Share a brief summary of the podcast you listened to. What are YOUR key takeaways? What do you want us to know? How does this connect to social justice youth work as described by Clemons?
I listened to the podcast, "Nice White People". It was about how the schools are segregated and how this particular school tries to "diversify" the school to raise the number of students attending.
The podcast was about a neighborhood school in New York named, School for International Studies (SIS). This school was made up of mainly Black, Latino, and Middle Eastern students. The principal of SIS was an African American woman and she reached out to the neighborhood families which were wealthy white families to give SIS a chance for their child to attend and raise the student population. The white families usually went to the same three schools that were populated with white students, SIS wasn't in their radar. The "white" schools were full so one parent, Rob, tried to gather other white families to attend SIS together. They were lured with promises of a French program so they came. They came to the school with a savior attitude. They formed their own committee and raised money for their children not necessarily for the school. They didn't take into account the feelings, the income level, and community of the children and families that were in the school before they came in trying to change it. They even had their children thinking they were sent there to make the school a better place. These new families had a way of thinking, because they can raise money, the school would be a better place, this isn't necessarily true and wasn't true for SIS.
My key takeaway listening to this podcast, I could feel the pain and hurt in the PTO members voices. All the hard work that they did for the school got over looked for money. If the white families came in and partnered with the PTO instead of creating their own secretive committee they could've brought together the community in a familiar way that the original families were used to. Instead it became an us against them thing. No one needed saving, they just needed help.
I want you to know that schools that are mainly populated with black and brown students don't need saving, they might just need a little help.
This podcast connects to Rachel's article on social justice youth work because if the students at SIS were able to have a say in the program that the new family brought to the school (French Program), the program would have been a language that a majority of the school speaks, not French.
