.supercast.com?utm_id=lifepartners&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=shownotes to sign up for our premium subscription. (00:00:00) Prologue: Chana talks with Nikole about what they both remember from being young parents just starting to think about schools for their children. (9 minutes) (00:10:41) Act One: Nikole talks with Chana about Najya’s elementary school and the problems her family navigated there. (15 minutes) (00:25:57) Act Two: Chana talks with Najya about her memories of elementary and middle school and how she felt about her mom’s choices. (9 minutes) (00:31:40) Act Three: Nikole and Najya talk about what changed when Najya pushed back against her mom’s choices for elementary and middle school and got to choose her own high school. (10 minutes) (00:42:08) Act Four: Nikole and Najya talk with each other about the different choices they made and the questions they still have for each other. (9 minutes) (00:51:06) Act Five: Nikole fact-checks her memory against her old emails with Najya’s elementary school and has a painful revelation. (7 minutes) Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org https://www.thisamericanlife.org/898/transcript / This American Life privacy policy https://www.thisamericanlife.org/page/privacy-policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Ira Glass?

  Hey, it's Ira with a quick word before the show starts. So I have this video that I want to show you. Maybe you heard, because we did so many promos, actually, that we just did this live show onstage in Los Angeles where I told stories and then Vic McAlister and these really talented comedians did improvised scenes based on those stories on the spot. And we livestreamed video of this show. And I'm just here to say that if you missed the livestream, you can now see the show. We have posted the video online. It's a really fun show. And to watch this for absolutely free, sign up for a free trial This American Life Partners subscription. And our hope is, you know, you'll stick around after the trial and that you'll love all

• 0:42Ira Glass?

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• 1:20Speaker 01

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• 1:51Ira Glass?

  Hey there, everybody. Ira Glass here. So our show today is something that producer Chana Joffe-Walt has been collaborating on with reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones. And Nikole's version of this story, which is in The New York Times Magazine, is something that many, many people are discussing online right now. And I just want to say that if you have seen that article, there are a lot of things in what you're about to hear that are not in the article. Particularly, you'll get to hear at length from Nikole's daughter. And there are things that commentators are raising online that get interestingly addressed in our version. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, don't worry. All of this will become clear. And with that, here's Chana Joffe-Walt talking with Nikole Hannah-Jones.

• 2:35Ira Glass?

  These are recordings made as Nikole was in the process of writing that article.

• 2:39Speaker 02

  I'm going to make sure we're recording.

• 2:41Speaker 03

  All right.

• 2:42Speaker 02

  Has it been 10 years since you've been in here?

• 2:44Speaker 03

  I'm trying to think when. I'm like, damn, I know it's been a long time. How long has it been?

• 2:50Speaker 02

  That's Nikole. And this is a ritual I find myself in with some frequency at my age, beginning social interactions with an accounting of time that inevitably leads to a conversation about the kids, where they were then and where they are now.

• 3:06Speaker 03

  And my child was just getting ready to start school. And now my child is a sophomore, getting ready to celebrate her sweet 16.

• 3:14Speaker 02

  That is wild.

• 3:15Speaker 03

  So...

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Really 16.

• 3:17Speaker 03

  That is wild. She will be 16 next month. Yeah. Time.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  Nikole and I spent a lot of time talking about our kids 10 years ago and talking about schools. We were reporting together on education, specifically on inequality and systemic racism in American public schools, how decades of policy choices have left public schools deeply unequal, many schools completely neglected. And meanwhile, Nikole and I had little kids. And in our own lives, the conversation among parents was how to game the system to be sure that your children do not end up in one of those schools.

• 3:58Speaker 03

  Literally, every middle-class parent, no matter what their race was, was like, you have to put her in, you know, Talented and Gifted prep courses because they test at 4:00 and you have to decide if you're going to put her in private school. But you're definitely not going to put her in the neighborhood school. And I lived in the heavily black, high-poverty neighborhood.

• 4:21Speaker 02

  These questions, what are you going to do about school, started right out of the gate.

• 4:26Speaker 03

  I mean, my response was, she's one.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:30Speaker 03

  And people would look at me like, oh, you're so naive. I remember people being like, you silly woman. And people actually felt that that was like not being a good parent, frankly.

• 4:42Speaker 02

  This intense, often judgmental scramble is something parents in places all over America do. But in New York City, where Nikole and I live, it's arguably the most extreme version. Parents have spreadsheets of schools, endless advice. You're going to want to avoid this school, apply to this program, maybe move to a different neighborhood. Any contortion makes sense, not even to strive for an elite school, but to avoid a, quote, "bad" school. What were the "bad" schools? Well, New York City has one of the most racially and economically segregated school systems in the country. The, quote, "bad" schools that families with options tried to avoid were disproportionately

• 5:26Speaker 02

  black, Latino, and poor. In her reporting, Nikole had seen that black students all over the country are concentrated in schools like this, where they're less likely to have the best teachers or curricula or facilities. And one reason that happens is that wealthy and middle-class families like hers opt out of those schools. So Nikole, who had a young black daughter and had been a young black girl herself, when her daughter, Najya, got to be school-aged, she did not make a spreadsheet, she did not game the system. She enrolled Najah in a regular public school, the kind of school most New York City kids end up in. The students mostly came from the neighborhood, black and Latino kids, poor and working

• 6:11Speaker 02

  class. Here's how Nikole saw it. She thought if more parents with advantage like her are inside a school, they could add their weight. They'll be personally invested. They'll be paying attention and seeing when there are problems. They can advocate for a school, for funding, for more experienced teachers, for extra programming, so all the students in the school, including their own kids, have what they need to learn. Nikole wrote about all this in a cover story for The New York Times Magazine 10 years ago. And on the cover, there was little Najah in her school uniform, Afro puffs, serious face, looking right at the camera. And the headline?

• 6:53Speaker 03

  Choosing a school for my daughter in a segregated city.

• 6:56Speaker 02

  I remember seeing it.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  So that's the setup.

• 6:58Speaker 02

  I remember seeing it and being like, oh, she did it.

• 7:01Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, because we, you know, you and I, we talked a lot about it.

• 7:06Speaker 02

  It was an earthquake of a story. Nikole putting the matter bluntly to parents. All of us gaming the system is making the system worse. What if we just stop?

