School desegregation and Whiteness in Brooklyn

An interview with Lisa Raymond-Tolan

Lisa Raymond-Tolan is a parent in Brooklyn’s District 15 whose son was part of the district’s new desegregation plan. As a result, her son was assigned to a school that was not on their list, and at which he would be one of the only White students. Lisa’s son ended up attending his assigned school—and is very happy. Raising Race Conscious Children had the opportunity to interview Lisa about the conversations around race that she had with her son through this process.

How did the conversation with your son about middle schools and race begin?

Lisa: It started the day I told him he got into a school that wasn’t on his list and he burst into tears. To get placed in a school that not only wasn’t on his list, but was a school he hadn’t even seen, was shocking at first.

During one exchange in the days that followed, he shared:

“All the kids at (his elementary) school say I’m going to get bullied there,”

and

“Everyone says it is a ‘bad’ school.”

Something caught me about those moments. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but it felt embedded with race. These were my first inklings that there was a bigger picture that we were going to have to wrap our heads around.

Tell me more about your response to the “bad school” comment:

Lisa: Well, first we tried to pick apart what makes a school “bad.” He answered that he had heard that the kids (at the middle school he was offered a spot at) don’t work hard—and he knew that the school didn’t have as high test scores as the other choices on his list. But then, together, we learned more about the school.

We explored, for example, that there were a lot of kids whose first language was not English, which helped explain why test scores were not as high as schools with low numbers of English Language Learners. We also talked about how many elementary schools in our district don’t get the same resources as his elementary school—for special programs like art and enrichment—and how that might impact a child’s experience of school…and how that is unfair.

We started seeing beyond the “bad test scores” and complicating why this school “looked bad on paper.”

I would also try to push back on the stereotype that kids at this school wouldn’t work hard. We would talk about how, just like at his (majority White) elementary school, there would be some kids who were more—and less—excited about doing the work…

The more we talked, the more came out regarding my desire for my son to go to school with kids who are different from him—and that is exactly what his middle school is giving him. I told my son, “So you got into this school, and while I think this year there will be more White kids than in prior years, there will probably not be many…’ but I don’t think that part really phased him. Well, let me ask him, he’s sitting right here at the table doing his homework…

Lisa’s son: I knew that I was going to different from everyone else. I knew most kids were going to be Hispanic or brown-skinned.

Lisa: For us, it was really about becoming aware that some of the negative things we were thinking were a by-product of being in a racist society—that we were beneficiaries of. But once we named it, and took the veil off of it, it made it so much easier to talk about. We weren’t aware of the racism that we were participating in actively and willfully not seeing. We wanted to send our kid to a “not bad school’ but before we had to reckon with it, we didn’t even realize what we were participating in. It was having to realize we had to use language about institutional racism…and reframing as an opportunity gap not an achievement gap.

What about the bullying comments?

Lisa: Our main approach to the bullying comments were to consider the source…which was other 5^th  graders, none of whom had seen the school or knew anyone directly who went there, so the information was second-hand at best.

We also focused on how everyone at every school is just a kid, like him. My son knows from hearing about my work (I’m an occupational therapist) that when kids are being mean or having issues at school, it’s important to consider what they might be going through at home or a learning challenge that make things feel really hard and frustrating.

And again, we also talk about how different elementary schools have different resources to support kids academically and emotionally…so that there are kids who didn’t always get the right help before now, which isn’t fair.

My son toured the school after he got in and started getting excited about it—but still, kids from his elementary school would say to him, ‘you are going to get jumped and bullied’ and he had to defend his new middle school to them.

How would your experience touring and considering middle schools have changed, if you knew what you know now, then:

It would have been a 180 turn. If I had had this lens, I would have looked at so many more options—which I had previously not even considered because of “bad test scores.”

We also realized that some of the schools that were on the top of his list, that are majority White, have more of a “sink or swim” culture that would not have provided my son with the support he needs socially, emotionally, or academically. That environment was mostly OK for my older son, but my younger son and I discussed that he sometimes needs more direct support—and how every student should get the support they need to succeed, not just the kids who are “good test-takers.”

My son goes to an amazing middle school. I feel like we won the lottery…and we didn’t even buy a ticket.

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