S10E5 – Taking Just Action for Integration with Richard and Leah Rothstein

S10E5 - Taking Just Action for Integration

Andrew: Welcome to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I'm Andrew, a White dad from Denver.

Dr. Val: And I'm Val, a Black mom from North Carolina.

Andrew: And this is Taking Just Action for Integration with Richard and Leah Rothstein. And Val, we got Richard Rothstein on the podcast!

Dr. Val: I know! This is, like, an unbelievable moment for me because (and I know you feel this way too), but his first book, The Color of Law, really shook me to my core.

Andrew: Totally. The Color of Love was one of those books I look back on and think just, like, how completely it upended my view of the world, of the country, of my understanding of how the country got to be as segregated as it is. Totally changed my world.

Dr. Val: And you know, I understood it from a Black person's perspective being on the receiving end of legalized segregation, but I still didn't understand the depths to which it was explicit in our laws and our policies. It was not a secret that we were trying to keep neighborhoods White, and in many ways that was like a painful reminder.

When we engage in collective conversations in our country around our, the issue of race, it was a painful reminder that we should be comfortable talking about it because we were very comfortable creating the rules that created the division in the first place.

Andrew: Yes. If listeners have not read The Color of Law, I highly recommend it. It's a, it's a fantastic book, but certainly one of the big takeaways I had was just that degree of intentionality in the explicitly racial policies that the government had.

And we're not talking about 150 or 200 years ago, but in the ‘40s and the ‘50s and the ‘60s. The ways that the GI Bill was implemented, the ways that the suburbs came to be, the ways that the Federal Housing Administration approved or didn't approve loans, on and on and on, these were all very explicitly racist policies.

Dr. Val: And as a result, we learn why our schools ended up being racially isolated in the first place. So we didn't just have Richard, we also had another very special guest. Can you talk a little bit about Leah?

Andrew: Yeah! So, so, this is another multi-generational conversation. We had the Doctors Darling-Hammond on a couple episodes ago, and Leah is Richard's daughter, and the two of them got together to write a book called Just Action, a follow up to The Color of Law with sort of action steps that anybody can take to deal with the segregation that Richard pointed out in the Color of Law.

Dr. Val: The fact that it is multi-generational and that it was a parent engaging in conversation with their child about the world and about what they can do to change it, that inspired Leah to want to not only do the work that she did for decades, but also to join her father in writing this book.

Andrew: Yeah, very nice to have the two of them and their two perspectives and to see the ways in which the choices that Richard made (both for the things that he cared about, but also the conversations he had and the environments that he chose for Leah) ended up creating this sort of passion in her that is similar to his own passion for justice.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Now, I think it's fair to name for our listeners that this conversation, especially in the ways in which they describe legal segregation around housing, is one that centers Black folks and White folks. And other ethnicities and races aren't named in this particular episode, but we know that they were also impacted by these laws as well.

Andrew: Yeah. And I think in different ways and it, you know, it's where they dig into it in the book a bit (we didn't get into it too much in the actual conversation), but there are ways in which obviously like the sort of hierarchy of human value that, that places White people on the top in this country impacts everybody negatively.

And I think they rightly point out that the impact of the segregative policies that the government has implemented were really directed directly at Black people. And so, other people have been caught up in the crossfire of that in various ways (and I think it's worth another conversation at some point about), but this conversation really does focus specifically on the ways that the government had very specifically anti-Black policies.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And while you may not hear your racial identity or ethnic group named in this conversation, I think it's always meaningful to learn about other people's experiences and to be fluent in the ways in which people experience race and racism in this country.

Andrew: The other thing I would just say is that we're largely talking about the ways that we are segregated in our lives, particularly around housing, and we don't get too deep into the school conversation, but we will definitely dig into that, in the outro after. So, stick around.

Dr. Val: Awesome. Let's take a listen.

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Richard Rothstein: I'm Richard Rothstein. I'm the author of The Color of Law and Co-author with Leah Rothstein of Just Action: How to Challenge Segregation Enacted Under the Color of Law. I've, um, for many years been writing about race and education.

Andrew: And Leah, how about you?

Leah Rothstein: I'm Leah Rothstein. I'm Richard's daughter and co-author with him of Just Action. Prior to writing this book, I worked in housing policy as a consultant to cities and counties and nonprofit developers on affordable housing development and finance, and community development. Prior to that, I was a community and labor organizer.

So I have some experience working on these issues from all angles. And I joined my dad to write Just Action because The Color of Law had such an impact on the conversation around how we came to be a segregated country. And I thought it was an important and ripe opportunity to help answer the question of “What can we do about that now in our own communities?”

And so I joined him to help answer that question by writing Just Action.

Andrew: Amazing. The Color of Law, you know, in, in, in which basically, I guess you, you argue that this idea of “de facto segregation,” that segregation just occurs naturally from people wanting to live with people who are like them, is largely a myth. And that the degree of segregation that we see today, both in our schools and our housing (in our country as a whole), is really the result of active policy steps taken by the government.

And it was certainly an eye-opening book. Totally changed the way that I see the world. I know so many people who, who feel the same way. And I, I would imagine I was not alone with my response being like, “Wow, I see the world in a new way. So now what do we do?” And it seems like Just Action is the answer to that, which is just chock-full of examples of people, from very hyper-local to national level, steps that people are taking to, to try to address it.

Both books sort of start with this premise that segregation is bad. That it's harmful to Black people, it's harmful to White people, it's harmful to our democracy. And, and I'm wondering, maybe Richard, you can start, how did you come to that understanding? What in your background, in your upbringing, in your life led you to have this as kind of a focus for your research, for your scholarship and your writing and, and you know, how did you come to that understanding?

Richard: Well, I am old enough to have been a participant in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and that was always an understanding that we could not succeed as a society on a segregated basis. Uh, I'm not suggesting that African Americans should not have the right to choose where they live.

Uh, if they choose to live in clusters of other African Americans, as do many Italians and Jews and Irish, that's, not inconsistent with having a non-segregated society. But African Americans don't have the choice. They have been required to live in areas of concentrated low income, as well as racial concentrations. And that is not consistent with a decent society, with a democratic society.

So the important thing is that people have a choice where to live. The other important thing is that, uh, the neighborhoods where we live become more equal in resources. Segregation and deprivation are synonyms. You can't have a desegregated society and equality, uh, in economic or social terms. And so, uh, it's necessary to destroy the structures that we've created that segregated African Americans, the ways in which we created them in the 20th century endured to the present and structure how we live in this country today.

Andrew: Yeah.