• 7:17Speaker 03

  I was really, really shocked by the impact that this piece had. You know, people were both writing, but also just sharing their story with me at my public speeches or other events that I was giving, like face-to-face, which was extremely powerful for me as well.

• 7:41Speaker 02

  I feel like you're underselling how much influence it's had on...

• 7:43Speaker 03

  Am I? What am I supposed to say?

• 7:45Speaker 02

  So like, there's school districts across the country that were suddenly talking about something that they had not been talking about, not just parents, but actual people controlling school policy.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Yes. It, in some ways, like, this was like my dream as a journalist. But I became a writer because I wanted society to change. So I always write in a way where I'm trying to persuade people by making a moral argument.

• 8:18Speaker 02

  That's what the story was, an argument. And it landed with so many people.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  This story just, in some ways, like, never lost its legs. I was in Boston a few weeks ago, and a woman who has a six-year-old, her child wasn't even born when the story came out, said that this story guided her education decision-making for her child.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  In a lot of your events, there was some people who would come up to you to sort of absolve them of their choice that they had made.

• 8:50Speaker 03

  Oh, all the time. Almost every public event I would do, either during the question-and-answer session, after the event, they would like kind of corner you. And there would inevitably be a parent or parents who would explain why they really, really, really believed in what I was saying, and they believed in the power of equality, but, you know, they just, they couldn't make that choice for whatever reason. And I'd always be like, you know, okay, I'm not your priest. I cannot absolve you, and I don't want to absolve you. I wanted you to be forced to be like, what about these kids? What do they deserve?

• 9:32Speaker 02

  So for 10 years, Nikole has talked publicly all over the country about every aspect of this article, except how it played out in her own life for her and her kid. And she decided she wanted to write about what happened and talk through it. So many months ago, Nikole reached out to me to ask if I wanted to hear everything that happened after the article was published. Yes, I did. She thought all the people who read her original essay 10 years ago and thought about it and talked to her about it and passed it on to others deserved to know how it actually turned out. And she thought her daughter, Najya, deserved a chance to share her perspective, too.

• 10:16Speaker 02

  Najah was eager to talk. She had a lot she wanted to say about this, and she has a very different take from her mom's. What you're going to hear is a series of conversations that took place before Nikole published her recent New York Times article, as she was trying to figure out in real time what she would write about all this. I talked to Nikole, and later, I talked to Najah, and she talks to her mom. These are conversations throughout which I was so alert and on edge sometimes. It is rare to hear a person who made a big influential argument come forward and say honestly, this is how it actually played out, and then publicly face their teenager.

• 11:01Speaker 02

  Who subjects themselves to that? That's today's show, An Argument in Five Acts. Two people willing to talk about some of the country's most enduring problems and look at how they unfolded in their own lives as mother and daughter. From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life. Stay with us.

• 11:32Speaker 04

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• 11:37Ira Glass?

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• 12:10Speaker 05

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• 12:34Speaker 02

  It's This American Life, Act One, Nicole's Choice. Nicole had been the one to pick the school, back when Najah was little. Her husband, Faraji, had been reluctant to send Najah there. He worried they'd be hurting her. Asked Nicole, is this us experimenting on our child based on idealism? They'd argued about it. But once they resolved to do it, Faraji was all in. He threw himself into the school. Both of them were committed to being involved, and Faraji ended up even more involved than Nicole. They reassured themselves, knowing that if there were ways the school fell short, they could get Najah help. And they'd be there, watching. They were both constantly assessing how it was going, where

• 13:19Speaker 02

  the school faltered, where it succeeded, what Najah was getting. They were tracking all of it, including benefits that don't get factored into lists of New York City's top schools.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  She got to spend her first six years of education in a school where most of the kids looked like her, where she had incredible Black and she had a Chinese-American educator, she had incredible Black educators, she had Caribbean educators, amazing Black History Month celebrations. They used to have the students do these self-portraits. And she would always, when she was young, make herself a dark-skinned Black woman, which I was like, yes, like, so you are, you know, as a Black girl, seeing yourself in that lens and not

• 14:13Speaker 03

  in the lens of this, like, outside world that is saying that that's not beautiful or that's not something to aspire to. And so, in her formative years, she didn't have that experience that I had of feeling less than other kids, of feeling like, is there something wrong with Black people, feeling different? Like, she didn't have that.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Like all of us, Nicole's own experience raising a child is always running parallel to the memory of her own childhood. Parenting is an ongoing act of correction. Nicole grew up being bussed from her Black neighborhood to a mostly white, wealthier school. She was part of a desegregation plan. She's talked about the social isolation of being one of the only Black kids in school on our show before, the psychological toll of that. And she didn't want that for Najah. And Najah was a different kid, growing up differently than Nicole did. Her parents had money and college degrees. Nicole wanted Najah to be in the mix with other kids, to see what she had that others didn't, and to feel comfortable with everyone.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  I don't want my child to feel separate from other kids. I don't want her to feel that she's better than other kids. And she started to recognize the advantages that she had. I remember she came home, there was a classmate whose older brother had been killed, and Najah was like, he doesn't have a coat. Can we get a coat for him? She had, like, empathy and humanity. And so, I felt like, that's why we're here. I believe in, like, a common good. I believe that, like, we have to be in it together.

• 16:07Speaker 02

  Nicole was prepared for some things in the school to be hard, and she and her husband, Faraji, were in the school often. Faraji volunteered regularly, organizing parents, talking to teachers, addressing issues. He became co-president of the school's PTA. And still, there was stuff they didn't know, till they heard it from Najah, starting around first grade.

• 16:29Speaker 03

  She would come home a lot and say things like, it's hard to concentrate, it's hard to focus, that there was a lot of disruption in the classroom, like, things that we know often happen in high-poverty schools.

• 16:43Speaker 02

  And they were having an experience parents in high-poverty schools sometimes have. They were having trouble getting the school to respond, even though they were so involved. In fourth grade, at a parent-teacher conference, Nicole and Faraji learned Najah was not on grade level, which was not something they'd heard before. So they immediately emailed her teachers and principals, saying, we want to see her schoolwork. Please send home all her graded tests and assignments, so we can look through them and see what's going on.

