Action and policy. Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the students, faculty and guests, those who dont know me, im academic dean, who have a special the first in many respects, one reason is not just because wonderful guests but the first Public Performance of the professor, the lecture is a tradition today, letting students into what is happening. They are run by the center in 1984 by the magazine publisher and his wife valerie and community trust. If you dont know, a publishing empire. And an eccentric financial contributed to some of the architectural wonders and also what famously donated in central park. We are grateful to the community trust. In the robust magazine program. And i would like to introduce george delacorte, the professor joining us here, Founding Editor and culture. If you have not read that you should and check it out. He is contributor to the book of books, editor of three nonfiction books, and a collection of short stories, book of poems, the author of a novel and also writing a new one. And i will have them introduce our guests. [applause] thank you for that wonderful introduction. Thank you for coming. Im really excited and honored to have nike hannahjones as our first speaker of the year. Nicole began in newspapers, at the observer in raleighdurham, working on the education beat. Then she moved to portland all the way across the country to work at the oregonian, and there she focused on housing discrimination. She moved to new york to start at propublica where she published a series of moving and highly recommended pieces about the resegregation of American Cities and schools, not just segregation but the actual active and continuing process of segregation for the aggregation educational system and was hired by a magazine where she continued her work. There are two reasons im happy we are having this conversation, one is because this is supposed to be a magazine lecture series, the work nicole has been doing is incredibly difficult, and with magazines and maritimes magazine, those places have given her an opportunity to do this kind of work. It was harder to do in newspapers. Very hard. The other reason is this is an incredibly relevant story, one of the most interesting significant pieces nicole has done was ferguson in the wake of the Michael Brown shooting where she went and looked at the school Michael Brown attended and the history of that school. In segregated st. Louis. It seems to me resegregation is a story that is underneath a lot of the news stories we are seeing all the time in the United States so please welcome nike hannahjones. [applause] the outline of the evening as i will ask questions and at 6 50 we will take questions from the audience and we will be done. I thought we would start by telling us a little bit how you got started. Why you became a journalist. Whether you found Journalism School useful and how did you get your first . Happy to be here. We appreciate you coming. How i became a journalist, i grew up in iowa. There are black people in iowa. Mostly related to each other. There were enough of us that we had segregation, we lived on one side of town and i started my education in a segregated school and at an early age i was very curious why the black neighborhood i lived in was one way and across the river they were living a different life. I was always a skeptical person even as a child. It often got me in trouble as a child but taught me a life skill. I was reading a lot, always very intense with history because history helps explain the world to me when i was in probably fifth or sixth grade, i wrote my first letter to the editor and i was in school i was a bit of a nerd. Once i get to high school, i was part of a voluntary segregation program, i went to high school that was 20 black, taking high school to the one semester black study and i took that class and was complaining about a black teacher, our High School Paper never wrote about that. He told me if i didnt like it i should join the paper or be quiet. So i took it as a challenge, i joined the paper, had a column, wrote about black kids and my classmates and what our experience was like, won my first journalism award, so i only applied to one college, the university of notre dame, i majored in history, i would be a historian or a journalist. To write history as it is happening. And historians right for other historians and i really wanted to write about people like me. And i went to Journalism School, the carolina blue, columbia. I went to grad school. It was a two your program and, a program for people who wanted to be academics and people like myself who wanted to be professionals who didnt have a journalism background so yes. That is where i got it. What about your first job . At the lincoln observer in raleigh, 30 minutes, and i went to a job as part of the National Association of journalists and a job fair. My first job fair i didnt know internship and came with class papers, wilson was managing editor at the time and kindly told me dont ever come to a job fair with those papers again. You can get some clips. I took his advice and came back the next year and he hired me as an intern and when i graduated he hired me as a reporter. My first job was as a Public School reporter in durham which was half black half White Liberal College town where duke is as i went to carolina. I started covering Public Education in a very segregated High Poverty School district at the height of no child left behind. Starting to see the right of highstakes testing and if you simply test and hold segregated High Poverty Schools to a higher level accountability you get results. This is where i started. My Journalism School year very early on looking at the result, very devastating results of School Reform leading kids in segregated High Poverty Schools with an interest in the subject. With the stories you were writing, where they about testing . Did you get that into the newspaper . At that time, i had a great editor, the room was a town where every story was about race. It was equally divided, blackandwhite, great deal of powersharing, half black half white, the school board was half white half black and had a black mayor and so racism was at the forefront of all the politics in the town and the whole premise of no child left behind, going to count everything, look at the race of every student, we are not going to leave black and brown kids behind, no child left behind was based on race so it was easy to look at the ramifications of high states testing, i dont know how much you know about no child left behind but you have poverty segregated schools that do not meet the same standards as white schools and they are taken over and implement these reforms, that would never work, it was easy for me to pick stories about race. The entire federal educational bureaucracies looking at racism at the time. It was june and the test scores, a daily kind of story. I was spending a lot of time in schools that were failing, talking principles, spending time in the heavily white at majority black district that have very little poverty and fundamentally spending time with passion and understanding, no way you would get the same results. It wasnt a matter of parents not wanting education for their children or kids not trying necessarily to different principles not trying but when you have a school where 20 of kids are poor you have a school where 99 of kids are poor. Turned them into specialized schools, cut into a magnet. Every few years these kids are being experimented on but the test results are always the same. Thats