This American Life - 898: An Argument

Episode Date: September 26, 2026

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 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)(00:00:00) Act One: Nikole talks with Chana about Najya’s elementary school and the problems her family navigated there. (15 minutes)(00:00:00) 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)(00:00:00) 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)(00:00:00) 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)(00:00:00) 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 / This American Life privacy policy. / Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Hey there, everybody. I have a glass here. So our show today is something that producer O'Connor Jaffe-Wa Walt has been collaborating on with reporter Nicole Hannah-Jones. And Nicole'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 Nicole's daughter. And there are things that commenters 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 Hannah Joffey Walt talking with Nicole Hannah-Jones. These are recordings made as Nicole was in the process of writing that article. I'm going to make sure we're recording. Has it been 10 years since you've been in here? I'm trying to think when I'm like, damn, I know it's been a long time. How long has it been? That's Nicole. 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.

And my child was just getting ready to start school. And now my child is a sophomore getting ready to celebrate her sweet 16. That is wild. Really 16. She will be 16 next month. Yeah. time. Nicole 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, Nicole and I had little kids. And in our own lives, the conversation among kids. parents was how to game the system to be sure that your children do not end up in one of those schools. 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 that for 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-povered school. neighborhood. These questions, what are you going to do about school, started right out of the gate. I mean, my response was she's one. 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. This intense, often judgmental, scramble is something parents in places all over America do, but in New York City, where Nicole 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 black, Latino, and poor. In her reporting, Nicole 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 Nicole, who had a young black daughter and had been a young black girl herself,

when her daughter Naja got to be school-aged, she did not make a spreadsheet, she did not game the system. She enrolled Naja 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 class. Here's how Nicole 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. Nicole wrote about all this in a cover story for the New York Times magazine 10 years ago.

And on the cover, there was Little Naja. In her school uniform, Afro Puffs, serious face looking right at the camera. And the headline? Choosing a school for my daughter in a segregated city. I remember seeing it. I remember seeing it and being like, oh, she did it. Yeah. Yeah, because we, you know, you and I, we talked a lot about it.

It was an earthquake of a story. Nicole, putting the matter bluntly to parents, all of us scheming the system is making the system worse. What if we just stop? 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. I feel like you're underselling how much influence is had on. So, like, there's school districts across the country. that we're suddenly talking about something that they had not been talking about, not just parents, but actual people controlling school policy.

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. That's what the story was, an argument. And it landed with so many people. This story just in some ways, like, never lost his 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.

In a lot of your events, there was some people who had come up to you to you to. sort of absolve them of the choice that they had made? Almost every public event I would do either during the question and answer session. After the event, they would 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? So for 10 years, Nicole 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, Nicole 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, Najah, deserved a chance to share her perspective, too. Nadja was eager to talk. She had a lot she wanted to say about this, and she has a very different take from her moms. What you're going to hear is a series of conversations that took place before Nicole 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 Nicole, and later I talked to Najah, and she talks to her mom. These are our conversations throughout which I was so. no 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. 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. It's This American Life, Act 1, Nicole's choice. Nicole had been the one to pick the school back when Naja was little. Her husband, Faragi, had been reluctant to send Naja 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, Faragi was all in. He threw himself into the school. Both of them were committed to being involved, and Faragey ended up even more involved than Nicole. They reassured themselves, knowing that if there were ways the school fell short, they could get Naja help.

And they'd be there, watching. They were both constantly assessing how it was going, where the school faltered, where it succeeded, what Naja was getting. They were tracking all of it, including benefits, that don't get factored into lists of New York City's top schools. She got to spend her first six years of education in a school where most of the kids look 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. So you are, you know, as a black girl, seeing yourself in that lens and not 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. 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 bust 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 Naja. And Naja was a different kid, growing up differently than Nicole did. Her parents had money and college degrees. Nicole wanted Naja to be in the mix with other kids, to see what she had that others didn't and to feel comfortable with everyone. 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. Nicole was prepared for some things in the school to be hard. And she and her husband Faragey were in the school often. Faragee 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, until they heard it from Naja, starting around first grade. 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.

And they were having inexperienced 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 Faragee learned Naja 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. They wouldn't send the schoolwork home. I asked them and they wouldn't do it. I have 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 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 teachers to send, they send all this work home that Nadja had been doing. And I start going through the math, then all the problems are wrong. Oh, no. like literally almost all the problems are wrong. But the problem, the answers are wrong. Like he's just putting a checkmark, he's not checking her math,

he's not correcting her, is 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 felt like I was failing my child. Like, my decision was failing my child.