• 17:13Speaker 03

  They wouldn't send the schoolwork home. I asked them, and they wouldn't do it. I had to go to the principal. The principal instructs them to send the homework home, and they say, that's extra work for us. So, I'm having to, like, take off from work, I'm coming up to the school all the time. I'm like, I need to see her work every week. This is crazy. And finally, the principal is able to get the parent, the teachers to send, they send all this work home that Najah had been doing. And I start going through the math, and all the problems are wrong.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Oh, no.

• 17:53Speaker 03

  Like, literally, almost all the problems are wrong.

• 17:57Speaker 02

  But the problem, the answers are wrong.

• 17:58Speaker 03

  The answers. Like, he's just putting a checkmark, he's not checking her math, he's not correcting her, he's not teaching her. Every single one is wrong. Yeah, devastating parent moment. I'm like, what am I doing? What am I doing, what am I doing to my child? Like, I, I felt like I was failing my child, like, my decision was failing my child. God,

• 18:40Speaker 03

  I was so worried that I had done wrong by my child, in a way that was irreparable.

• 18:50Speaker 03

  I remember sitting at the table that night, and I was, I mean, I'm not naive, but I was in shock. There was the one part of just, like, what she wasn't learning, but there was the other part of, like, this little girl has all this confidence. She thinks she is amazing at math. She is smart, but she thinks she's, like, academically doing well, and she's not.

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Nicole sat at the table, waiting for Faraji to get home.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  And Faraji and I, I remember, like, as soon as he got home, I think he was at a, maybe at a school board meeting or something like that, and I'm like, look at this. And it's like, well, what do we do? Do we, do we, do we leave? Do we, like, take her out of this? And so, we struggled with, like, what to do. I mean, I, we felt stuck, because those other kids did not deserve not to be taught either, and the understanding that the consequences for them were going to be so much greater than for my child. These

• 20:01Speaker 03

  were already kids, living in public housing, living in poverty, no power in our society.

• 20:10Speaker 03

  Faraji and I, we would have these discussions, and we would be like, who are we if, like, the moment it gets really rough, we give up? Then what do we do it for in the first place? And in the end, we just felt, we felt we couldn't abandon the rest of those kids.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  They made a new plan. They would stay in the school, they would get Najah's support, and they were going to get the school's support. Nicole asked a friend, a former math teacher, to tutor Najah at home. And Nicole and Faraji threw themselves into getting help for the rest of her class. They demanded the principal provide remediation for the entire math class. They had numerous meetings with the district superintendent. He agreed to send an extra teacher into the classroom. Their teacher friend recruited other educators to come by the school and offer after-school tutoring. This was a sprawling, all-consuming project that took so much more time than simply addressing the problem for their own kid.

• 21:16Speaker 02

  But they'd say to each other, this is why we're here, in the school, not just for their own child's success. Success for them was both and. Najah doing well, and all the kids doing well.

• 21:29Speaker 03

  It's like, we recommitted. Like, we have to be here. Like, we have to now make sure all these kids in this classroom's work is getting graded, that these teachers are actually teaching all these kids, not just our child. And that's what we did. But it tested, it tested us, for sure.

• 21:52Speaker 02

  You said, it actually might have been from your article, that it can feel unnatural, it can feel almost unnatural to put your child in a school that you think isn't the best, most perfect school. Did it feel unnatural to you?

• 22:06Speaker 03

  Unnatural? Yes. Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Say more about that.

• 22:11Speaker 03

  I mean,

• 22:13Speaker 03

  every other decision that I'm making about my child is to try to give my child the best life possible, trying to put her in the best situation, to give her the best examples, to protect her, you know, make life easy for her. So, no, it didn't, it didn't feel natural.

• 22:35Speaker 03

  But a lot of things that are the right thing to do don't feel natural.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  So that was the balance of things at the end of elementary school, a shaky seesaw. They'd fought for better, like they knew they'd have to. They got help for Najah, like they thought they might have to, and they stayed committed. For middle school, Nicole and Faraji chose a school in the neighborhood that was mostly black and low-income. Test scores were not great. A public school plenty of parents would dismiss, but Nicole visited and liked it. Her district superintendent had recommended it as a school with a deeply committed principal who was on the ball, responsive to parents and students. And important to Nicole, this school had never screened students, like some of the more sought-after middle schools. It didn't select kids based on their grades or attendance records

• 23:26Speaker 02

  or anything like that. It was open to everyone. Najah made friends, joined the Food and Justice Club, did a lot of art. Outside school, she ran track. And then, one day in 7th grade, Nicole and Najah were in the car. Najah was 12 years old. Nicole picked her up from school, and Najah said she and her friends had been researching schools online and looked up their own school.

• 23:52Speaker 03

  She was like, "Did you know my school had test scores like this when you decided to send me here?"

• 24:00Speaker 03

  I paused, you know, like, hand on the wheel, driving. I'm like, looking straight ahead, and I'm sitting there like, okay, what's, what's, what am I going to say out of my mouth that's going to make sense to her? And, you know, it's like, I knew this, I knew this day would come. I, I, I wouldn't say I, like, talked a script over in my head of what I would say, but I knew it would come. And yet, it's like, the words that I'm, like, formulating in my head to explain why I chose this really sounded really hollow.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Why? Like, what? What were you?

• 24:38Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I'm like, yeah, I, I knew that the score, these test scores, but test scores are not the most important thing about a school. And it was really important to me, you know, my own values. I felt it was really important that you be in a school with, like, most of the people in our neighborhood. And she's sitting there, and like, I see out of the corner of my eye, this look like, "That sounds crazy." Like, what? You mean, like, you had, you had all these resources? Like, you could have sent me anywhere. You could have sent me to the best schools. And, and you're saying, like, you just chose not to?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  So your child is asking you a question that you have, you've spoken about this on hundreds of stages. You've written hundreds of pages about it. Like, you know what to say. Why do you not know what to say?