when i began to question can you accomplish Educational Equity within segregated schools . You just could not find a school that was able to do it. You could find an Elementary School that might turn around for a year or two and then the scores would go down. You never found a middle school that was able to turn around and you never found a high school. Every educator when it were not on the record, when they were being honest, what theyre asked to do was impossible for a night of 10 kids are coming in here hungry. They are already behind when you come into the classroom. Idq, imagine a teacher when you have four kids who are behind in a class of 25, thats one thing, but when you have 21 kids who are behind in a class of 25 and and youre asked to do the same things, youre just not when you get the same results. The system was set up to fail but it was set up to make us feel like, politically it was okay to say which is going to hold poor schools accountable because white parents in this very little town just like white parents in almost every town didnt really want integration or to do the same. That was necessary to make, to give these kids the same education. You said at this point you realized that the one thing that would work, integration, is the one thing that people refused to do. And was a process. I dont know that i came to that. I was a brandnew reporter. I was an older reporter. I was the oldest intern at the observer, like 27 and interning. When i was in neutral as i was new to education. I was just learning about education coverage. It wasnt what i sought to cover out. I did know what it wanted to cover. I just knew i wanted to write about race. I was learning a lot but that allowed me because i didnt have preconceived notions about what would work and what should work in education. I could look at all the things theyre doing. They were unaware of the results. Wheres the school that is consistently performing on par with his other schools . You just couldnt find those results. I love research. Ive read a lot. I made a lot of history, sociology. Like every study that comes out in this area i was reading and just really started to formulate my mind, this picture where if we could do it someone would have done it. You cant ever show a place that did it made me stop reading this thing is working. Clearly i do a new it was a really going to work but it was the most politically expedient thing. I feel like the great story that youve arrived at is the story of resegregation. When did you start feeling like that was what you were saying . I mean, theres two stories. I grew up in the north and its not really resegregation in the north. Its just continuous segregation. It really wasnt until i moved down south that i experienced living, like the south has been those integrated part of the country in terms of housing and schools for the last 45 years. The story of resegregation is really a southern story. The northern story is a story of your willful blindness to the continuous ongoing segregation that is only been here at much higher levels than we see in the south for the past 50 years. I really started, i find annoying people who write about race but always write about it as if these inequalities have come down from the skies if they are all a legacy of the past and the only important work that we value is who is at the races of the week, who can show who said something verifiably racist . Or would write about studies that say black people are doing badly here, they are living in these conditions, which isnt news to anyone. We know that. I wanted to understand why, like what is causing this. Why are our neighborhood still segregated figures actually passed the Fair Housing Act . Why our school still segregated, not by segregated but when you look across every measure, black and latino students are getting the least qualified teachers, less likely to get access to academic courses that would get you into an institution like the columbia system of across the country. I wanted to understand why that was. Thats really when the work begin to focus on looking at the particular actions that we had taken in the past but also the people are taking right now that maintain segregation and racial inequality. With schools resegregation was a way to do that because if they play seven segregated and then it was integrated, you could go back to the point where it starts re segregating and show that someone had to do something. So i start looking a School District that an by federal courts to integrate and what federal courts order to integrate a layup certain things that you as a School District must do. You have to bust the schedule you have to racial balance or reject a pair pair of white school and a black school. Once the School District differently from the court order they can do whatever they want. They can create all black schools and they want as long as they never say we are doing this because you want to discriminate against black kids. They can do whatever they want. It was easy then to go to this point where a School District or school had been integrated and now is going backwards and you could find who did what. Who made this decision that resegregating this this school, and then asked them about it. You could trace the point. When i wrote about tuscaloosa i could literally go to the record, look at the Public Meetings where their voting to great and all black leader system of schools. I could show the map where someone sat down and drew a zone though it great and also a good and you could show them the intent in a way that we dont write about Racial Discrimination and inequality, where we ever show intent in kind of conscious action. I think thats what my work has been trying to do, is showing this history. We also know americans dont really care about history, and they certainly want to ignore the history of race in this country. So really setting about we got here but also saying this is not legacy, that people right now im making decisions that maintain this and im going to show you how that works. I have to say it was like, the red pill or the blue pill on the matrix . Whatever cult was where you could see all the code, thats what i think of my work is doing, is we live in this Computer Program where we can kind of her 10 at all of this is asked and i would just go about our lives and people all kind of had this interest because we all on paper the same rights. My work is showing the code behind where all of these inequalities have been and how they happen. Tuscaloosa story is a store you did for the republican. I guess propublic a period what were the stories you could do for the newspaper and then what stores could you not do for the newspaper . One, segregation, like 10,000 words. You, you could never write anything that long. What that allowed me to do though is tell this story from like i was in my story starts in 1619 which is the universe africans were brought to this country as slaves. Or to be slaves. I said because i think you just cannot understand anything about racial inequality today without going back and look at a lot of things that happen in the past. With the newspaper you just cant take the time to build that history into the story but i think fundamentally helped you understand. When i give talks illinois wants to know why, wisest to like that . Why do we do that . Because weve been working on this for 400 years and weve only been working to undo it for maybe 50 and then halfheartedly. I think understanding of systems over 400 years were created, else us understand how much work its