The list of issues our news media now consider “problematic” is about to get a little longer.
The New York Times is set to release a new podcast called Nice White Parents, which seeks to explore the ways in which white parents have contributed to the problems facing public schools.
More specifically, the show is “about the 60-year relationship between white parents and the public school down the block,” the paper announced Thursday.
It adds, “We know that American public schools do not guarantee each child an equal education — two decades of school reform initiatives have not changed that. But when we look at how our schools are failing, we usually focus on who they’re failing: Black and brown kids. We ask: Why aren’t they performing better? Why aren’t they achieving more? Those are not the right questions.”
I bet you can guess where this is going.
“If you want to understand what’s wrong with our public education system,” the New York Times’s announcement adds, “you have to look at what is arguably the most powerful force in our schools: White parents.”
Elsewhere, on social media, the paper promoted its forthcoming podcast, saying, “To understand what’s wrong with our public education system, you have to look at what’s arguably the most powerful force in our schools: White parents.”
To understand what’s wrong with our public education system, you have to look at what’s arguably the most powerful force in our schools: White parents. Listen to the trailer for “Nice White Parents,” a new series from @serial, brought to you by @nytimes. https://t.co/ljXOFNOZFO
— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 23, 2020
Though it is unclear whether the podcast will come right out and accuse white parents of being racist — after all, we have not even listened to the yet-to-be-released program — it seems likely. Indeed, based on the paper’s own promotional material, white parents, even well-meaning ones, will likely be cast as extremely “problematic” for both public school and minority students. Perhaps because, at some point decades ago, their families moved. Or perhaps because they send their children to private schools. Or something.
Included in the New York Times’s Thursday announcement is a short audio clip of the host, This American Life producer Chana Joffe-Walt, discussing an incident that occurred in 1963 in which white parents lobbied for a public school to be built next to their neighborhood only to decline later to enroll their own children.
“For years,” Joffe-Walt says, “I’ve been looking for an answer to the question: Why don’t public schools work better? What is getting in the way of giving each child an equal opportunity, an equal education?”
Joffe-Walt adds, “But now, I think I have been looking in the wrong places for what’s broken in our schools. I think you can’t understand what’s broken if you don’t look here at one of the most powerful forces shaping public education: white parents.”
If you have a bad feeling about this show, you are not alone.
Joffe-Walt’s background in covering public schools includes co-authoring several articles on education and segregation in 2015 alongside New York Times magazine staffer Nikole Hannah-Jones.
Yes, that Hannah-Jones. As in, the founder of the New York Times’s 1619 Project, whose entire thesis rested upon the fabricated assertion that the American colonists revolted against the British as a means to preserve slavery.
Having cut her teeth covering education with the New York Times’s crackerjack activist reporter, it seems a sure thing that Joffe-Walt’s Nice White Parents will suffer from shortcomings and ideological blind spots, such as those found in the 1619 Project. But who knows? Perhaps it won’t. Perhaps Joffe-Walt will surprise everyone.
Hope springs eternal and all that.