• 25:33Speaker 03

  I do know what to say, and I say it. But what I'm saying is, as I'm saying it, I know it sounds hollow coming out of my mouth, but I really believe that. I mean, I come from a people where I know my life, literally, in a literal way, is only possible because people were willing to sacrifice for a larger good. I mean, sacrifice, like, put your child through a white mob, sacrifice. Sacrifice, like, get assassinated on your front lawn, sacrifice. Sacrifice, like, get thrown off of the land that you worked. If everyone says, "Well, I would love to do that. I believe in the concept of equality, but, you know,

• 26:17Speaker 03

  I can't make a personal sacrifice." We don't get, we don't get there. I don't live my life. So I know what I'm saying to her is right. But I also know that she is a 12-year-old child who looks at you not to, like, give her moral clarity, but to give her a, a life of opportunity. So I'm just, now I'm just kind of repeating what I've said and hoping that she'll move on, but she is not. She's, she's angry.

• 26:53Speaker 03

  It hasn't been, she's like, "It's not a good school, and I could have been at a good school." And so it's like, just rounding around. And now I'm like, oh, my God, like, she's really not going to let this go.

• 27:06Speaker 02

  Did you think she's going to ask me about this sometime? I'm going to explain to her. Did you think about just giving her your article?

• 27:14Speaker 03

  No. My child's not reading 10,000 words that I write.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  She's not, she's not.

• 27:21Speaker 02

  She's on the cover, though.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  She's on the cover, no. Uh-uh, no.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Really? She's, has she never read it? Do you think she's never read it?

• 27:27Speaker 03

  I don't think so.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  No, I don't believe that. Really?

• 27:30Speaker 03

  I promise. When you ask her, the answer's going to be no.

• 27:33Speaker 02

  I am going to ask her. That's coming up. The answer to that question and so many others. I talked to Najah, and then she and her mom talk. No one is a prophet in her own home. That's in a minute from Chicago Public Radio when our program continues.

• 27:51Speaker 04

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• 28:10Speaker 05

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• 28:41Ira Glass?

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• 29:10Speaker 02

  It's This American Life. I'm Chana Joffe-Walt, sitting in for Ira Glass. Today's show, An Argument, Act Two, Najah. Because of who Nicole is and what we've talked about over years, I've thought about Najya more than I've thought about most other children who are not my own. From when she was little, I'd heard what Nicole wanted for her young daughter. I'd read her old article where she'd written about what she hoped for. And I've wondered, what's this all going to be like for Najah? Somehow, back then, I never really imagined there would be a day when I might get to just ask her. Okay, your mom told me she didn't know if you had read the article about choosing your elementary school. Have you read that article?

• 29:55Speaker 06

  No.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  You've never read that article?

• 29:57Speaker 06

  Well, no, I have not. I have never read it. I've never found myself to read it. Maybe I should because of my mom.

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Well, also because it's about you.

• 30:07Speaker 06

  Well, yeah, but I never read it.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Najah has been listening to her mom give talks her whole life. She says she knows what the article is about, her school. She went to her school. She lived it. She didn't have to read about it. What was the school her mom chose, wrote 10,000 words about choosing, actually like for Najah?

• 30:28Speaker 06

  It was just regular, like, it was fine.

• 30:31Speaker 02

  It was just school?

• 30:31Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't really remember a lot from elementary. I wasn't really into art. I liked to draw a lot. I was, yeah, I was loud. I still am, like, chatty.

• 30:42Speaker 02

  Did you ever wonder why you were in that elementary school?

• 30:46Speaker 06

  No. It was just a school that she picked for me. I didn't really care about it. I wasn't ever thinking about stuff like that.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  She was lonely sometimes when girls were mean, regular kid stuff. Najah remembers 4th grade, they didn't do much in class, and that her mom had issues with her teachers. She thought it was weird that her 3rd grade teacher was absent a lot. But 5th grade was fun. It was all fine. What Najah wanted to talk about more was middle school, 6th grade. That's when things got hard for her. She says in middle school, other kids made it hard to learn. There were fights.

• 31:22Speaker 06

  Problems all the time, like, we wouldn't even be able to play in gym because the kids wouldn't stop acting out. It would be like, all the time. They would be throwing, like, fart bombs and stuff. There was, like, no punishment. It wasn't, like, stopped. So because that's just not fun, you get, you can't do anything, and they're ruining your chances to do things just because they can't act right. It was, like, really bad. I think I'd come home to complaining to my mom all the time, like, "Bro, these kids are always, like, fighting, and they're always disrupting, like, class. I'm not trying to be in this type of environment." And I wasn't enjoying it. I remember we got our, like, report cards back. I think there was, like, seven kids in that class who were, like, on honor roll, and the rest were, like, they didn't.

• 32:04Speaker 06

  The school was so easy, and like, how did you not get? I don't know.

• 32:11Speaker 02

  Wait, you're like, how did people not get honor roll?

• 32:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. Right, because it was like, it was just a really easy school.

• 32:19Speaker 02

  Did you have homework?

• 32:21Speaker 06

  No.

• 32:22Speaker 02

  No homework?

• 32:22Speaker 06

  No, none, zero, like.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  How did you feel about that?

• 32:27Speaker 06

  I thought it was bad. I think I complained about my friends, like, we don't get anything. We're not getting work, like, we're not getting any.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  You wanted homework?

• 32:33Speaker 06

  We did. I, we did. We honestly did want to get more things because we knew that we weren't learning enough. We didn't know anything.

• 32:41Speaker 02

  Najah was building her own assessment of her school, drawing on what she was seeing and what she wanted for herself. For her, a good school had homework. A good school was an organized school. Najah used that word a lot when we talked. Her school was not organized. And then, in 7th grade, Najah's teachers and friends started talking about the next step: high school. New York City has hundreds of high schools. The top schools, there are things you have to do. You have to apply, get good grades, you have to take a test or audition. It's a whole process. You need to do research, go on tours. You have to engage. If you're an ambitious 7th grader, or even just a kid who cares about status,

• 33:25Speaker 02

  as nearly every 7th grader does, this is when you start to become aware, if you are not already, that there are, quote, "good schools and bad schools," and you fit somewhere in that system. And if you didn't know about it till now, you are probably already behind. Najah and her friends started researching the top high schools. It was in doing that research that they looked up their own school.

• 33:49Speaker 06

  And we were just shocked. Test scores were really low. Everything about the school was really low.

• 33:54Speaker 02

  What'd you think when you saw that?

• 33:57Speaker 06

  I was like, wow. Like, that's why we're not getting anything. Like, we have nothing. You see all the reviews. You see the parent reviews. You see student reviews. You see everything.

• 34:08Speaker 02

  And test scores?