going to take to undo it. Theres just no space for that in the newspaper. You could get maybe two paragraphs. In the segregation now peace, twothirds of the story is history. On it onethird takes place in the presence. If you look at the piece i did in the times magazine i would say about half of that story is in the past and half of it is in the present. I think thats whats so important is building this case the one thing cannot be nine of how this inequality is structural and systemic, and not accidental, and that it was socially engineered and, therefore, we are going to have to socially engineer our way out of it. You said when you one the best black journalist of the year from the National Association of black journalists, you said you were considering quitting journalism sorted towards the india time at the oregonian, is that right . Can you say why . Of course. The speech is on the record. What i found i think a lot of journalists of color fine that newsrooms want diversity. They want the first people, they want people to look diverse. They dont necessarily want people who think at first think about stories about race in a different way. When i went to the oregonian i made a very clear, i only ever became a journalist because i wanted to write about racial inequality. I like writing but i think sometimes but what called me to be a journalist was to tell those stories. When i got to the oregonian it just wasnt what you wanted me to do. Over and over i would find myself pitching the stories and being marginalized for those stories, being told i couldnt write those stories. And at that point after, i went to the oregonian in 2006 and six and i was right when the industry, the newspaper industry was really in a freefall. There was nowhere for me to go. I had to stick it out and after five years of just really struggling to tell the stories that i got into journalism to do, i was considering leaving. I was at the point where i felt, i wasnt doing what i got into journalism, so maybe i should think of Something Else. The problem was i couldnt think of anything else i would rather be doing because i feel like this is my calling. I was close but i could never kind of make the leap into doing Something Else because i couldnt imagine what else i would do with my life. And how did you end up at propublica . I was rescued. Steve engelbert the wasnt the founder of propublica was the managing editor at the oregonian what i was there and it worked under him there, and so he ended up bringing the art to propublica. Really, really right at the point where i probably wouldve left journalism within the next six months at that point. I said this at my speech, at the National Association of black journalists, that he saved my life in the way. This is my calling and easy wouldnt have taken out of that situation when he brought me to propublica i made very clear i cant write the stories, dont hire me because i dont want to go to another place why cant do that. He gave me free reign. Now i am here. You said you seen a lot of journalists who were in a similar position who didnt get rescued, is that right . Yes. Yeah, i mean, i could go down the list of black and brown journalists who have let the news because they became very disillusioned with not being able to write the stories they got into journalism to write. Newsrooms can be very unfriendly to people who dont just look diverse, but actually want to tell those stories in a very particular way. One of the things i heard was you want to write about black people too much. I remember having this conversation with the added at the oregonian, have you ever had that conversation with a white journalist . Have you ever told a white journalist they are writing about white people too much . You cant even imagine that happening, though it should absolutely happen. When i was told that i actually went back through our old story system and it printed out every story item written since i had been there. And then i put on the stack every story that even had a black person in it, even if i didnt identify the person is black and if i just knew the person was black and it was 10 of my stories. Literally 10 . I took those two stacks into that office and i was like what is it about you in the that makes you think that me writing 10 of my stories about black people is too much . There wasnt really a good answer because in their head they overestimated how many stories they thought i was writing about race. What i was always told was its not that many black people here, you are not writing to her audience. But youll never get that audience if youre not telling the stories. Its also just on an accurate reflection of our society and our communities that were supposed to be covering. Yesterday during the debate some people were snapping but nobody could hear them. So at the oregonian, i read some of the pieces you did about housing discrimination and the seem to be directly into the big piece you then did about the error housing act, right . So it does seem like you are building a kind of, and really and also with your education work, what was it like to come to a position where you are now allowed to write at length with five or six or seven years of really solid daytoday reporting on it . That must have been nice. Yeah, i mean, it was amazing and scary. When youre writing something every week or every two weeks, just a couple, not that many people read it, its not that big of a deal. When you spend a year on something, it better be good. Theres a lot of pressure but no, it was an amazing feeling to finally go from where i always felt like a difficult work, i wanted to do bigger work. I was always interested in doing more investigative work, and as we know a lot of times women and journalists of color are not seeking and groomed to be on teams to do a larger work. To have someone trusted i could do that and just given the freedom to do it was the most amazing experience in the world. And i think that thats part of the reason why, i recently founded an organization to a more journalists of color become investigative reporters because i feel like its most important we can do in our democracy is Holding Power accountable for how it treats our most vulnerable citizens, but its even wider than standard newsrooms. I think what it allowed me to do and what i will always love about propublica was the wasnt really a template for the type of writing i was trying to do, not in investigative reporting anyway, and they just trusted me to do it and to let me do my thing. If theres anything i would say to editors, like let journalists do their things and you will be amazed at what theyre able to produce. I think you just dont see that enough spirit how would you describe the sort of work you did there . When you say the wasnt long. Lots of words. When you say the wasnt a template, what did you mean . My work isnt probably like traditional investigative reporting in that way. I again, i spent a lot of time building this historical case. If you look at my more recent work it definitely has a point of view. Im not trying to go down the middle and just say im just link out at this beginning of the facts. Im making an argument at this point. I think thats not the usual way that this is done. But they let me, they gave me the freedom to do that and i think one, the reporting is sound for even though im coming from a point of view that segregation is wrong and we should do something about it, the reporting is very sound, but also, to give that much space do things like, when i was writing about a lot of people are dead