God, I was so worried that I had done wrong by my child in a way that was irreparable. 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. Nicole sat at the table, waiting for Faragey to get home. And Farage 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 leave? Do we like take her out of this? And so we struggled with like what to do. I mean, I, I, 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 four. for my child. These were already kids living in public housing, living in poverty, no power in our society. For Raji 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. They made a new plan.

They would stay in the school. They would get Naja support and they were going to get the school support. Nicole asked a friend, a former math teacher, to tutor Naja at home. And Nicole and Faragey 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 student. 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. 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. Nadja doing well and all the kids doing well. It's like we recommit. We've recommit. Like, we have to be here. Like, we have to now make sure all these kids in this classroom 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.

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? Unnatural? Yes. Yeah. Say more about that. I mean, 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 feel natural. But a lot of things that are the right thing to do don't feel natural. 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 Naja like they thought they might have to. And they stayed committed. For middle school, Nicole and Farage chose a school in the neighborhood. It 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 them were sought after middle schools. It didn't select kids based on their grades or attendance records or anything like that. It was open to everyone. Nadja made friends, joined the Food and Justice Club, did a lot of art. Outside school, she ran track. And then, one day in seventh grade, Nicole and Nadja were in the car. Nadja was 12 years old. Nicole picked her up from school, and Nadja said she and her friends had been researching

schools online and looked up their own school. She was like, did you know my school had test scores like this when you decided to send me here? I pause, you know, like hand on the wheel driving. I'm like looking straight ahead. And I'm sitting there like, okay, 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 day would come. 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. Why? Like what? What were you? Well, you know, I'm like, yeah, I knew that the school of 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 how 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 you're saying, like, you just chose not to. 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? 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 work. If everyone says, well, I would love to do that, I believe in the concept of equality, but, you know, I can't make a personal sacrifice. 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 give her moral clarity, but to give her a life of opportunity.

So now I'm just kind of repeating what I've said and hoping that she'll move on, but she is not. She's angry. 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 round and around. And now I'm like, oh, my God, like, she's really not going to let this go. 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? No. My child's not reading 10,000 words that I write. She's not. She's not. She's on the cover, though. It's her picture.

No. No. Uh-uh, no. Really? Has she never read it? Do you think she's never read it? I don't think so. No, I don't believe that.

Really? I promise. When you ask her, the answer's going to be no. I am going to ask her. That's coming up. The answer to that question and so many others. I talk 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. It's This American Life. I'm Hannah Jaffe Walt, sitting in for Ira Glass. Today's show, an argument, act two, Naja. Because of who Nicole is and what we've talked about over years, I've thought about Naja 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 Naja? 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? No. You've never read that article? 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. Well, also because it's about you. Oh, yeah, but I never read it. Naja has been listening to her mom give talks her whole life. She says she knows what the article was 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 Frenaja. It was just regular, like it was fine. It was just school. Yeah, I don't really remember a lot from elementary. I was really into art. I like to draw a lot. I was, yeah, I was loud.

I still am. It was chatty. Did you ever wonder why you were in that? elementary school? No. It was just a school that she picks for me. I didn't really care about it. I wasn't ever thinking about stuff like that.

She was lonely sometimes when girls were mean, regular kid stuff. Nadja remembers fourth grade they didn't do much in class and that her mom had issues with her teachers. She thought it was weird that her third grade teacher was absent a lot. But fifth grade was fun. It was all fine. What Nadja wanted to talk about more was middle school. sixth grade. That's when things got hard for her.

She says in middle school, other kids made it hard to learn. There were fights. 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'll 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. The school was so easy.

I'm, like, how did you not get on, I don't know. Wait, you're, like, how did people not get honor roll? Is that what you mean? Right. Because it was like, it was just a really easy school. Did you have homework? No. No homework?

No. None. Zero. How did you feel about that? 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.

You want to homework? We did. We honestly did want to get more things because we knew that we weren't learning enough. We didn't know anything. Nantja 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.

Naja used that word a lot when we talked. Her school was not organized. And then, in seventh grade, Najj'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 seventh grader, or even just a kid who cares about status, as nearly every seventh 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 until now, you are probably already behind. Naja and her friends started researching

the top high schools. It was in doing that research that they looked up their own school. And we were just shocked. Test scores, we're really low. Everything about the school was really low. What did you think when you saw that? I was like, wow.

Like, that's why we're not getting anything. Like, we have nothing. You see all the reviews. You see all parent reviews. You see student reviews. You see everything. And test scores. Hmm?

I think we looked at those scores all the time. You did? Yeah, I think we looked at them all the time. Like you kept returning? Mm-hmm. We kept looking at other sites, like, how the school was. And it was not great. 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. 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? Nadja was mad, and she wanted an answer.