• 34:09Speaker 06

  Hmm. I think we looked at those scores all the time.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  You did?

• 34:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, I think we looked at them all the time.

• 34:15Speaker 02

  Like, you kept returning?

• 34:16Speaker 06

  Hmm, we kept looking at other sites, like, how the school was. And it was not great.

• 34:22Speaker 02

  She remembers bringing this information to her mom, and she remembers her mom trying to explain her thinking, but Najah doesn't remember exactly what her mom said, because she says, "It made no sense."

• 34:33Speaker 06

  I didn't ever agree with, like, her response. All I know is that I wasn't having it. I was just like, why? Why am I here?

• 34:44Speaker 02

  Najah was mad, and she wanted an answer.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Act 3, Najah's Choice. Nicole tried to answer Najah's questions, over and over. But Nicole understood things about Najya's school and the school system in general that Najah, as an 11 and 12-year-old, did not. Nicole knew that because her middle school didn't screen students, because it didn't select some students and turn others away, what that meant is the school had a high concentration of kids who showed up on day one to middle school already behind. Most kids had gone to elementary schools that were struggling. Many had diagnosed learning disabilities, and almost all of them experienced poverty outside of school. From Nicole's perspective, Najah's middle school was doing

• 35:38Speaker 02

  a pretty good job of trying to serve all its students. Nicole had been inside lots of schools as a reporter, and to her, Najah's school wasn't one that was neglecting students or lacking organization. It seemed organized and deeply caring, and unlike Najya's elementary school, responsive. When Nicole brought Najah's complaints to teachers and administrators, they got back to her right away. They tried in earnest to address things. But none of that was changing how Najah felt. She kept returning to their argument about why she was at this school. Why? At sometimes random moments.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  She would, like, we'd be in the kitchen preparing food, and she'd be like, "I still don't understand why you did that." And I'm like, "Oh, my God." I'm like, I, you know, like, she's not gonna let, she's not letting it go. And you know what? She said, like, "You weren't in the classroom."

• 36:33Speaker 02

  Right. It's not your experience.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  It's not, right. It's not your education. It's not your experience. And I deeply heard that. And she's not, you know, an eight-year-old child. She is a young woman who's done her research. And I'm like, I just don't want, I don't want this to haunt me for the rest of our relationship. That's why what I ultimately decided, this is like, I don't know, fifth, sixth conversation slash argument, where I said, you know, you are absolutely justified in feeling how you feel. You certainly, if I had made different choices, would have

• 37:15Speaker 03

  had very different educational experience. And because of that, I'm gonna now let you make the choice for your, your educational experience going forward. For high school, I would let her choose.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  She would decide what school she wanted to visit, and she would decide what school she wanted to apply for.

• 37:37Speaker 02

  This is a 12, she's a 12 at the time? This is a 12-year-old? And what was her reaction?

• 37:46Speaker 03

  If anybody has ever parented a 12-year-old girl, then you know, her reaction was like, "Yeah, but you still shouldn't have did that."

• 38:02Speaker 03

  "I still want to talk about what you did. You're trying to move on, but I, I'm not over that." So that was her response. But then, she was like, "Really? Like, you're really gonna let me?" And I was like, "Absolutely. Okay, great."

• 38:19Speaker 06

  "I'm going to a school that I want for myself. I'm going to a school that's gonna be, like, hard to get into, like, that's really good, that has high scores. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted better education, just like, learning more, or like, homework, like, having more curriculars, or like, just more subjects. I didn't want to be in a majority-black school. I thought I wanted more of a diverse community."

• 38:48Speaker 02

  Why?

• 38:52Speaker 06

  I felt like if I was in a diverse community, more diverse or less black, or not less black, but more diverse community, I would get better education, because that's what it seemed like.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Where did you get that idea from? Like, why did it seem that way to you?

• 39:10Speaker 06

  Because you see it in your school. You see all these schools, prestigious, like, they're mainly Asian or mainly white. And it's like, if I've been in these schools where it's majority-black, it's like, I'm not getting anything from it at all. If you look at, like, the top schools, they're majority-white. And it's like, if you want to go into a good school, you're gonna have to go to a majority-white school.

• 39:34Speaker 03

  She comes back with her list of schools. And I internally cringed.

• 39:41Speaker 02

  Why?

• 39:42Speaker 03

  Well, what my daughter did was looked up the top achieving schools in the city. She found out, like, the best, in terms of test score, schools in the city, and that was her list.

• 39:57Speaker 02

  The exact opposite of your approach, yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:01Speaker 02

  What'd you do with your face?

• 40:02Speaker 03

  No, I, I don't think I actually, it's impossible for me to have a neutral face, but I, I try. I work very hard. I'm like, I cannot believe this. Like, my child came up with, like, the exact opposite of my life's work. And every school on there is a, is a school that screens and has hardly known black kids.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Najah organized everything for high school. She researched the schools, found out when they had tours, how you get into them. The only time Nicole intervened was to insist that Najah at least tour a selective, high-achieving, majority-black high school. Otherwise, Nicole kept her word and let Najah take the reins. Najah began imagining more and more what she wanted from school, where she was heading in high school and beyond high school. Nicole teaches at Howard University, an HBCU, the mecca of black education and excellence.

• 41:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, look, I've been ingraining Howard into her since she was, like, three years old. And then one day, she comes back from middle school and she says she wants to go to Harvard. And I was like, we have never mentioned the word Harvard in our household. What the hell is happening? I'm like, what? But like she did for high schools, she looked up the top-ranked school and decided that's where she wanted to go.

• 41:34Speaker 02

  You're literally like, where did this girl learn the word Howard?

• 41:36Speaker 03

  Harvard, yes. I'm telling you, like, we don't, we don't even discuss PWIs as an option in our household, like, so.

• 41:44Speaker 02

  Predominantly white universities, yeah.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  And especially, like, not Harvard. Like, Harvard? What child? Because I'm like, did I mishear you? Did you accidentally say Howard?

• 41:54Speaker 02

  I love that your child's rebellion is to tell her mother that she wants to go to Harvard University.

• 41:59Speaker 03

  Exactly, and I'm disappointed. I'm like, what is wrong with you?

• 42:08Speaker 03

  You have to admire that the child is like, whatever is the best, that's what I want.