Richard: So the crimes that we committed, the government, our government (speaking for all of us), the crimes they committed to segregate this society need to be redressed. And that's why we wrote this new book, Just Action, to describe how both Whites and African Americans can join together to create a society where people have the opportunity to choose where they live and to have access to the neighborhoods with equal opportunity.

Andrew: Yeah. How did you come to care about that? Why was that something that was important to you?

Richard Rothstein: Well, um, as a very young man, as I said, I was recruited into the civil rights movement. In 1960, four students, uh, in Greensboro, North Carolina sat at a lunch counter in the Woolworth stor to protest their exclusion from the opportunity to eat at any restaurant they want. To shop at any store that they want. And I was a college student in that year. Pulled into a picket line in front of a Woolworth store in, uh, the neighborhood of my college. And, as I became more and more involved in civil rights activities, I began to appreciate how structural the, uh, segregation of African Americans and Whites were.

Dr. Val: Yeah, I was just at that Woolworth (now museum) earlier this month. And I think that was, that's awesome that that was the moment that you feel like you were most captured to, to join into the fight.

So thank you for that! And it, it was neat to actually be in that place in history.

Just looking early on in the text, you talk about that this redress will require the formation of biracial and multi-ethnic local communities.

And so, can you talk a little bit about were you part of a multi-ethnic community prior to your work in the civil rights movement? Or like, was this your first entrance into that? Because we have many listeners who are trying to figure out how to join some of these movements, these multi-racial, multi-ethnic movements, and they're not quite sure how to plug in.

Richard Rothstein: Well, um, no, actually the, the first African Americans I ever ran into were in college. I grew up in a segregated neighborhood, uh, the kind of neighborhood that, uh, was created by the Federal Housing Administration for Whites only.

A suburban neighborhood inside New York City. And so, I did not have much exposure to people who were African American (in particular) until, uh, I began to meet some in college. And then through the civil rights movement, of course, I met many more.

Andrew: Leah, how, what was your journey? I mean, obviously I'm, I'm guessing that your father had some influence on you growing up, um, and sort of shaped some of your thinking. But yeah, what was your personal journey into this work? Why do you care?

Leah Rothstein: Yeah. Well, obviously I grow, grew up not just with my dad, but my mom was also a civil rights activist and it was just sort of in the water we drank to, uh, be concerned about equity in our society and to know that we have a role and obligation to do something. To better our communities.

So I grew up hearing about both of my parents getting involved in the civil rights movement, the anti-Vietnam War movement. And I just had this belief, this understanding that I would go to college and then there would be a massive social movement and I would just join it. And then I would make, like, massive change in the country. And that's just what people do when they're, like, in their twenties!

[Leah chuckles]

And so it took a little while of, you know, getting outta that to realize that I grew up with sort of unique parents who had unique paths in their lives. And I got to college and there wasn't, you know, a ready-made movement for me to join 'cause that's not actually how it works.

But I did join activist movements in college and got involved in sort of racial equity movements and grassroots organizations, and then became a community organizer, and then a labor organizer. And then wanted to see if I could get more kind of training that would be able to affect change on a, on a different level. So, I went back to school in public policy and then ended up working in housing and community development policy. I really saw how the communities we live in, the resources we have access to because of where we live are a lot of the driving reasons behind the inequities we see in our society.

So I wanted to address it from that end. And then my dad wrote The Color of Law and I was one of the people who asked him after reading it, you know, what do we do with this now?

Dr. Val: I love it.

Leah Rothstein: You know, I, I had all this policy experience and organizing experience. It still didn't seem like it was, it wasn't clear to me how we get out of this and, and change it. So, uh, I asked him “What do we do?” And he said, “Well, why don't you help me answer that question?” And here we are!

Andrew: That's beautiful.

Dr. Val: That is beautiful.

Andrew: Richard, I wonder if we can start with sort of like a, 30,000 foot overview of Color of Law and kind of the arguments that you made. We've touched on it a little bit, but give us the high level view of, of how it was that the government created the segregation that we currently are living with.

Richard: Well, there are many policies that federal, state, and the governments followed, racially explicit to ensure that we be a segregated society. That African Americans and Whites could not live near one another in any metropolitan area of the country.

Perhaps the best known of these, although not many people recognize the government's involvement, is the creation of suburbs. In the immediate World War II period of single family homes that were Whites only. At the time, we were not a suburban country. Factories had to be located near Deepwater ports or railroad terminals so both Black and White workers, banks that service those factories and their employees, insurance companies all had to live in urban areas.

The federal government embarked on a program, led by the Federal Housing Administration and then Veterans Administration, to move the White population out of those urban areas into single family homes in newly created suburbs, and prohibit African Americans from accompanying them.

I'm not suggesting that those urban areas were fully integrated at the time, they were not. Many of them were segregated, but they were much less segregated than they are today simply because of the need to be close to the jobs that were all in those areas.

The best known of these suburban developments that the FHA and the VA financed/subsidized is Levittown, east of New York City, but they exist in every metropolitan area, surrounding the downtown areas of the country. Levittown was 17,000 homes, an enormous undertaking. William Levitt was a bigot, left to his own devices he would not have sold to an African American.

No bank would be crazy enough to lend him the money for such, uh, unheard of venture. Who was gonna live out there when people wanna live in the cities? He couldn't raise the money for it, to build 17,000 homes, to buy the land. The only way he could build the homes was by going to the federal government (the FHA and VA), asking for a guarantee of his bank loans. The FHA and VA agreed to give him that bank guarantee provided he committed to sell no homes to African Americans. The FHA and VA even required that he place a clause in the deed of every home prohibiting resale to African Americans or rental to African Americans.

This was a racially explicit program in the federal government. It wasn't something that was the product of rogue bureaucrats working in these agencies. Uh, this was written federal policy. The Federal Housing Administration had a manual that was distributed to appraisers all over the country whose job it was to evaluate the application of developers. The manual said you couldn't recommend for a federal bank guarantee a loan to a developer who was going to sell to African Americans.

The manual went so far as to say that you couldn't recommend a loan to the developer of an all White project if it was going to be located near where African Americans were living, causing the words of the manual that would run the risk of “infiltration by inharmonious racial groups.” That's what the Federal Policy Manual said.

This notion of de facto segregation is utter nonsense. This was engineered by the federal government.

If the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administrations had fulfilled their obligations under the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution, they would've required Levit as a condition of his bank loan to sell on a non-discriminatory basis. If the federal government had, uh, not annihilated the plain meaning of those two amendments in the post Civil War period and into the present day, we'd have a racially egalitarian society today.

