My misguided six-year foray into ‘social justice journalism’ (2016-2022)
To get past the current education stalemate, journalists, practitioners, and parents need to rethink prior positions and efforts — starting with our own. I’ll go first.
I’ve always been skeptical about the practical and political feasibility of school integration — as well as the value of focusing on it as a school reform priority.
That much should be clear from all the writing and commentary I’ve done on the topic, including Some Questions About This American Life’s ‘The Problem We All Live With’ and Questioning 70 years of integration. (More links below)
But at the same time, I was for several years deeply convinced that the lack of racial diversity among education journalists was a core problem — that newsrooms needed to be integrated as much or more than schools — and that I should try and do something about it.
Some of my pieces from that era start with 2016’s Just how white is education journalism? all the way to 2022’s Racial diversity in education news? Two steps forward, one step back.
Only now am I realizing how misguided my efforts were, how much they contradicted my skepticism around school diversity, and how deeply rooted they were in my personal desire to avoid being seen as racist.