• 42:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  I, I both admired it and was appalled at the same time. Like, where are you getting these ideas? Who is putting these crazy ideas in your head?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Najah submitted her high school application, ranking a dozen high achieving schools, and she got into her top choice, a majority white and Asian school in a wealthy neighborhood, almost an hour commute by subway from her home. She started freshman year.

• 42:45Speaker 03

  Within two weeks, she was ready to transfer. She wanted to transfer out of the school.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  And I told her, no. I was like, look, we went through a whole process. You're going to stay here and we're going to figure it out. Like, this is life. This is real life.

• 43:02Speaker 06

  The girls were different. I noticed that there were kids that were comfortable saying the N-word. I also experienced that.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  There were white kids that were saying the N-word.

• 43:11Speaker 06

  Yeah. That's everywhere, but it was like, I never really experienced that in person. It was like, kids that also came from very good homes, like, kids that also came from, like, very rich households.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  And did that affect you?

• 43:27Speaker 06

  I thought they were, like, too bougie and had high egos, but, like, unaware, like, don't know about anything, like, socially wise, like, nothing about black people, or nothing about this, kind of just unaware about a lot of things and a lot of things in history, just really privileged and spoiled.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  And kind of ignorant.

• 43:47Speaker 06

  Very, very ignorant.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. Got it. Okay.

• 43:50Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 43:51Speaker 02

  How were the academics? That was the thing you had really wanted.

• 43:55Speaker 06

  Um, when I got into that school and they were talking about all these things, I'm like, what are we talking about? I never learned this. So it was kind of bumpy. Like, it was, it was hard. It was really stressful.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, that sounds stressful.

• 44:12Speaker 06

  I've never got a C before. I never really got those grades in middle school. And when I saw that now, it was just like, ugh. It sucked a lot.

• 44:22Speaker 03

  She didn't feel like she fit in. She didn't feel like she had anything in common with most of the kids.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Were you surprised that that was her experience? That for a few weeks?

• 44:30Speaker 03

  No, not at all. That, that experience I have had.

• 44:36Speaker 02

  That was the experience you were trying to protect her from?

• 44:38Speaker 03

  Exactly.

• 44:39Speaker 02

  One of, one of them.

• 44:40Speaker 03

  One of them, yeah. Probably the most devastating thing is you, you spend, like, their whole lifetime trying to build up the sense of themselves, just as a parent, parenting a child, but also me trying to build my child's confidence as a black girl and the inherent intellect and worth. And then it can be destroyed, like, in two weeks in this school. Freshman year, it was the first time a teacher ever called about, like, behavior for Najah, that it never happened. She had never had behavior problems. She was angry. She was really angry that, for much of that year.

• 45:18Speaker 02

  Nicole and Faraji focused on getting Najah tutoring and support. And Najah settled in. She made new friends. She caught up academically. She stopped asking to transfer. She's doing well. This was the new status quo. And this is where they were when I started talking to Nicole and Najah, toward the end of Najah's sophomore year, the second year at the high school that she'd chosen for herself. Nicole and Najah had come into the studio to talk, not knowing exactly what the other thought about this whole experience now. Some time had passed and they'd stopped fighting about it. Nicole had not written her new article about all of this yet, and she had questions.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  She thought, now that Najah was doing so well, she'd been able to get into her top school and succeed there, Nicole wanted to know if I asked Najah what she thought of her mom's choice, would she still say it was terrible?

• 46:24Speaker 02

  Act Four, Nicole and Najah. When they showed up together, I could tell just by watching the way they interact that Nicole and Najah enjoy spending time together. They're comfortable. Najah's 16 years old now. She tells me her top pick for college is Howard, not Harvard, Howard. She likes it, she says, because it's in DC. It's got a nice campus. Plus, she says, I'd get to be with my mom. They both act like this is a completely regular thing for a 16-year-old to say and want. And that is how I know they're close and that a lot has changed. I had talked to Nicole about all this twice on her own before she came in with Najah. And I talked to Najah alone for almost an hour and a half

• 47:09Speaker 02

  while her mom waited outside. I got Najah's thoughts and the experiences she'd had in the different schools. And it wasn't until the very end, when I said, is there anything else you want to say, that Najah mentioned the argument with her mom. They hadn't had it for a long time. But Najah said she had brought it up again when she was feeling behind at the beginning of high school.

• 47:28Speaker 06

  Like, Mom, if you didn't put me in these schools, I would have been okay.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  What'd she say?

• 47:34Speaker 06

  She was, she said the same thing she said. I don't know what she said. All I know is I complained to her, so.

• 47:43Speaker 02

  So you know that she said the same thing that she said the last time you had the conversation, but you don't actually know what that thing was?

• 47:48Speaker 06

  Yeah, I don't know, I don't know what it was.

• 47:50Speaker 02

  Do you want to know?

• 47:51Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 47:52Speaker 02

  I think we could probably get the answer from her, because she's sitting right outside here. Nicole, you up for coming in? Hello, Nicole.

• 48:01Speaker 03

  Hello.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Nicole sits next to Najah and they talk. I'm going to bleep the name of Najah's high school when it comes up in this conversation. They're sitting side by side, and Nicole begins laying out her case. She's clear, vulnerable, tells Najah, this was a hard choice, the hardest choice. Najah's still, seems to be listening carefully. As Nicole says, "Public education is just so deeply unequal and always has been. Black kids in particular segregated and denied a fair and equal education."

• 48:36Speaker 03

  What do we then do? Do we just say, well, it's nothing I can do? Or do you try in some way to make some intervention? It's like, why should my child be the one that's rescued? Like, you should escape what we consign so many other kids just like you to? I just will never feel right about that.

• 48:58Speaker 06

  Why, why? It makes no sense. You're talking about, oh, I'm just going to give you the worst just because it's not fair that you, I didn't actually be born. All you're supposed to do is just, like, put me in a good school, like, oh, well, I didn't want to put you in a great school and have you have advantages over other kids. Isn't that what you want? Isn't that what you want me to have? Is that not a normal thing you want me to have? You don't want me to?

• 49:21Speaker 03

  You do, though.

• 49:21Speaker 06

  Okay, yeah.

• 49:22Speaker 03

  But you do. You have advantages. You have so many advantages.