So this is a, these are very powerful federal policies, and their impact continues today because, uh, for one thing, those homes that sold at the time inexpensively, they were working class, family homes, two bedroom/one bath homes, they sold for eight or $9,000 in the mid-20th century. Today, that's about a hundred thousand dollars in today's money, maybe a little bit more. Those homes no longer sell for a hundred thousand dollars. In every metropolitan area of the country, they sell for 200, 300, 400, $500,000. In some places, a million, $2 million, or more.

Andrew: Right.

Richard: The White families who were subsidized by the federal government to move into these all white suburbs (many of them returning war veterans in World War II). They didn't move to these places to get rich, they needed a place to live. There was a housing shortage. Uh, getting rich was a, an unexpected by-product as these homes appreciated in value. But they did. They used the wealth that they accumulated from the, uh, appreciation and the value of their homes to send their children to college, to take care of temporary emergencies (perhaps unemployment or medical emergency), to subsidize their retirements, and to bequeath wealth to their children and grandchildren who then had down payments for their own homes.

African Americans were prohibited by explicit written federal policy from participating in this program that generated wealth for Whites, unexpected wealth for Whites. The result is that there's an enormous wealth gap between African Americans and Whites today that is largely attributable to these unconstitutional and unlawful policies of the federal government.

That wealth gap underlies our most serious social problems. That underlies the segregation of schools and the achievement gap that results from that segregation. It underlies health disparities between Blacks and Whites. It underlies the police abuse that we spend so much time being traumatized by, of young African American men.

Because if you concentrate the most disadvantaged young men in single neighborhoods, where they have no access to good jobs, no access to schools that aren't overwhelmed by the social and economic problems of their children, it's inevitable that the police are going to engage in confrontations with them.

And this is just one policy I've been describing. There were many other policies. I came to understand this first when I was assisting in a lawsuit describing the government requirement that African Americans and Whites live in separate public housing projects.

So I'm only describing a couple of these policies. There were many, many at the federal, state, and local levels, all of which contributed to the segregation that we know today. And that perpetuates the inequality that results from that segregation.

Andrew: Yeah. That, that perpetuating part was part of what was so eye opening to me because the ways that, not only you highlight all of the very explicit policies that, that created the segregation, but the long-term impact. You know, we started out the suburbs with assistance to White homeowners that then led to wealth creation, that then led the ability to give loans to their children, to buy houses too expensive to afford for other– I mean, a $100,000 house, I can't even think of! There's no metropolitan area that has a hundred thousand dollars homes anymore. Like who, who could start out on that path? And yet then you have this generational wealth that just builds and builds and builds on itself. So the ways that Color of Law highlights the ongoing impacts.

Dr. Val: Right. And I just wanna make a personal connection. My grandfather said he needed 20 co-signers for his home. Um,

Leah Rothstein: Wow.

Andrew: Wow.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And he served in, in World War II in the Korean War, so have met all of the requirements of the GI Bill and all that was promised. And yet. So, mm-hmm.

Andrew: Leah, tell us about Just Action. We are still living with the impacts of all of these decisions that the government explicitly made and, and Just Action sets out to say, “Well, here's what we do about it.” You write in the beginning, “This book hopes to provoke the imaginations of activists and the many more who would like to support them.” What are the ways that you're hoping to provoke the imaginations of activists with Just Action?

Leah Rothstein: Yeah. Well, we wrote this book with the intention of sparking inspiration, ideas for local residents to get involved in their own communities, to begin to advocate for changes that can redress segregation. So we call for the need for a reactivated, reinvigorated civil rights movement that's made up of these biracial, multi-ethnic groups, formed in our own communities, that can start to educate themselves on how we got here. How we came to be a segregated country. All of those ongoing, sort of, consequences and impacts of segregation that we still live with today. And then start to learn how they can begin to challenge that and undo it.

And we talk about groups taking on the redress of segregation. And by that we mean both advocating for policy change that ensures we don't continue to perpetuate and maintain segregated communities, and also advocate for policy and programmatic changes that can address the disparities that exist as a result of segregation.

So the example we've been talking about of the wealth gap that was created by those unconstitutional policies of the government of the past that helped Whites into home ownership and, explicitly excluded African Americans. You know, now we have the Fair Housing Act, so anyone can, you know, supposedly buy a home without having to worry about being racially discriminated against. But without access to intergenerational wealth, that sort of promise of equal access is an empty promise. So we want to address those disparities in order to redress the causes and consequences of segregation.

So, we make that call to form these groups and then we give dozens of examples of policies and strategies that a local group can advocate for or can implement on their own, or, pressure their local governments or institutions, or corporations in their communities to adopt these changes in these programs. And then for each one of those we give an example of a community somewhere in the country that's doing that, that's successfully implemented that policy or strategy or is working towards doing so.

So, we hope to leave readers with inspiration and hope that there's not, you know, nothing that we can do. There's actually a lot we can do and a lot that is being done.

Andrew: It is a heavy book and these are heavy topics and it can feel a little bit overwhelming. But the book is definitely also hopeful. So can you tell us about some of those strategies that you lay out in the book?

Leah Rothstein: So, those policies and strategies that we describe, they, they fall into two main categories. One is to increase investments and resources in lower income, segregated African-American communities. One of the consequences of that segregation is that those communities lack resources and investments. They're under invested. They've been deprived of resources and government services. So we wanna make those areas, areas of what's called higher opportunity.

Cleaner air, access to financial institutions, grocery stores, jobs, well-resourced schools. And then we know that that happens in a lower income area, often gentrification results and prices rise. People with higher incomes wanna move in and the longtime residents are at risk of being displaced, 'cause they can no longer afford to live there or they're evicted, to bring in higher paying tenants. And so, those strategies to increase investments in those neighborhoods need to be coupled with anti displacement strategies to prevent some of the displacement that can occur.

Protections for renters against rapidly increasing rents or unjust evictions. Or inclusionary zoning policies that require when new housing is built in a neighborhood, that a certain percentage of the units have to be sold or rented at affordable prices. So that ensures that when new development is happening in a gentrifying community, that there's some access to affordable homes for the people who've lived in that community for a long time.

Then the other category of strategies we talk about are concerned with opening up exclusive expensive, usually predominantly White suburban communities, to diverse residents. So we want to desegregate those segregated White neighborhoods. We can do that with strategies like zoning reform to ensure that those areas can build housing other than only single family homes to provide a diversity of housing options and affordability ranges. Subsidies for African Americans to move into those neighborhoods. Not only rental subsidies, but down payment assistance, grants or loans specifically targeted towards African Americans to address that wealth gap that we've been talking about.

Andrew: Hmm.

Leah Rothstein: And then there's other strategies that are concerned with increasing opportunities for home ownership for African Americans in all types of neighborhoods. Again, down payment assistance, home ownership, counseling and education.