i was writing about. Usually you writing about people doing things only now. Propublica really wants to have an impact study want you to do a story where like someone will lose their job or some law is going to change. Im writing about School Segregation or housing segregation, fully expecting when this publishes nothing would change ever. I still dont think it really well. But they let me do that not expecting that in going to get some law passed or theres going to be this, like this huge shift in our society because of the work. A lot of reporters leading a reporter spent a year that will not have any results except people be outrage, its a Pretty Amazing thing. But really making, i see myself like im making a record and im hoping forcing us to confront things that we dont want to confront, whether were going to fix them or not. Im always thinking about people trapped in these communities, what they could be if we actually treat them as full citizens. Im always thinking about the children trapped in these classrooms who, as nedra martin in my peace that comes like her daughter could be a doctor who sates her childs life life one day, and were squandering all of these children. Thats what im always thinking about even if i dont think my writing is going to change the situation for them. Im just not going to let us pretend its not there. Speak with one of the powerful things about your work is a lot of americans feel like if we just give it 300 years, you know, this double kind of work itself out. These kids dont have a 300 years. When theyre in school there in school for 10 years. So you come to propublica with this background doing a lot of reporting, and you have these two big stories, so i could School Segregation and housing segregation which are connected. How do you go about choosing how to tackle these giant subjects . The good thing is it was one great thing that came out of my very hard time at the oregonian. It was a narrative paper and thats ultimately what i went to was it really didnt narrative journalism, and i believed in narrative journalism because i understand you can do these, like fabulous investigations, and if they are dry no one will read them. You dont connect with people on human level, it doesnt matter you found all of this wrongdoing. Thats always been my instinct is to tell these hard stories through compelling narratives. Im always at the beginning thinking about what is the narrative . What is a narrative structure that can drive this story that is probably hard to read . When i did segregation now on tuscaloosa, one, part of the process about where i would tell the story had to do with the narrative. Tuscaloosa is where George Wallace stands in the schoolhouse door. Its alabama, which is like the cradle of the confederacy but also the cradle of the Civil Rights Movement. So im thinking about that when im choosing where im going to go. Im investigating, like what happened, how did the resegregation happen here and who are the characters, and can i tell this story in a way the black elites worked with the white elites to resegregation schools spent in case anyone hasnt read the article you meet all of yall havent read the article . I think they have picked for tv audience at home, tuscaloosa is a place that had a big integrated high school, Central High School, that was integrated of course in the late \70{l1}s{l0}\70{l1}s{l0} and \80{l1}s{l0}\80{l1}s{l0}, became a powerhouse in the following debate and then they resegregation. Right. As most people dont know, brown the board, we didnt have a kumbaya moment. There was a lot of foot dragging and School Districts have to be brought to court so real integration didnt come to tuscaloosa until about 1988 which is fairly common. What the judge into doing, a black escort a White High School and Black Middle School and a White Middle School and he just merged those schools. If you are a middle School Student in tuscaloosa youll went to the same school and everyone went to the same high school and he created this blockbuster powerhouse high school, it was like the dream of integration. The imperfect drink of integration but it was still the dream of integration. This district was experienced a lot of white flight. As soon as they were released from the court order, they destroyed that, integrated high school and created three high schools and an entire theater system of all black poverty high schools. That was a fascinating story narratively because you have this place that was forced to integrate 30 years after brown v. Board, and then creates this amazing high school thats like kicking everybodys bites. It was like beating sports teams all across the country. It was producing all these National Merit scholarships and given that wasnt enough to hold integration together. You could go and you can look at this place and what they did to create these allblack schools but also the black elite was part of that. So that was all part of the calculation, like what i just tell the street of resegregation from tuscaloosa. Before it went down and also wanted to tell it through three generations of one family. I knew that. I hoped i would find a family to tell it through, but i understood there so much of the session will take place in the past and if i wanted people to care about i needed to have like a human face that would connect them from the past to the present. Luckily i found the perfect family, perfect family. Pretty early on. You talk to some of the families who were less perfect. Yeah. I mean, the main character in the segregation, a young lady who was at the allblack high school and she is everything. Shes class president. Shes state track champion, on the mayors council. She was at its aggregate high school that was feeling her in terms of her education. But what made the family privilege was i wanted a grandparent who had gone through segregated schools after brown to show how desegregation didnt come to this country after brown, and then whose parent had gone to the end Good High School in that town as a result of the court order, and now found the grandchild bakken circuited school that looked just like the schools that the grandparents had attended. Thats what i was really looking for and thats what i found in that family. Central high school, are there a lot of schools like that, that were integrated and became an integrated . Yet. A wave of resegregation. Really think those holding it back was federal court orders for the most part. We never wanted integration in this country and i think thats a myth we tell ourselves as we wanted it and we tried really hard and it failed. We failed because we didnt really want it. There was this brief period of time where the federal government was forcing it, and where it forced it, many times it did work but as soon as we started releasing those courts, because a lot of this court orders were 40 or 50 years old, and the Supreme Court had made it increasingly easy for districts to be released from their court orders. Once they were released we went back to kind of our natural state of things, which is to immediately do things to resegregation. The peak of integration in this country was 1988 which eight which is when i was in middle school, and now black students are asked segregated as they were in 1972. The typical expense of a black student in this country is to attend a segregated High Poverty School. The typical experience for a white student is to attend a white segregated low Poverty School spirit that tuscaloosa story, as you mentioned, the resegregation was a kind of agree to buy some of