• 49:26Speaker 06

  Right, okay, so, no. But I'm not saying, I'm saying in school-wise. I'm in school every day. I'm in this, in that, I was in that building every single day. That doesn't make sense. I'm there more than home. Obviously, I get more in general, but school is the most important thing.

• 49:41Speaker 03

  Why do you imagine, like, you're able to do well in [BLEEP]?

• 49:48Speaker 06

  Um, because it's a better school.

• 49:51Speaker 03

  But you? You think it's possible your foundation wasn't as terrible as you think it is?

• 49:58Speaker 06

  No.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  So you think you came in, like, a blank slate of [BLEEP] and now have learned everything there?

• 50:04Speaker 06

  No, but...

• 50:05Speaker 03

  You, you have been able to have the same academic success as your classmates?

• 50:09Speaker 06

  Yeah, to get through it, because, well, not even, though. Like, I, everyone, last year, I had my grade come out. I remember crying because everyone else's, like, score was so good. And I was just like, how is it so easy for everyone else but me? So no, I don't think that I got through it. I think I just tried, tried my hardest.

• 50:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to say you did not receive the top quality middle school education.

• 50:40Speaker 06

  Elementary with even basic fractions. I mean, like, I was never taught that. I would have had to relearn everything from my tutor.

• 50:49Speaker 03

  That's fair.

• 50:50Speaker 06

  Everyone's not your, not your kid. You can't save everyone who doesn't want to be saved.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  That's what you think, though? You think, like, other kids don't want better?

• 51:02Speaker 06

  I'm not saying that. I wanted better. All the kids in my school wanted, that I wanted better, wanted better. There's no benefit that came out of you putting me in those schools. There's no benefit at all. Could you tell me a benefit?

• 51:15Speaker 03

  You want me to answer that? Benefit for the school?

• 51:17Speaker 06

  What benefit did you provide the school?

• 51:20Speaker 03

  I think that's a great question.

• 51:24Speaker 03

  I do think it was a benefit of us being in those schools. We brought resources.

• 51:31Speaker 03

  If you remember--

• 51:32Speaker 02

  Nicole runs through a bunch of examples. Your dad organizing parents at the school, intervening when there were issues with teachers, making sure kids who couldn't afford field trips would still get those opportunities. The principal creating a recognition breakfast for kids who made the honor roll wouldn't have happened if you weren't in the school. Nicole goes big and specific. The benefits of kids having friends from different backgrounds are moral obligations to one another. Najah is not waiting for her to be done. She's jumping in. Opportunities for all kids? Like what? You made friends with different kinds of people? Who? Dad being involved had a big impact? How?

• 52:13Speaker 03

  We don't have to actually agree. It's OK for us to see this in a different way. But ultimately, you got into your first choice of high school.

• 52:23Speaker 06

  But you could have had me way higher in education.

• 52:26Speaker 03

  Do you feel like your life is being held back?

• 52:29Speaker 06

  I don't think that. But I don't want to be-- I didn't want to feel like I didn't know anything because I was set back in other schools. I didn't want to feel like I was dumb. In ninth grade, it did feel like I was dumb. It did feel like I didn't know anything. It was like, oh, my gosh. Like, you're the-- like, a dumb black girl in a white school.

• 52:49Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 52:51Speaker 06

  That's what it made me feel. Why should I have to suffer with that? Why couldn't you just benefit kids in another way? Like, there was other options.

• 52:59Speaker 03

  I don't think you can change-- I think we have decades of people saying they were going to change a school from the outside. And I don't think-- I just don't think you do. I think New York City is full of people who write checks and people who say, you know, I believe in equality. I mean, what we were trying to do was not just about giving some additional funds to a school. We were trying to change the power dynamics.

• 53:27Speaker 06

  But that doesn't connect to why did I have to be in the school?

• 53:31Speaker 02

  Nicole says, OK. Remember what happened in fourth grade when kids weren't being taught? Do you remember that? That wasn't just happening to you.

• 53:39Speaker 03

  The only way, though, that we know that's happening is because we're in the class and we're in the school. And had we not been in the school, we wouldn't have ever known that that was happening.

• 53:50Speaker 06

  There are ways that you could know that kind of stuff.

• 53:54Speaker 03

  But there aren't.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  And we've talked about, like, over and over, like, our lives are the products of people who didn't just say, we think segregation is wrong. We think injustice is wrong. Like, they were willing to put themselves, their families, their children on the line for that.

• 54:12Speaker 06

  So you put me on the line to help a school, but it didn't work?

• 54:15Speaker 03

  I put-- yeah, I put you on the line--

• 54:17Speaker 06

  But even--

• 54:18Speaker 03

  in hopes of--

• 54:18Speaker 06

  Even when you knew--

• 54:19Speaker 03

  making a change, yeah. It's not like I never had any doubts about my choice. I did. And the only reason I'm OK with my choice now is I'm like, you're fine. I felt this was important. I tried to do the right thing.

• 54:37Speaker 06

  And I think I'm fine because I'm in the school I am now. I feel like if I picked a different choice that you wanted me to, I don't think I would be fine.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  OK.

• 54:45Speaker 06

  And I think this choice was good for me. And I do appreciate you for saying that.

• 54:51Speaker 03

  I think your choice is good for you as well.

• 54:54Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 54:59Speaker 02

  They'd done it. Nicole had committed to letting Najah have her say. She felt she owed it to her. And Nicole was committed to putting all of this out into the world. And as a final step in this whole process, she fact-checked herself. And she was in for a shock. Let's give this an act, a mini-act, a postscript. Act V, The Evidence.

• 55:30Speaker 02

  She was checking her memory on things as she wrote her story for the New York Times Magazine. And Nicole looked through old emails back and forth with Najah's schools, messages to principals and teachers raising concerns.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  And there's, like, pages of emails. I don't even remember sending that many emails. And I'm a writer and I'm a journalist, so my emails are very detailed. Like, every time I'm emailing the principal, I'm quoting my daughter. I'm listing all these details, the issues we were having, not feeling like we were getting the proper response, my worries, my concerns, my-- like, Najah came home and said that her teacher was gone again. And this is, like, the fourth time the teacher was gone. And there was no sub. And Najah said she had to go into kindergarten class, but she's in second grade, right? And not just, like, a record of my making complaints, but a record of, like, noncaring. Like, the principal not responding,

• 56:26Speaker 03

  the teachers not responding over and over and over and over again. And I'm in Texas that day. And I'm getting ready to go give a talk. And I'm sitting in the hotel room and I'm just reading all of these emails.