And then addressing the barriers that African Americans face to home ownership that are not as obvious. Like the credit scoring system, for example. It's a racially neutral policy that, you know, is supposed to be an objective rating of your future likelihood of repaying a debt. If you don't have a high enough credit score, you can't get a mortgage. But the way that system works, it has a racially disparate impact. And that's because the kind of financial history that gets factored into a credit score is the kind of financial history that Whites are more likely to have than African Americans. That's because African American neighborhoods have fewer bank branches. People have less, in those neighborhoods have less access to home ownership. So they're more likely to have been renters when they're applying for a mortgage and rental payment history isn't factored into your credit score.

And even though the credit scoring system is a nationwide system, individual bank branches can adjust how they evaluate mortgage applicants’ credit worthiness. And several have done that. And we advocate for local groups sort of pressuring their local banks to do that in their own branches to open up, um, credit access to African American families.

Dr. Val: Well, I definitely feel like you told much of my story. So in 2007 we did a new construction home. The down payment was $2,500. Didn't think anything of it. We didn't have parents who could really educate us on, like, the full process, and what was happening in the world in late 2007 for us to understand the trends.

We go to, to sign off and when we do the final paperwork, it cost less. I'm like, “Oh my gosh, the house is on sale!” But like, why else would it cost less? I didn't even have, like, the knowledge to know that the market was crumbling all around. After we signed on the dotted line, the house was like a hundred thousand dollars under, like, right away.

And I, had made the promise that I was gonna pay the mortgage because that's what I agreed to do. And so when we went to short sell the home, um, we hadn't missed any payments. And the bank said, “No, sorry, you haven't missed any payments.”

But I'm like, “Bank, I can't afford to live here. I'm doing everything possible to stay here and to, like, hold up my end of the bargain, but I cannot afford to live here.” And there was no answer for us. And so, finally we decided to, to miss a payment, and the bank approved the, the short sale.

But we went to renting homes for several years after that, 'cause I felt all types of, like, post-traumatic stress around the process. And finally bought a house again last year for the first time. Had been renting all of that time because I just did not, I did not trust that this was a way that I could make wealth. It only felt like a trap for me. Right?

So I, I wanna thank you just for elevating the story and what's possible and the need for us to continue to organize and educate, um, in our communities about just the whole entire process.

Leah Rothstein: Well, that is something that we write about, that a lot of people think that opening up home ownership opportunities for African Americans will be the answer to closing the wealth gap. And, that's because for Whites, owning a home has been the most important way to build wealth. But it hasn't been the same experience for African Americans, for, you know, your own experience as an example, for many other reasons. And so, it is important to open up access to home ownership to those who've been excluded from that opportunity, because there's a lot of benefits to home ownership. But then we can't stop there and we need to sort of address all of the other disparities that exist.

You know, there's ongoing issues like bias in the appraisal process where African American communities are appraised at lower than the value that they can sell for. And that limits the wealth building potential of those homeowners who are trying to either refinance or sell their home at a higher price.

And then there's sort of the opposite problem of the tax assessment system where homes in African American communities are overvalued in the property tax assessment system. The result is that homeowners in African American/Hispanic communities are overpaying in property tax relative to the value of their home compared to homeowners in White communities who are underpaying relative to the value of their home. If you're paying too much in property taxes, you can build wealth less quickly.

Andrew: The book is, is like, like you said, just like chock-full of various solutions. And I do think there is hope in that because it's hard for me to imagine anybody reading the book and not coming away with some place that they felt like they could get involved. Maybe we could sort of unpack one of one of the solutions that you talk about, which is the end of single family zoning. I'm wondering if you just talk a little bit about why you call for that and what that might achieve.

Leah Rothstein: Okay. So, zoning is how a local government determines what can be built where in its jurisdiction. And for residential areas it zones what kind of residential buildings can be built. Single family, multi-family. Duplexes, et cetera.

So it used to be that jurisdictions could zone by race and say that this residential area is zoned only for Whites. And this residential area is zoned only for African Americans. Now, in the early 20th century, that was outlawed. You could no longer zone by race. But what took its place was single family only zoning. So those White areas were zoned only to allow single family homes, which means one home per lot in that area. Now that ensures that there's a cap on how many homes can be built (in that zone, or in that suburb, or in that city), and if there's a cap on how much housing can be built as demand goes up, the only thing that can happen is prices of those homes go up. 'Cause no new homes can be built there. So as prices go up, it ensures that the homes there remain expensive and only accessible to those who are the most affluent or who have access to intergenerational wealth. It was a way of ensuring that those areas remained White .

Throughout the country, 75% of residentially zoned land, and nationwide is zoned only for single family homes. Part of the reason why we're in a housing crisis in many parts of the country, 'cause we just haven't built enough homes, because most of our residentially zoned land only allows one house per lot. It limits how many homes we can build. That all has a basis and an underlying motivation originally as a sort of racial segregation motivation.

And so, in order to address that and redress that, we do believe that the first step is upzoning, or getting rid of single family only zoning. These expensive areas, you know, where housing costs are high usually are also higher opportunity areas, areas with well-resourced public schools, and open space, and retail. You know, so we wanna open up access to those areas. The only way to do that is to allow more housing to be built there.

The promise is for many advocates of upzoning that it will effectively desegregate those segregated white areas. Now it's a long process (building new homes), so a zoning change won't see any impact for years. But even if it does lead to more housing being built, it likely won't lead to desegregating those White areas unless there's specific intentional action: preferences or priorities or subsidies, uh, or assistance given to African American families to access those new units built in those upzoned areas. So we think it's a necessary first step, but alone it won't achieve the desegregation goals.

Andrew: I think Minneapolis got rid of single family zoning a couple years ago. How do we think about the things that might help? And then on what sort of timeline might they help?

Leah Rothstein: It did pass in Minneapolis, but then it was held up in court by environmentalists who said that it would have a detrimental environmental impact on the city by allowing denser housing.

Dr. Val: That's super fascinating about the environmentalists, and I'm now wondering about the intersections between climate justice and housing justice.

Richard: Well, let me say that, that it is not all environmentalists.

Dr. Val: Right, right.

Richard: And, actually upzoning and increasing density is good for the environment, not bad for the environment. So it's a kind of phony environmentalism, which wants to preserve rural environments for rich people and the guise of environmentalism. But, single family zoning is not good for the environment.

Andrew: Yeah.

Richard: Now can I, let me add something else to what, uh, Leah was describing. We emphasize in Just Action that upzoning is only a first step.

Andrew: Right.