Act 3. Naja's choice. Nicole tried to answer Naja's questions over and over, but Nicole understood things about Naja's school and the school system in general that Naja 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, Nodja's middle school was doing a pretty good job of trying to serve all its students. Nicole had been inside lots of schools as a reporter and to hurt Nodja's school, Well, wasn't one that was neglecting students or lacking organization. It seemed organized and deeply caring. And unlike Nadja's elementary school, responsive. When Nicole brought Nadja'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 Nadja felt. She kept returning to their argument about why she was at this school. Why? At sometimes random moments. 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, you know, like, she's not going to let, she's not letting it go.

And you know what she said, like, you weren't in the classroom. Right. It's not your experience. 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 had very different educational experience. And because of that, I'm going to now let you make the choice for your educational experience going forward. For high school, I would let her choose. Wow. She would decide what school she wanted to visit, and she would decide what school she wanted to apply for. This is a 12?

She's a 12 at the time? Is it a 12-year-old? And what was her reaction? 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. I still want to talk about what you did. You're trying to move on, but I'm not over that.

So that was her response. And she was like, really? Like, you're really going to let me? And I was like, absolutely. Okay, great. I'm going to a school that I want for myself. I'm going to school that's going to 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. Why? 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. Where did you get that idea from? Like, why did it seem that way to you? Because you see it in your school, do 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, we're going to have to go to majority white school. She comes back with her list of schools. And I internally cringed. Why? 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. The exact opposite of your approach. Yeah. What did you do with your face? No, I don't think I actually, it's impossible for me to have a neutral face, but 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 school that screens and has hardly known black kids. Nantra 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. was to insist that Naja at least tore a selective, high-achieving majority black high school. Otherwise, Nicole kept her word and let Naja take the reins. Naja began imagining more and more of what she wanted from school,

where she was heading in high school and beyond high school. Nicole teaches at Howard University and HBCU, the mecca of black education and excellence. 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. You're literally like, where did this girl learn the word, Howard? Harvard. Yes. I'm telling you. Like, we don't, we don't even discuss PWIs as an option in our household. Like, so. Predominantly white institutions.

Yeah. And especially, like, not Harvard. Like, Harvard? What child? Because I'm like, did I mishear you? Did you accidentally say Howard? No. I love that your child's rebellion is to tell her mother that she wants to go to Harvard

University. Exactly. And I'm disappointed. I'm like, what is wrong with you? You have to admire that the child is like, whatever is the best, that's what I want. Yeah. 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? Nadja 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. Within two weeks, she was ready to transfer. She wanted to transfer out of the school. Wow. 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. The girls were different. I noticed that there were kids that were comfortable seeing the N-Word. I also experienced that. There were white kids that were saying the N-WR-WRid. 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. And did that affect you? I thought they were like too boozy and had high egos. But like unaware, like don't know about anything. Like social 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.

And kind of ignorant. Very, very ignorant. Got it. Okay. Yeah. How were the academics? That was the thing you had really wanted. When I gone into 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 hard. It was really stressful. Yeah, that sounds stressful. 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, well, it sucked a lot. She didn't feel like she fit in.

She didn't feel like she had anything in common with most of the kids. Were you surprised that that was her experience, the first few weeks? No, not at all. That experience I've had. That was the experience you were trying to protect her from. Exactly. One of them. One of them, yeah.

Probably the most devastating thing is 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 Naja, that it never happened. She had never had behavior problems. She was angry. She was really angry for much of that year. Nicole and Faragei focused on getting Naja tutoring and support. And Naja 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 Naja. Toward the end of Naja'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. She thought, now that Nadja was doing so well, she'd been able to get into her top school and succeed there, Nicole wanted to know if I asked Naja what she thought of her mom's choice. Would she still say it was terrible?

Act 4, Nicole and Naja. When they showed up together, I could tell just by watching the way they interact that Nicole and Naja enjoy spending time together. They're comfortable. Not just 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 D.C., 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 Naja, and I talked to Naja alone for almost an hour and a half while her mom waited outside. I got Naja's thoughts on the experiences she'd had in the different school, And it wasn't until the very end when I said, is there anything else you want to say, that Nadja mentioned the argument with her mom. They hadn't had it for a long time.

But Nadja said she had brought it up again when she was feeling behind at the beginning of high school. Like, Mom, if you didn't put me in these schools, I would have been okay. What'd she say? She said the same thing. She said. I don't know what she said. All I know is I complained to her. So.

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. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it was. Do you want to know? Yes. 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.

Hello. Nicole sits next to Naja and they talk. I'm going to believe the name of Naja'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 Naja, this was a hard choice, the hardest choice. Naja'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.

