(crowd talking)
(photocopier sound)
- Norman Rockwell who is
the painter who you think of
as being the example of America,
of the things that we
associate as the good things
in America.
And this person who spent his career,
glorifying America included
things that were powerful
that disturbed him
about racism in America.
And that situation that existed then,
so offended Norman Rockwell
that he made this painting
and described it as a problem
that we all as a nation faced.
(soft piano music)
Much of the desegregation
that occurred in this country
happened after 1968 up
until the early 1990s.
And then the effort started moving back,
the courts became less
likely to enforce orders
to desegregate, cases were dismissed.
And so you in essence had a 25 year period
where an effort was made to desegregate.
But the effort to
segregate is one that began
when the country started.
(explosion)
(flute marching music)
♪ Hallelu-, hallelu-, hallelujah ♪
♪ Hallelu-, hallelu-, hallelujah ♪
(upbeat music)
(vehicle hooter)
(birds chirping and dog barking)
- You know America is
built on this powerful idea
and we call it The American Dream.
This idea, it's the idea
that where you begin life
should not dictate where
you end up in life.
That zip code is not destiny.
And in some ways, the story of America
is the story of a country
trying to finally live up
to those ideals.
- I think that the reason why
my family pushed so heavily
for me to look at
predominately White schools
is because they have this belief that
where the White schools
are is where resources are.
And it's a belief that is true,
especially in New York City, surprisingly.
Even when I was looking through
the high school directory
when I was applying to schools,
I saw that it was true.
Schools that were
predominantly White and Asian
had maybe 16 sports teams
and maybe like 30
extracurricular activities
available at their school
and then I would look
at schools near my area
in Brownsville, Brooklyn
and I would see that the school
across the street from me
only had like four sports teams available.
And that difference was not
only an extra curriculars
and sports, but also an
academic opportunities.
- We're at the levels of segregation
that we had not seen since
the 1970s in America today.
Not only do we see
segregation between schools,
we see segregation within classrooms.
And we see many different
new tools and practices
that are being used to segregate
students not only by race,
but by disability and by language status.
Students are being disciplined
at very different rates,
depending on their race.
In many schools across America,
we see a situation in which,
I'll take a case that
we had in Mississippi
where we had, you know, some
days 12, 13, 14 students
who were being arrested
in school every single day
for things like minor infractions.
We're using discipline
as a way to get students
not only out of the classroom,
but out of school all together.
That is the modern form of segregation
in American schooling today.
- [Richard] It's not just a question about
Black and White children
being in school together.
But more fundamentally, the
challenge is that in America,
Black children generally
don't receive access
to a quality education in the
same way as White children do,
just as poor children in
America don't receive access
to education in the way
that wealthy children do.
New York City has wound up
adding an entirely different set
of factors that make the problem
of segregation even worse.
And that's that New York
City really unusual,
compared to many other jurisdictions,
heavily relies on screened
admissions practices.
So again, in a system
where 66% of students
are Black and Latino.
Only 10% of the students at
the specialized high schools
are Black and Latino.
At the most prestigious of the schools,
Stuyvesant High School of
900 students were admitted
into last year's class, there
were seven Black students
who were admitted to
Stuyvesant High School.
And so I think anybody
looking at the system
have to answer a very important question.
Either you think there are
only seven Black students
in New York City, who have
the smarts and the grit
and the work ethic to
perform well at Stuyvesant
or you think there's something
wrong with the system,
but you can't have it both ways.
Either there's something
wrong with our kids
or there's something
wrong with our system.
And now we argue that
there's something wrong with our system.
- [Tiffani] I'm in a
program called SEO Scholars
that works to get low income students
to and through college.
And over the course of
my high school career,
I will have taken over 720 hours
of supplemental education
in English and in math.
It was very discouraging,
the first day they had
us take a diagnostic exam
and we got our scores back
and everyone had failed pretty much
and we were in auditorium,
and we all open up our
envelopes at the same time.
And we all, I think
that was the first time
that they told us that we are
in a system that is unequal,
and that there's an achievement gap
and that there is an opportunity gap,
and that there was nothing
we could do about it
besides attend these extra classes
and try to get ourselves on the
same level as other students
who already knew the information
that we weren't being offered.
- And as anyone with children knows,
young people can live
down to expectations too.
If you expect less from them,
then you are likely to get that.
And that affects, again,
the way that they see
themselves as they grow up.
- If you look at schools
that are racially segregated,
that are in areas of concentrated poverty,
they have less resources,
they are not as strong
academically in any way
that you want to measure that,
whether that be by test scores,
by the kinds of curriculum and classes
and educational offerings
that are provided
and we see higher teacher turnover.
If you look at where school is located,
you can pretty much map
the kind of opportunities
that students are gonna have there.
- [Dennis] Until we find
a way in this country
to address these problems
that continue to stifle
certain students for things
that have nothing to do
with their qualifications
or their intelligence,
that we failed as a country.
And until we we change that,
then we can't truly describe
us as a free country
and one where there is opportunity.
- So we have to confront
those problems together.
The fact that you have a group of people
who have a real personal vested interest
in the way the system works,
and the fact that you have
people who look at the system
and don't really see
anything wrong with it.
So the question is,
how do you change that?
You change that through
organized leadership.
What we lack in this country,
the only thing we ever really
lacked in this country,
is the political will to do what's right.
You have to fight and agitate
and organize to drive change.
(somber music)