Richard: And as Leah just said, it's not an inevitable first step towards redressing racial inequality. Frequently when we talk about housing reform, the tendency is to talk about so-called “affordable housing,” which is only for poor people. Taking a single family neighborhood, abolishing single family zoning and creating a segregated building for low-income people is not desegregation.

Andrew: Right.

Richard: Uh, what we need to do in communities like that, is create multi-unit buildings that blend into the rest of the community (duplexes, triplexes), and we wanna do that for racial reasons because it is not only poor African-Americans who are segregated. Middle class African-Americans are segregated in this society today because, as Leah has described and I mentioned, uh, they don't have the kind of intergenerational wealth that middle class Whites have.

Middle class African-Americans live in less well-resourced neighborhoods than middle class Whites with the same incomes. They live in neighborhoods with higher poverty rates than middle class Whites with the same incomes. So middle class African-Americans are also excluded from housing.

But middle class Whites are also excluded from housing in this market. In this market nobody except the wealthy can afford housing in many communities in this country. So, if you simply upzone, even if you restrict it to duplexes and triplexes, the chances are that middle class Whites will outcompete African Americans for those available homes because they are housing challenged as well.

So we have to be intentional about the racial equity that we hope to achieve with this kind of zoning reform. It's a first step, but without that racial intentionality, it will not, uh, achieve the desegregation that we're talking about.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean, one, one of the themes of the book it seems like is, we had very explicit policies around race that led to this. We need comparably explicit policies that, that address race. That this idea of “race neutral policies,” “race evasive policies” do not actually get us to dressing the harms that have been caused because they were so explicitly racist in intent.

Richard: Well, I wanna emphasize, you know, I talked before about the Levittown?

Andrew: Mm-Hmm.

Richard: The African Americans who were excluded from Levittown were not poor people. These were people, these were middle class African Americans who were excluded, and you don't remedy that by creating affordable housing for the poor.

Now we need affordable housing for the poor, that's part of the solution. But too often we think of that as the only solution. And the victims of segregation are not only low income African Americans.

Andrew: Yeah.

Can we talk a little bit more about gentrification? You know, we had, Jade Adia on the podcast, two episodes ago who wrote a YA book about, kind of, the harms of gentrification in the way that it so often plays out now. And, and I certainly don't read Just Action as a call for gentrification, but is definitely a call for more integrated living, which certainly the way, the way we have done it in the past often causes harm and sort of a traumatic version of gentrification.

In, in Just Action you mentioned this idea of “conscientious gentrification.” Can you sort of unpack a little bit about, what that is and, and how you view this, like, difference between desegregating a neighborhood and gentrification?

Richard: Let me begin by saying there's a fantasy that exists among some African Americans that you can have highly resourced neighborhoods and still have them homogeneously Black. That can't happen. If you improve the quality of a neighborhood. Better resources. More quality retail. The abolition of industrial sites in those neighborhoods. More highly resourced schools. If you do all those things, other people besides African Americans are gonna wanna move in. You can't stop it. The only thing you can do is take steps to prevent the displacement of as many existing residents as you can to preserve the possibility of a desegregated neighborhood.

So how do we prevent massive displacement when other people want to move in (Whites in particular)? And the way we, we describe in just action, a number of policies that should be pursued, and all Just Action is, is a description of things that local activists can do in their own local communities.

One of those policies is inclusionary zoning, requiring any new development, include a set aside share of units, not only for the poor, but for middle income families as well who cannot afford market rate housing. It includes support of renters. Frequently in gentrifying neighborhoods, landlords fail to maintain homes and the hopes that, uh, existing residents will leave because the homes are so poorly maintained. And then once they leave, they remodel them and get higher, paying tenants.

There's also the possibility of creating land trusts. In these gentrifying communities, that will help to preserve housing opportunities for existing residents. Leah, do you wanna talk about that for a minute?

Leah Rothstein: Sure. So land trusts are nonprofit organizations. They're concerned with creating and maintaining permanently affordable home ownership opportunities in neighborhoods where housing costs are rising.

So land trusts operate by acquiring land property homes, usually through donation from local governments. You know, local governments are often sitting on a lot of unused vacant properties, foreclosed homes, or unused city county buildings, for example, school sites. They could donate some of that property to a land trust.

So the land trust fixes up or builds homes on that land, sells them at affordable prices to lower and moderate income households. And in the process, the land trust, it retains ownership of the land underneath the house. So when you take the land out of the equation, the house is less expensive. So it just sells the home. And the homeowner owns that home like any other homeowner. And they pay their mortgage insurance, property taxes, interest, you know, all of that. And then when they want to resell their home, they have to adhere to a maximum resale price that the land trust establishes. And that maximum price, it allows the home seller to build up some equity in the sale of the home. Not as much as if they sold it at market rate prices, but some. And then in turn, the new home buyer gets an affordable price for that home.

So that's how they’re permanently affordable home ownership opportunities. A great way of expanding home ownership housing in communities that are gentrifying. So they're great. It's a great model.

Andrew: I'm wondering just sort of, in, in the world that you imagine, uh, in Just Action. If people take the book, if they go out and they find their various ways to plug in, recognizing that we have decades and decades of work to undo and that we need to be, you know, affirmatively changing past policies and, you know, dressing the harms that have, that have caused, but, you know, what does the world look like?

What's the vision of, of the country on the other side of that, if, if this work comes, if people step up and, and take on these projects?

Leah Rothstein: I think a vision I have of, sort of, between now and getting to the other side of all of these fights and creating, an equal non-polarized society where we know each other and get along and everybody's treated equally. In between, I hope to inspire just a reality where we aren't afraid to talk about these issues and they're more part of our normal conversation. Especially amongst White people, that the issues of race and racial inequality in our country aren't, you know, swept under the rug or ignored or not sort of part of our everyday life and conversations we have with our friends and neighbors and colleagues that it just becomes a more normalized part of our existence. And that's how we will then sort of set the context and the environment where these kinds of changes can be enacted, because we're more well versed in how we got here and what we need to change.

Richard: I mentioned before that the racial segregation and inequality that we've created underlies our most serious social problems, uh, in schools, in healthcare, in criminal justice, and also is an enormous threat to our democracy.

We all know that we're more polarized in a society today than perhaps any time since the 1850s. And that polarization largely tracks racial lines. I mean, how can we ever expect to preserve this democracy if African Americans and Whites have so little contact with each other. Have little, little exposure to each other, have so little understanding of each other's life's problems? It can't happen without that.

So, this effort, that I hope you and your colleagues will share an undertaking, is essential. Not only for the material conditions of life of African Americans, but also for the preservation of this democracy.