the black leaders in the community because they were afraid they would be o attract business, if they didnt have a high quality and majority white school basically. Right spirit when did you find that out, early in the reporting or were you surprised to find that out . Did you find it to be, was your initial reaction, this is not a good case, or were you excited . What was your reaction . I think its great for the note. It gives texture and nuance, and i think when you look at all these cases, all these compromises that it happened. School desegregation was hard on black communities. It was always the black schools that were shut down. The black teachers and the black principles were fired. It was like a kids were getting on long bus ride to go to white schools. For many of the black civil rights leaders should push for desegregation, they felt that the cost had been too high for black children, and they were chasing white children across the city and white children kept fling figure what happened in tuscaloosa goes from majority white School District to majority black School District. The fear was if you didnt set aside a pocket of mostly white schools, the entire School District would turn black and then you could at any integration because you would have no white kids left in the district. But also then every time you tried to pass a tax in majority white down because the city of tuscaloosa was to majority white, if you have a majority white town and entirely black School System and to try to pass a tax for schools, white parents are not going to vote for that because their kids are not in the schools. Businesses are not going to support because their employees that they dont care about dont have kids in the schools. There was this calculation communities were having to make that we will tolerate some level of segregation for our poorest most vulnerable black kids in order to keep white kids in the district. That was an important story to do because thats a story that is happening communities all across the country. You see it in new york city. Middleclass black kids are typically not going, they are the kids are in school with white kids but its the course most all the kids who were being segregated. I thought that was important because it talks about the failures of the Civil Rights Movement. The black elite at that point thought they, they understood that a judge is going to release that district from the court order and a citizen it did the district to do what it wanted to anyway so they figured if they tried to negotiate some terms at least they could get something out of it for the black community in which it that would be Economic Development. Unfortunately, didnt work out that way. They didnt give the Economic Development so the made the decision and still didnt get it. A lot of people in that community have believed the black elite had sold them out but they just could never prove it. I was able to finally get on the record the black judge in the town of basically signed the deal to admit that he did it. One of the difficulties of the stories that you are telling is the fact that white people have gotten much better at not being, i mean, in the president ial campaign theyve gotten worse at it, but they gotten better and not being such explicit races, right, so you dont often have this smoking gun of somebody saying the nword, for example, right . You adopted the kind of, i heard you describe it, it was almost like the legal definition, right, of what segregation now is rather than a kind of narrative definition, right . Could you Say Something about that . What made, of course, during the Civil Rights Movement we were dealing with whats called segregation by law. What we are mostly talking about today is cause and effect of segregation but i think the fact that segregated is a fallacy. Its a term thats adopted by the north to resist having to, under brown the board. So segregation by fact that we dont really know who caused it. No one business are responsible. We cant say there was a lot of forced it or the government officials that mandated it. So that was a most segregation outside of the south was written into the law was categorized but i would argue and i think my work which is what id never say that i just cant segregation, the most of the segregation we see today is still du jour ray and that is still a result of official policy, still result of official actors. When the School Official in the city of tuscaloosa made the decision to draw the attendance zone that creates 13 years of entirely black High Poverty Schools, i dont know how you call it anything but intentional segregation. One of the things that talk about about with the journalist is stop getting so caught up in what you can print someone was thinking. Look at their actions and look at whether or not a new what the results of those actions would be. One of the things, when you think about it, when exxon mobil has a spill in the gulf, and we would never say, its like we dont care if the head of exxon mobil like hates docs or not, right . We dont pick it doesnt matter just how he feels about the environment, whether he likes seagulls or whatever. We only care that there were certain things i shouldve done and you didnt do it. That this was a foreseeable result of that. But when it comes to race suddenly like the only thing that matters is whether we can prove what someone like hated black people. , and if we cant prove that you hate black people when youre doing it, then suddenly, report of those actions the way we need to. My work is saying like i dont care. I can show that you make a decision he knew would be harmful, you did it anyway and i want to know why that is. Thats the way we need to be thinking about reporting on race. Legal discrimination has been outlawed in this country for 50 years. People know how not to do that and write things on paper. But its not an accident that in every facet of American Life we are still seeing black americans being disadvantaged. Thats not accidental or incidental and i think thats how we need to be writing about these issues. Im going to ask one more question but if people want to start coming up to the microphones to ask their own questions, they should start doing that now. A few months ago you had a piece in the New York Times magazine where you describe your decision to send your daughter to a high poverty segregated school. Did you do that as a journalist . Didnt make the decision as a journalist . No. Spinning but it was based on your expense of reporting on this topic for a decade or more . Yeah, i mean, its one thing to write about Public Schools when you dont have kids, and its a very different thing to write about Public Schools when you actually have to make a decision about your own child. I guess i would refrain the question. I made the decision as a mom, as a human being who think so were doing to kids is wrong, and understanding that by pretending its only systemic it allows us to get all talk about our individual decisions. But clearly all of my years of reporting informed my decision to enroll my daughter and at school. I remember early on as a brandnew Public Schools reported in drama, hearing all the excuses that liberal parents would give about why they would not put the kids any school with poor black kids. I remember one of my earlier stories was about the roma tried use magnets goes to integrate certain schools in poor neighborhoods edited a survey, they were always very hypervigilant about what white parents wanted because those with a person to keep in the district. Poor