Like their peers in so many other urban places in the United States, the White families in my liberal D.C. neighborhood make a point of showing up. We show up to bond at artisan coffeehouses over our shared love for the area’s “diversity.” We show up at our book clubs to read Ta-Nehisi Coates, Isabel Wilkerson and Colson Whitehead. We show up — often in hybrid cars festooned with Black Lives Matter decals — to protest police violence against Black men and to organize litter cleanups in area playgrounds. We pride ourselves on fully and authentically participating in our newfound urban communities.
And yet, most of us also show up to encourage our city’s education officials to secure seats in segregated, higher-quality schools for our White and wealthy kids. For so many White progressive families, diverse neighborhoods are beautiful — but diverse, integrated schools are never quite satisfactory for our children.
Almost every American city hosts a version of this dynamic. In her new book, “Learning in Public: Lessons for a Racially Divided America From My Daughter’s School,” White author and activist Courtney E. Martin recounts moving (from rapidly gentrifying Brooklyn) in 2013 to rapidly gentrifying Oakland, Calif., in part for its progressive politics and eclectic cultural and culinary life. She and her husband bought a house and had two daughters, and Martin was thrilled that her girls would grow up differently than she had in her “conservative hometown of Colorado Springs.”
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