Dr. Val: What was it like writing this book together, as a parent/child duo? Love to hear a little bit about that.

Richard: It was the highpoint of my life.

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh!

Andrew: That's great.

[Andrew chuckles]

Leah Rothstein: I don't know what else I can add to that.

Dr. Val: That! Mic drop. That is beautiful!

Andrew: Yeah. That's beautiful. Thank you both so much for your time for agreeing to come on and for, for your work. I mean, I, again, I can't tell you how powerful Color of Law was for me and now to find Just Action as a “what to do about it now” has just been such a great addition to my life. I'm so grateful for it and grateful for your time.

Dr. Val: I wanna thank you all. One, for just being who you are through and through. To have people who walk the talk and are in communities are and are really working on the ground for these changes, I deeply, uh, admire. And so thank you for being the model of what this looks like. I do think we all need each other in order to win. Together is the only way we, we fix this. And so, I wanna thank you all again for, for that.

Leah Rothstein: Thank you so much!

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Andrew: So Val, what did you think?

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh, so much! Uh, one, they're lovely. I think at least once a season, we got to get an intergenerational group on here, right? Like a caregiver and their kid. Like, that connection is always so powerful.

Andrew: Yeah. I mean that I, like, still get a little teary thinking about that moment of saying that it was the high point of his life working on this book together.

Dr. Val: I know!

Andrew: So nice.

Dr. Val: What a gift. Yeah, what a gift for them to do this work together. Um, a couple of things that I want to start out with that I think are really important for our listeners to understand is when he told the story about being inspired by the work of those in my home state, North Carolina!

That it was his proximity at a young age and at a critical juncture that really inspired not only his lifelong work, but how he approached parenting and the expectations that he had for his daughter. Right? And so, she said, “Hey, no, I always expected!”

Andrew: Right. “I thought this is what you do when you get older,” right.

Dr. Val: “I'll get involved in a movement!”

Andrew: You go to elementary school, you go to middle school, you go to high school, you go to college, you go to join your, whatever the movement of the day is and get involved and change the world. Yeah.

Dr. Val: That’s it! And I love that as an expectation of how you live and contribute to society in a way to make it better. But what, what really stands out to me in his particular story, and I think this is a common thread throughout many people's experiences, is that you have to be in community with other people, especially the ones that you are, are advocating with to understand what is happening. And, you know, the way he described it, it was like, it was a no brainer. Like, “After I got involved, it was obvious that this was a problem and that this is what I should be working toward.” That this is what justice looked like.

And so, I just want to continue to encourage our listeners to, to really get invested in the communities that they want to, to advocate with. Because as you and I try to model every single episode, like, this relationship, our joining together as a community is part of the work. This authentic relationship that we are building is part of the work. We are both changed for the better because of this relationship. And our kids are better because of this relationship.

And I think that is just something that I, I won't get tired of saying and sharing.

Andrew: Yeah, I, I completely agree. I think it makes some things become obvious. I mean, there's a moment of, he was sort of like, “Duh! Like, of course–

Dr. Val: Yeah!

[Val laughs]

Andrew: –this is the right thing to do,” because it becomes obvious. Because things seem like they must be a certain way once you are in relationship. Once you get to know people. Once he found himself as part of this movement and developed relationships and was part of a community, found this sort of like, “Well, it's obvious that, that something needs to be done about this.”

And I think, you know, it's, it's easy to get in our heads a little bit about “What's the ‘right’ way to show up. What's the best way to show up? Where's the right place to put my energy? Where's the right place to focus? What’s the most effective use of my advocacy time?” And in some ways, you can overthink it a lot. Like, get into relationship, get into community, go and find people. And then the answers will come.

Dr. Val: And I think the way I was advocating before I recognize that, you know, I was really powered at, at that point in time by a lot of anger and frustration. And now my power source, I want it to be joy. And so what does it look like to advocate from a power source of joy and how that shows up.

Andrew: And love. And humanity.

Dr. Val: And love! Yeah! Absolutely. Absolutely.

Andrew: Yeah. And the other thing that, that it makes me think of (from this, this sort of theme of stamina, theme of perseverance) is one of the themes that comes out of the conversation, and certainly the book, is that action is really important.

It is called Just Action.

Dr. Val: Mm hmm.

Andrew: It is not called “just think about it.” It is not–

Dr. Val: Ooh!

Andrew: –called just, just, just have a conversation about it or, or, or join a book club about it, but it is actually taking action. And they really talk explicitly in the book about this idea that you have to go and do things.

And, and it's important to be thoughtful. It's important to learn the history, but just knowing it is not enough. It's actually getting out and taking action. And I think there's a way that that can feel overwhelming and feel like, “I don't know what action to take,” but it is in the showing up and doing things that you are sustained, that you find those moments of, of love, of humanity, of compassion, of joy, that are then sustaining to, to, to keep you going.

Dr. Val: Yeah, we have to be biased toward action, and doing, and relationships. I think as in terms of a blueprint, they've given us a fantastic blueprint of what this work could look like. Not only in housing, but how we can then apply it to public schools.

Andrew: Yeah. And to that point, one of the other themes that comes out of the book is, is the importance of explicitly race conscious policies to, to redress the past harms. And so, you know, it's one thing to say “We have the Fair Housing Act now.” And so in theory, we don't have ongoing segregation, but without making amends for the past segregation, it's sort of an empty promise.

And I think that certainly shows up in education in a lot of places.

Dr. Val: Yeah. What that may look like in schools could be saying, could be, “Hey, we are going to stop tracking our students” as that policy moving forward, and then “What are the policies we're putting in place to make sure that all of the kids who currently may not have had the same equal access to opportunity, what are we doing for them specifically?” Right?

Andrew: Totally. Yeah. And, I think even more broadly, again, to make the tie back to public education, the disparities in neighborhoods inevitably leads to disparities in schools. And I think if we take a, like Dr Erica Turner talked about last time, a “race evasive” approach to dealing with that, then it's easy to say “Let's give everybody the same classes or the same amount of funding or the same amount of resource.” And what we really need to be doing is, is investing in our kids with a real eye towards equity, towards making up for all of these other places where, where society is failing.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Can we talk a little bit about Richard's comment related to the idea of all Black neighborhoods that are, like, resourced and have trees? I will say, growing up there was this show that, that depicted, like, this Black family unit, um, upper middle class. And I was like, “Man, I want to live in their neighborhood growing up.” And, I don't know that, um, Black folks believe that's like a, like a real thing. I think there's probably pockets, you might get a cul de sac!

[Val laughs]

Andrew: Right. Right.