black pants work either. They had else to go. They did the survey of pension asking what you want in your school. Every single thing this prince of the wanted existed in this magnet schools in the innercity they couldnt get any white kids. I just remember, i wrote a story about that, at a just remember how like a thinking all these parents think they are good people, they are good people. They are willing to tolerate this inequality. And then throughout the years of my reporting, then beating other journalists who are cataloging racial inequality, but when you ask when you lived away to set their own children to school, they were not living what they were writing. I just couldnt fathom doing that. I have to say im not judging other people, probably doesnt ring true. I probably am judging, but for me it was just never a choice. Like, and its hard to actually say it has appeared, i literally dont think my daughter deserves more than other kids but it really dont think that she does. I didnt test of four towns it and give to. I think shes smart, i dont think shes brilliant. I dont think it matters. As parents we got into this like consumer culture around this thing that we say we believe is the great equalizer, this thing that we say is like this Important Institution where it doesnt matter where you came from. You all come here and come out with the same thing, but then we have turned it into this thing that we have to fight for every accuser best brevets for and any secure every advantage for my child. I fundamentally dont believe in that. Also knowing, like i have choice, and getting my child doesnt get in that school i can give her. But thats not true for all the other kids in my daughters classroom who are living in Public Housing with parents who are doing the best they can who have no resources whatsoever. Yes, the inequality is systemic, but every choice that we make is holding up that system. Theres just no way i could do that. I also understand and i think thats what the New York Times piece really tries to grapple with, is that that is a hard decision for parents to make and i understand that, too, because when you have so much inequality to ask a parent, subject their child to that, to the very schools i say are not educating kids, its a big ask spirit how is school so far . Shes great. My daughter is a sassy little child who is doing great. Shes doing great, but thats the thing, like for those of us who can give our kids everything, our kids will do great in any environment. And i think thats why we need to stop being so selfish about it. Me being in her skull changes the of that school. Them knowing that theres a New York Times report who is a parent at the School Change the entire dynamic of that school, right . And we know this though because this is what i say in my piece, like integration is about power. Its about access to power and you has it and who doesnt. When you have an entire school where every parent lives in a housing project, window officials dont care what those parents need. We know that theres nothing those parents can do that is going to get like at psa, the white wealthy schools that will get 10 elected officials to come to weekly meetings about 50 kids not getting their first choice for kindergarten. Thats really what integration is about, and i think everyone knows that. I think white parents know that. Black parents know that and thats why people try to protect their power. I have my power whether my daughter is in that school or not but i can share that out if im in that school with those kids. Thank you. Spinning i will try to get my answers shorter, yall. Sorry spirit that was great. Thank you. [applause] can you hear me . I think you can. Can you hear me . I was listening to your work when you did the problems we all live with, and i felt like, can you talk about when you were dealing with the education beat, like how do you generate access to the families in these neighborhoods and communities somewhat closed off in a sense . And how do you figure out which is the right person to create that narrative in your pieces . So the families are easy. Its getting access to the schools that can be really hard. I find that families always want to talk, because they know that they are being screwed. They know that their kids are not getting the education that they deserve, and so i never have a hard time with the families. It can be really hard to get into the schools. What ive also found is that a lot of times the teachers and the principles in the schools also know that theyre being set up to fail. And that you can get access by talking to people who know them to get them to meet with you and getting access into the schools that way. In terms of the narrative, this is something i struggle with a lot actually because im always find a balance two things. I want to pick a kid he was fairly representative, but im also always understand who im writing to you, and that i need to pick a kid that people think deserves an education. Im very troubled by that. Like, i struggle with that because i think the kid who is a c student who is come to school with lots of issues clearly deserves an education, too. But i need to find a kid that someone will really be outraged about, and theyre just never outraged about that black c student. They are outraged about alicia who is making all as, doing that she could possibly do and is being screwed. So im working on that because i actually have a lot of inner turmoil about that, about not being able to write about the typical kid in these schools. Because i need white people to be outraged so they will do something. Typically, when im looking for a student im looking for one, someone who can articulate whats happening so that when im interviewing them that they have given some thought to the circumstance, which a lot of us dont. I mean, when i was in school i remember when i was in tuscaloosa in the black high school, it had no ap classes and the White High School, the most heavily White High School had like 20. And the School Board Member when confronted by students said you shouldve asked for physics. Im thinking, like what High School Kid looks at the course catalog and is like, theres not classes you that it want to take. Im going to ask them to give than to be. You pick from the classes you given. Kids dont come you only know what you essentially dont even necessarily know youre getting about education. Sometimes you do, sometimes you dont but i think most kids dont know. A lot of times kids in poor schools parents also did not receive a good education. Im looking for a kid or a family some sense that they are not getting what youre supposed to get so that we can talk about that so that i am not just putting it, im not just speaking for them but theyre able able to speak for themselves. Thats kind of what im looking for, someone who has complied all of us. We want someone who has a compelling narrative, so you can articulate that narrative. You do that by talking to a lot of people and usually going with your gut like you have connected with and spending a lot of time with them. Thank you. Youre welcome. I said i should answer shortly and that certainly was not shorter. My name is torey and i, like you, really value the sort of historical background that leads to these greater systemic problems, and i struggle a lot in my own figuring out of the journalism how you bring that Historical Perspective to bear on these problems because i think sometimes in other reporting it can seem sort of piecemeal. We are looking at problems very much decontextualized, and