• 56:46Speaker 03

  And it was crushing to read them. I was like, damn, like, you really-- to make this work for yourself mentally, I just forgot. I had just pushed a lot of that out of my memory, I think, to be able to live with the choices we were trying to make.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  And I--

• 57:18Speaker 03

  I understand my child feeling very

• 57:29Speaker 03

  betrayed

• 57:33Speaker 03

  by our choices.

• 57:38Speaker 03

  This is why my baby is so angry.

• 57:43Speaker 02

  Did you tell her any of that?

• 57:44Speaker 03

  Well, she calls me.

• 57:47Speaker 03

  She calls me right as I'm sitting there. I'm, like, sitting at my desk, just going through all these emails. And I'm like-- I'm not crying, but I'm teary-eyed. I'm just sitting there. So she calls me. And I pick up. And I'm trying to make my voice sound normal, but she hears that I'm upsetting my voice. And she's like, what's wrong, mommy? And I'm like, nothing, everything's good. And she's like, what's wrong?

• 58:18Speaker 03

  And she asked me that maybe one more time. And then I just told her. I was like, I've been reading the emails

• 58:26Speaker 03

  from everything that was happening with your schools. And I'm sorry. And I just told her, like, I--

• 58:36Speaker 03

  I don't feel like you got the education you deserved. And I don't feel that I listened to you enough. I just said, I'm sorry.

• 58:48Speaker 02

  What did she say?

• 58:51Speaker 03

  She was quiet for a second. And then she told me, I'm kind of glad you're seeing this now. Because I don't feel like you listened to me. I don't feel like you tried to understand that. And I just apologized again. And I said, you're right. The stakes were so high for me personally. I feel like the stakes are so high when it comes to the issue of integration and equality that I couldn't admit to her that, yes, you did bear a cause. And I don't know that we made the right choice. I don't know what the right choice would be.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  I was stunned by this turn. I have never heard Nicole talk like this. I've never heard most people, my closest friends, be this truthful with themselves about their choices, especially when it comes to our kids and schools. And talking about those choices in public? Never. Why? So all of us can judge, or feel smug, or angry, or vindicated, or however you have felt listening to this? It's not like Nicole is the only one out here making a choice. We all live in the same world she lives in. We all live with schools that are segregated and unequal. We all make choices, imperfect, complicated choices.

• 1:00:25Speaker 02

  Nicole's just the one who's reckoning with hers, deeply and in public. And I think the less you talk about a choice, the less you scrutinize it, the easier it is to live with.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  Nicole is in a strange, new, and disorienting place these days. She's a person who's used to making an argument. And now, she's not sure what to argue for. Not just because of her experience with Najah, also because of what Nicole's seen in her reporting over the last decade. For years, Nicole's writing pushed for systemic change. In particular, she's argued that we need to integrate public schools racially and economically. And in her reporting, she's talked to so many people who put their lives into that fight, who sacrificed, made real, life-changing sacrifices that they hoped would lead to a bigger transformation. And so little has changed.

• 1:01:22Speaker 02

  Public schools are unequal and segregated as they were 10 years ago, 30 years ago, 60 years ago. If you sacrifice to make a change, but change doesn't come, all you're left with is the sacrifice.

• 1:01:37Speaker 03

  And so what am I arguing for? I don't know anymore.

• 1:01:41Speaker 02

  Whoa, Nicole.

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  I know.

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  A lot's happened.

• 1:01:44Speaker 03

  A lot has happened. The base of the argument is that what we are doing to black children is immoral. And that I'm not wavered on. I will not waver on. I want us to understand that we choose this. I don't want us to be absolved by it, not even me.

• 1:02:08Speaker 03

  I want us to come at the end of this story sharing my sense of devastation. I feel like the culmination of all my work is I'm going to force you to bear witness to what you choose and what I choose.

• 1:02:42Speaker 07

  Them that's got shall get.

• 1:02:48Speaker 07

  Them that's not shall lose.

• 1:02:55Speaker 07

  So the Bible says.

• 1:03:02Speaker 07

  And that still is news.

• 1:03:09Speaker 07

  Cause mama may have.

• 1:03:16Speaker 07

  And Papa may have lost. But God is sure gonna bless the child who's got his own.

• 1:03:31Speaker 07

  Yeah, yeah, who's got his own.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Our program was produced and edited today by Nancy Updike with help from Ira Glass. The people who put together today's show are Cassie Howley, Adrian Lilly, Seth Lind, Catherine Raimondo, Stowe Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Ryan Rumory, Ruby Schwartz, Alyssa Ship, Christopher Swetala, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurraqman. Our senior editor, David Kestenbaum. Our executive editor, Emmanuel Berry. Nicole's article is called "In Fighting For Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?" And you can find it on the New York Times website. It was edited by Alena Silverman. Special thanks today to Rachel Lissy.

• 1:04:18Speaker 02

  Our website, thisamericanlife.org, where you can stream an archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free. And there's videos and lists of favorite shows and tons of other stuff there, too. Again, thisamericanlife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio Exchange. I'm Chana Joffe-Walt. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of This American Life.

• 1:05:08Ira Glass?

  Next week on the podcast of This American Life.

• 1:05:10Speaker 07

  Good, I'm dropping it, too. Do you want to hear about all the work that I did for you? Or what? Should we move on?

• 1:05:17Ira Glass?

  There's this podcast out there where it feels like they invented something completely new. This guy, Sarah Kaveta, recorded his personal conversations for years. And the result is unlike anything I've ever heard. We play some of this show. It's called "Reaching Out." Next week on the podcast or on your local public radio station.

• 1:05:44Speaker 04

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 1:05:49Speaker 01

  This message comes from Live Right Publishing. Now in paperback, Paul McCartney's New York Times bestseller, Wings: The Story of a Band on the Run, is the definitive oral history of McCartney's band Wings. Containing interviews with Paul, his family, band members, and close contemporaries, including a new conversation between Paul and Oscar-winning director Morgan Neville, Wings chronicles the triumphant journey of one of the world's greatest musical innovators. Available now from Live Right.