Dr. Val: But you probably aren't getting a whole neighborhood. And if I may speak for all Black people, I think we're probably realistic around the challenges of true neighborhood integration. And we are, I think, probably aware that if we are isolated as Black folks, there will be a divestment from our communities. And I wish that wasn't true. I wish with my whole heart that wasn't true. That we could have all of the investment, and for it to still feel like a safe place culturally to be.

And I'm, I'm wondering what does it look like when culturally you can be whole in a neighborhood that is integrated. What does that look like?

Andrew: Yeah. This makes me think of (and shout out to my buddy, Andy, who I was talking about this with), this idea of physical gentrification versus cultural gentrification. That we think of these things going inevitably together. That when you have more resources in a community, you also end up with more, you know, yoga studios and high end coffee shops.

And in addition to people being displaced, the cultural institutions get displaced. And I think that leads to that sort of sense of insecurity that you're talking about. And Richard is, is right, I'm sure, that the idea of segregated all Black neighborhood being well resourced, you know, the fact of the more resources makes people want to move there. And to me, this comes back to this question of, you know, both sort of how do we show up?

And we talked about in the Jade Adia episode too, like how we show up really matters. So, if these new people who are arriving in the neighborhood show up willing to become part of the neighborhood rather than taking over the neighborhood, I think that can make a difference.

But then what policies do we put in place? And, you know, particularly around things like housing policy, even if we get the housing policy right. So we're getting rid of single family zoning. We're having inclusionary building policies where we're having more affordable housing. Not just, you know, for the sort of lowest income folks, but also for middle income folks. We're creating policies that encourage people to stay in place.

We also have to be addressing that sort of cultural piece of it. We also have to be addressing the, you know, what businesses are being given loans to be able to stay in place. What businesses are, are being encouraged to start up in, in this environment as it's being invested in? Because if we're not also doing that, I think we risk that even if we get the physical part of, of, you know, the investment right, we risk that sort of cultural gentrification.

Dr. Val: Yeah. You know, right now I'm going to make a plug for communities of color who are experiencing gentrification to call in if they have been able to maintain some of their cultural identity there, and what that looks like in partnership with a community that there's new investment in, new financial investment in, but still the cultural aspects of the community stay intact.

I would love for someone to call in and talk to us about that.

Andrew: Yeah, for sure.

Dr. Val: I want to, because I'm sure there's communities that are trying to figure out how to do that and, uh, I would love to hear from them.

Andrew: Yeah. It leads me to this piece in the book that we talked about a little bit of this, like seven steps to conscientious gentrification (and we'll put a link to it in the show notes as well). These sort of steps that if, if you are showing up in a new neighborhood to think about, one is shop at older businesses.

One is join/volunteer/donate to local organizations that have been around. Learn your history. Be friendly. I mean, the fact that we have to have a, a step in the process that is be friendly! But I, but I, but I think we do!

Dr. Val: I think that's real. I think that's real.

Andrew: It’s real, you know? A smile, a saying “hello,” whatever. Worship, attend, donate to local religious orgs that have been serving the neighborhood for a long time.

Educate. So send your kids to the schools in the neighborhood. Advocate for, you know, more inclusive housing policies for the things that the people in that neighborhood care about. And then my favorite, “Be bold but humble.” And they say, quote: “Don't be afraid to be the only new resident in the room. Curious stares won't kill you. And most people will appreciate that you're trying to support the community. Support, but don't take over. Follow before leading, or just follow.”

Dr. Val: Yeah. Yeah. And if I was on the receiving end of some physical gentrification and folks were doing this thing on this list, then I would feel like, “Hey, they're not just in it to kick me out of my neighborhood and I can no longer afford to be here.” But the goal is actually to be a healthy community.

And that's really exciting! And, you know, I know you, you were joking about the idea, like, “Be friendly.” I think that is so significant, because if a White person moves into a community of color, um, they might have not processed any, like, biases, some baggage they might have, stereotypes.

And so, being more demotivated to, to make connections because of fear, I think it's something that is probably pretty common. Right? And so, and instead if you're friendly, I mean, you can bring me the sourdough bread. I might, I might eat it! It sounds so simple, too simple to name, but being friendly. I think is a significant–

Andrew: It goes a long way!

Dr. Val: –first step. Yes! Heck yeah.

Andrew: Again, get out of your own way a little bit, like, get out of your head. Just, just start by being friendly and trying to meet people. The other theme for the season that we have not yet talked about is the power of storytelling. And I, you know, there's The Color of Law tells a very powerful story about the history of this country. And that, you know, a story that certainly changed the way I see the country and understand history. But from a personal standpoint, you kind of shared a couple of personal things in the conversation, Val. Both about your grandfather and his experience of buying a house, and then your own experience of buying a house.

Dr. Val: Yeah. When I was thinking about having, you know, what my grandfather's story, having to get such a significant number of co-signers, but how that had to be, um, a true community-wide effort. And how, as annoying as it probably was, how all of your co-signers were probably celebrating the fact that you were getting the house, like, “We are going to do this together!” Right?

When I think about it that way, that feels like love for, for your community. And so, it sucks, but we still got around and we were still able to love one another.

Andrew: There is something that's sort of powerfully communal about

Dr. Val: Yeah, there is. And maybe, the present day version of that is “And how we craft our housing policies,” right? And so if, if we are saying, “Hey, we're going to have housing that's middle class, and working class, and low income families, and all races can afford to be in this community.”

Maybe that's our collective way of saying “We welcome you and you belong” in the way that 20 co-signers in the past maybe did the same thing. Right?

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: The other story

[Val chuckles]

I told was about my housing fiasco that, you know, I'm still very much recovering from, right? It felt like a big deal to go back into the house buying market because of the experience that we had before. And, you know, I want to hope that it pays off like it's supposed to, in terms of building wealth for my family.

But because I've had the experience of the opposite happening, I'm just not sure.

Andrew: I think to, to that theme of the power of storytelling, it's one thing to think about the ways policies were crafted. It's one thing to think about the society level impacts that that had and the averages and the numbers and, even now, I think they, they cite a statistic that 40 percent of African American households are homeowners and 75 percent of White households are homeowners, even right now.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Andrew: And those statistics are shocking, but I think it's powerful to hear the direct impact on somebody.

And I'm sure that was a challenging situation to find yourself in. And you're not in it anymore, and yet it is still with you. Like we, there is still harm that was done and it's still, you know, hovers over you, it seems like.

Dr. Val: Yeah, because I did everything right. I checked all the boxes. I had the credit score that I needed. I had the income that I thought would be fine for the house. And so, when all of that came crashing down, um, yeah, it, it did shake my ideas about home ownership and whether or not it was for me. And in, in buying this house, my kids have some stability that I did not think was needed necessarily, right? Because I thought of the home as like,

Andrew: It's wherever we are.