i think your work has resonated with so many people because it does have that, but not all of us are going to be able to have the ability to have someone like propublica scoop us up and give us that opportunity. So how would you recommend that people are interested in reporting on these types of issues are able to incorporate that sort of historical and systemic understand into the work in a compelling way that maybe has to be a lot shorter . I was a beat reporter for most of my career so i didnt always have the luxury of a lot of space and a lot of time. The first thing i would say is you have to know the history yourself if you want to write about it. I think a lot of times journalists are not spending the time to figure out whats the history of this place, how many, i cant even tell you when i talk to education reporters, have you ever read brown v. Board of education . Have you read any of the case law, have you read the Civil Rights Act . Have you read the Fair Housing Act . A lot of times you are not going to write about if you dont know. When baltimore was on fire the first thing im thinking about is thomas versus head which was in this their housing lawsuit with the city of baltimore, the county baltimore and the third, were also for intentional segregating black folks in the innercity. That gives you like mad context for why baltimore is on fire. But if you dont know the history you never putting that in the story. Its not even necessary that you have to spend 3000 words on the history. You have to have some understanding of history and even if you input three paragraphs of a hit in your story youve given your reader a lot more context to understand whats happening there and if you havent. So to me the biggest bomb is not time and space to its lack of curiosity amongst reporters to really figure out why a place is like it is. This is why i always say as a black report of people look at me as i think they know what my biases are. They think they know the particular framework in which im writing a story but we dont look at what reporters and have that same assumption. You look at the way that reporters cover education. Most what reporters are coming from segregated white, public or private schools that were very high functioning. So it can be impossible to imagine the systemic reasons why these other schools are failing when that your framework. That is the biggest problem, the lack of curiosity about this history, the lack of trying to really go out and get that context and understand the context. And if you have that you dont need a lot of space to put it in. Thats also going to inform how you report all the stores. We all building a body of work. Its not everyones story. If youre covering a beat your writing multiple stories about this issue and having that context will inform what stories you tell and how you tell them and what your good stories are. Thank you so much spirit first off thank you so much for your missing talk. Thank you for being so honest with us as well stupid i always fear it will get me in trouble. I love it. My question for you is, and a lot of talks to universities, you see a lot of black students from poor neighborhoods of the nation of lowerclass. Im just curious, and you see more black students from like higher middleclass type homes. Have you done any research on why this is an deep elite universities looking to come at backgrounds when they are picking black applicants to accept into their schools . I have lots of thoughts. I worked in College Admissions right out of college, and i can tell you College Admissions officers know the high schools. They know which high schools are segregated. They know which high schools have a good reputation. You can have a 4. 0 from Central High School or you can have a 4. 0 a four point oh from Northridge High School in tuscaloosa and guidance, admissions, no what the difference is. I also think theres just, when i went to notre dame there was a huge, there was a small black population, the black population there was very welloff, and it was like, it was a struggle to be both black and workingclass at an institution like that. Universities dont want to put in the work to recruit. I think they dont want to put into work to actually help the students whats they get there. When you look at the numbers, its not just that theyre not recruiting a lot of lowincome black students, they are not recruiting a lot of black american students. A lot of those black numbers or action black students who are coming either secondgeneration or firstgeneration americans from caribbean or africa. I think antiblack racism and particularly particularly at the black american racism is a big part of how hard it is for black americans into an low income students to get into institutions like this. Thank you. Youre welcome. Thank you for being here today. I have a question about advocacy journalism. You mentioned that you now go into stores knowing you have a perspective, and thats okay. Of course your sound reporting backs it up, but im wondering if you ever worry as being seen as advocate for nation will negatively affect the way that readers view your work and how you deal with that . Ive been very open almost my, well, all of my trip that i dont believe in unbiased journalism. It doesnt exist. All reporters have a perspective on what they are writing. Its whether they are hiding it or not. I never pretend to be unbiased. What a doozy is my work will be accurate and my work will be there. That is what i think readers should expect from any of us. When you think of the nature of investigative reporting, to me by why did is is advocacy reporting we are saying the government is doing this and it shouldnt be, right . Or we are saying this corporation is taking advantage of these americans and it shouldnt be, and we are writing is because want it to be fixed. When you look at the very mission of newspapers, when i was at the oregonian, my mission was to speak for the powerless. We could have a mission will speak for the powerful or that we will not speak for anyone, but thats not the role that we play. To me i think that when you know kind of, to an extent, you can judge my work better because im not pretending to be unbiased. So you can judge what it is im writing. Am i writing something thats fair . I think what i worry about is what all good journalist worry about is im going to make a mistake. I worry about being accurate, and i worry about treating people fairly, and i dont worry for one second that whether people think i am biased or not. Because if you want to know if im biased, if i think segregated kids in schools is that resource is a problem, i actually fine with that. Thanks so much. [applause] hello. I enjoyed your recent piece on this. Im just one had changing media from print affects how you kind of approach people youre working with, particularly people are more vulnerable than others, whether makes a difference at all and how a kind of contributes to a final output. I actually found for that particular angle, i found it liberating through radio. Because people are speaking for themselves so much more. When you write in magazine you can write and you can get people a lot more space to speak, but in newspapers its like one sentence he said one sentence. But for radio most of the stories, people are telling in their own words and you getting to his in. Youre giving them a lot of space to tell their own stories and i found it to be completed liberating. Thats what im not a radio reporter but i always heard, i did a written time i get it printed version