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 sense? some intervention. It's like, why should my child be the one that's rescued? Like, you should escape what we consigned so many other kids just like you to. I just will never feel right about that. 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 ask to be bored. 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 have this. Okay, yeah. But you do. You have advantages. You have so many advantages. Right. Okay.

But I'm not saying, I'm seeing in school-wise. I'm in school every day. 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. Why do you imagine? Imagine, like, you're able to do well in...

Because it's a better school. But you? Do you think it's possible your foundation wasn't as terrible as you think it is? No. So you think you came in, like, a blank slate of... And now have learned everything there? No, but... You have been able to have the same academic success as your classmates.

Yeah, to get through it because... Well, not even, though. Like, 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 my hardest. Yeah, I mean, I think it's fair to say you did not receive the top quality,

middle school education. That's fair. Even basic fractions. I mean, like, I was never taught that. I had to relearn everything for my tutor. That's fair. Everyone's not your kid. You can't save everyone who doesn't want to be saved.

That's what you think, though? You think, like, other kids don't want better? I'm not saying that I want it better. All the kids in my school want that 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? You want me to answer that?

Benefit for the school? What benefit did you provide the school? I think that's a great question. I do think it was a benefit of us being in those schools. We brought resources. If you remember when you... 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. Naja 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? We don't have to actually agree. It's okay for us to see this in a different way.

But ultimately, you got into your first choice of high school. But you could have had me wait higher in education. Do you feel like your life is being held back? 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. And ninth grade, it did feel like I was dumb. It didn't 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. 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. 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 just don't think you do.

I think New York City is full of. of people who write checks and people who say, you know, I believe inequality. 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. But that doesn't connect to why did I have to be in the school? Nicole says, okay, remember what happened in fourth grade when kids weren't being taught? Do you remember that? That wasn't just happening to you.

The only way, though, that we know that's happening is because we're in the class and we're in the school. And have we not been in the school, we wouldn't have ever known that that was happening. There are ways that you could know that kind of stuff. But there aren't. 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. So you put me on the line to help a school, but it didn't work.

Yeah, I put you on the line in hopes of making a change, yeah. It's not like I never had any doubts about my choice. I did. And the only reason I'm okay with my choice now is I'm like, you're fine. I felt this was important. I tried to do the right thing. 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. Okay. And I think this choice was good for me. And I do appreciate you for seeing that. I think your choice is good for you as well. Yes. They'd done it. Nicole had committed to letting Naja have her say.

She felt she owed it to her. And Nicole was committed to putting all of this out into the work. 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 post-script. Act 5. The evidence. 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 Nodja's schools, messages to principals and teachers raising concerns. And there's like pages of emails. I don't even remember sending that many emails. Then 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, Naja 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 not just said she had to go in the kindergarten class, but she's in second grade, right? And not just like a record of my making complaints, but a record of like non-caring, like the principal not responding, 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.

And it was crushing to read them. And 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. and I understand my child feeling very betrayed by our choices. This is why my baby is so angry. Did you tell her any of that? Well, she calls me. She calls me right as I'm sitting there.

I'm like sitting at my desk, just gone through all these emails. And I'm like, I'm not crying, but I'm teary-eyed. I'm 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 upset in 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?

And she asked me that maybe one more time. And then I just told her, I was like, I've been reading the emails from everything that was happening with your schools. And I'm sorry. And I just told her, like, 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. What did she say? 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 listen 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. 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. 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. 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 Naja, also because of what Nicole's seen in her reporting over the last decade. For years, Nicole,

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. 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. And so what am I arguing for? I don't know. Anymore. Whoa, Nicole. I know. A lot's happened. A lot has happened.

The base of the argument is that what we are doing to black children is immoral. And that I am 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. 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.

Them that God shall get, them that's not shall lose. So the Bible says, and that still is new, because mama may have, and Papa may have, Lord, but God is sure going to bless the child

who's got his own. 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 Lynde, Catherine Raimondo, Stone Nelson, Nadia Raymond, Ryan Rumory, Ruby Schwartz, Alyssa Schip, Christopher Swatala, Julie Whitaker, and Diane Wu. Our managing editor is Sarah Abdurachman, our senior editor, David Kessimbaum, our executive editor, Emmanuel Barry. 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 Elena Silverman. Special thanks today to Rachel Lissy. 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, This AmericanLife.org. This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the public radio exchange.

I'm Khanna Jaffe Walt. Ira Glass will be back next week with more stories of This American Life. Next week on the podcast of this American life. 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? There's this podcast out there where it feels like they invented something completely new. This guy, Sarah Kavado, 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. Connor, I'm over right.