Dr. Val: Yeah! We're the home. We're the home, right? And so now to, you know, with the kids being able to, to walk home from school or like we see the same people in the neighborhood all the time. We have good neighborhood friends that, you know, we check in on.

That all feels really, really good. I completely underestimated the value of that.

Andrew: Mmm.

Dr. Val: And I’m so grateful to have it now.

Andrew: Hmm. And it's in the, it's like in the kind of permanence of ownership that you feel more connected to that. Because like there's, you don't have to own a house to be part, to feel part of that community.

Dr. Val: No! You don't.

Andrew: But, you're not going to raise your own rent.

Dr. Val: No!

Andrew: You’re not going to evict yourself. So, like, there is a, there is a sense of stability and of predictability.

Dr. Val: Until the market crashes and then….

Andrew: So we also bought, it was a condo in San Francisco, right around the same time, 2008. Like right as the market was collapsing and like literally two of the banks that we had started talking to about a mortgage changed their lending policies as we were in conversations with them.

We sort of, like, snuck in at the end and it was like, you know, all of the things that caused the subprime, we had a no document loan. We had a 10 year interest only. So if we had kept that house and that mortgage for 10 years on year 11, the payments would have ballooned like six times over.

But we were able to get into it in part because we had family who could both kind of talk us through the process, who had experience with it, and could loan us the money to make a down payment.

And in, in the end, it turned out alright. We, we were underwater in the place for a little while, and then we ended up renting it, and eventually sold it. And, um, you know, acquired a little wealth through that. And we're able to kind of continue on the process of being homeowners. But we only were able to get into that through generational wealth and we were both buying houses at the same time and yet the circumstances were quite different.

Dr. Val: I appreciate you sharing that, that story and I think part of what enables some of these policies to continue is that we aren't talking to each other about our experiences. There was a, a colleague of mine, White family who was buying a house and they were at the same time that we did, and we had like the exact same numbers and they got a better offer on interests. And because we were working with the same realtor, the realtor was able to say, “Hey.” And so, and they, and the realtor was able to go back to the bank and say, “You're offering different,” Yeah! And so we were able to get, um, the same interest rate as this other couple. And so, I think it is important for us to continue to, to talk about it. Like, you know, we say, “Don't talk about things,” like money or religion or, what? Politics?

But I think we have to if we're, if we're going to be in this together, um, to figure out how to make a more just world for, for all people.

Andrew: For sure. For sure. We have to be in conversation. We have to be in community with each other and we have to have, be willing to have these conversations. Talk about these kinds of taboo topics if we're going to move forward.

One thing they say near the end of the book is “A healthy community that can sustain a common national identity is one where affluent, middle class, working class, and low income families of all races and ethnicities have access to the same resources and whose children attend the same schools.

This should be the aspiration of civil rights activists.”

Dr. Val: That's what's up.

Andrew: That is what's up. And that's what we were working on here. And we all have an obligation. Schools are certainly an important place to do this work. I feel even more called after this conversation to get more involved in housing issues locally.

The conversations that happen around housing are usually had by, you know, maybe four or five people who happen to show up at a city council meeting.

Dr. Val: You can be one of those people!

Andrew: You can be one of those people. Get Just Action. Like I said in the conversation, if you can't find a place where you feel like you could tap in, um, I would be shocked because there are so many great examples of ways that just, you know, people coming together and putting pressure on local governments, on businesses, on banks, on corporations, all of that can really have a big impact.

Dr. Val: Yeah. So, you have a surprise for me.

Andrew: So Val, we got a voice memo!

Dr. Val: Yaaay!

Andrew: After the last episode with Dr. Erica Turner about race evasive managerialism. We got a lovely voice memo from Michael and let's take a listen to that.

Michael: Hi, this is Michael Redney. I'm a White teacher, White dad from Kansas City. Love listening to the Integrated Schools Podcast. I think the latest one, which was with Dr. Erica Turner and talking about, race evasive managerial approaches by middle management in, in schools and it prompted me to really do some thinking and reflection on that. And that not only do I feel like I see that, but it made me wonder too about how some of these things are implemented at the school site level or at the classroom level when we talk about, you know, grading for equity and standards based grading. And I just, I wonder about some of the ways that we substitute actually having the more challenging conversations, you know, among school staff and teachers. And even among administrators and board members, about real, equitable actions and relationships and instead just push “equity” as a buzzword.

And, well, you know, “Our grading system can take care of equity for, for us.”

So anyway, I just appreciated the episode and wanted to share a reflection on that because, you all had, invited us as listeners to do so. So I thought I'd try it. But thanks a lot for what you do.

It's been really meaningful for me with my students and my own kids. Alright, thank you.

Dr. Val: Michael! Thank you so much for one, listening to the podcast. Two, being inspired to reflect on what you're seeing in your community. And I think that gives credence to many of the conversations that we have here.

Right? Like, these are real issues that are happening in our schools, in our neighborhoods, in proximity to us. They are not in a far off other worldly place. Like, I firmly believe that sometimes a buzzword is used to keep us from digging into the actual policies and the real work.

And I think it's fair to ask, like, what does this actually mean for us as a school system, as a district? How do we get better at what we say we want to do? Those types of conversations require an ongoing commitment and courage to keep that up. And I think, most importantly, it requires a team because it's easy to dismiss one voice. And so you need a community of voices asking those questions and, and working together for this effort.

Andrew: Yeah. And I think, you know (tied to this episode as well), the idea of being explicit and intentional about race. We were explicit and intentional about the ways that we used race to create segregation, to create disparities. We need to be also explicit about it when we try to redress those harms.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Michael, please keep listening! Thank you so much! No, we really, really appreciate it.

Andrew: Absolutely. Thank you, Michael. Listeners, you can be like Michael as well. Go to our website, integratedschools.org. Click on the send voicemail button on the side of the page. Go to speakpipe. com, S P E A K P I P E dot com slash integrated schools. Send us your reflections on this conversation on other conversations.

We would love to hear from you.

Dr. Val: That's right. And make sure you listen, you share. And as the Rothsteins have instructed us, make sure you take action (right?) in your local community.

Every conversation matters, that includes with your young people, in your proximity, your children. They are paying attention.

Andrew: Absolutely. If you enjoyed this episode, if you want to hear more conversations like this, head on over to Patreon. We would be grateful for your support. Patreon.com/integrated schools. Send us a few bucks every month. We would very much appreciate it. And Val, as always, it is a true gift to be in this with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.

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