of that story first, but i always heard it as a way to peace because i thought the power of one clearly hearing like that mob in the high school gymnasium, theres no way i could have conveyed that in print the way that it is to hear it. Also i just, when i interviewed nedra, i felt people new to hear their voice of the given telling their own story. I found that to be very powerful. Whats hard about it is it becomes much more about the storytelling, i have lots of facts and lots of like data points, and you have to wipe a lot of that in rated. No one is trying to hear all the statistics on like School Segregation or all the percentages of how many teachers are qualified and all of that. A lot of the really liked investigative part i think has to get polished out in the story, and that can be a little hard. Overall, i think in terms of like giving people agency, radio was a great way for that. Do you think that theres a place for white people to write about race and segregation, even if we really displacing people of color . Yeah. I mean, the story of race and segregation is not a black story, right . Of course not. Its not, right . Spirit but when i listen to the black lives matter people speak, a lot of them say this is a time for white people to stand aside and be in a listing place. Typically, like when you look back in time, like a lot of white people in britain, had these dominant positions, forums to be able to communicate here but do you think its more important for us to step aside and allow people of color to can mitigate their stories . No. I mean, i think that the journalists of color should be writing about race if they want to come editing white people should certainly be writing about race. I think the problem is white people often think writing about race is like writing about black or brown folks, but white people are living in segregated commuters, going to segregated schools, are often the ones in power who are maintaining the segregation or maintaining the racial inequality. So certainly you guys should be writing about not just race, like going and writing about like a black people are suffering, but writing about how power is working and what that power looks like. As a journalist we are always writing about, i dont know how journalists do the job without writing about all kinds of different types of people and all kinds of different types of issues. Its not just placing someone. I think its doing your job. One of the things i say is theres not really a beat you can come in this country we shouldnt be writing about race. Race is on every single beat, if youre writing about banking, schools, policing, business, housing. Like, theres nothing that race doesnt touch in this country so you are a journalist in your job, you should be writing about race no matter what color you are and no matter what beat you are coming spirit even if we are limited by the range of our experience . I mean, im working on a story on the department of justice right now, i dont know anything about epa. I dont know anything about the laws regulating the environment and toxins. We are all having come this is the nature of journalism is have to learn about things we dont know about and then try to synthesize them for mass consumption. We need to get out of this might state that race is somewhat different. You study it. Im that good about writing about race because im black. On good because i have studied the hell out of it, right . [applause] thats what makes the good. Believe me theres a lot of blackwhite why dont think are very good about writing at race. I could name some. Im not going to name them. I think like i have developed an expertise in the subject and that is why im good at it. Not just because an era when i wake up im just a great race writer. I think all of us, this is something we want to do, you get an expertise in it and you will do good work. Thank you. Youre welcome. You talked in the New York Times piece about the way new york city is kind of doing this integration as like a voluntary measure and kind of making the argument that it benefits white families in addition to black and latino families. Im wondering if you think that argument is actually ever going to, i know in new york right now its kind of covering up real action from taking place. Im wondering if youd seen in your research for you think that argument will ever hold sway or its just way to keep kicking the can down the road . What argument . That its in the interest of white families and white students to have integrated schools, to. I think that, its two different things. Integration from black and latino students is about equality and about equity. Integration for white students is not. Fundamentally youre making two different arguments. But i think that the argument that i would make is when you had a country that was 80 white, its one thing to stop 20 of your population from getting an education and being able to be citizens who can play a role in our society. Its another thing to 50 of your population who is under educated and unable to like pay your Social Security and to work living wage jobs. So in that way i think fundamentally as our country changes, i dont think that makes us better on race. We can look at any country that is already gone my nor do white or any city in this country the oregon minority white. I know that doesnt necessarily fundamentally change power, but as a country when youre having half of your Public School students are black and latino, if youre going to choose not to educate them, it is going to harm you. Like there is action going to be harm to white students. I dont think we have realized yet but i think that is where we are coming to. Im not optimistic. I dont have a lot of optimism about race. I think if you study history you dont have a lot of reason them optimism, but i think, what i do know is we cannot continue to go as we are, that you cannot have half of your population uneducated and unable to take these important jobs and do this important work. We didnt have that before, so maybe but probably not. Thanks. Hi nikole. Hey, girl spirit we know each other, sorry. Came all the way from london just to see me tonight. No, she didnt. [laughter] my question is about the ida b wells society. Your organization for journalists of color trying to encourage more active and Investigative Journalism. Mother jones did an article about a month ago about how its really hard for them to continue to encourage this passion in journalism to do Investigative Journalism because of funding. Is your Organization Going to work in concert in trying to get organizations to continue to push Investigative Journalism, especially when peace is like yours are doing so well, not just an education of the people who do investigative pieces that really change the conversation in society . Yeah. I think the argument when it comes to diversity is a red herring. I think that clearly they are struggling in general and investigative reporting is expensive. To pay someone sadder to produce one thing a year is very expensive, but i dont think that is the reason why we have a diversity problem and investigative reporting. What we are trying to push him is that our people who are qualified and we need to find a way to hire them. I dont think the funding is the issue. We cant find a qualified person because i can tell you that persons qualified because ive trained them. That is what were trying to do. Thank you. Youre welcome. Thats it. Thank you all for coming. Thank you, nicole. [applause]
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