S11E14 – What Was Lost: Noliwe Rooks on the Failures of Integration

S11E14 - What Was Lost: Noliwe Rooks on The Failures of 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 What Was Lost: Noliwe Rooks on the Failures of Integration. We got a heavy one today, Val.

Dr. Val: We do. It's a heavy moment in our lives as well.

Andrew: It is. Sitting with a lot of uncertainty, a lot of turmoil in the world, but coming together to talk about this conversation we had with Dr. Noliwe Rooks.

Dr. Val: And I, I know you, you mentioned the turmoil in the world, and I think we have to just take a moment to understand that our conversations are rooted in a context that it just feels deeply disturbing at this point.

Andrew: Yeah. Dr. Rooks brings us a lot of historical content that obviously sheds a lot of light on our current state in this country, but the immediate acute current state of the country is certainly weighing on both of us.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And so, we just encourage you to, to stick together. Um, we know that the world is changing very rapidly, that you might be unsure about what's happening, that you might be deeply concerned about some things that are happening in your community. We are too.

And so our guest today, as you mentioned, was talking to us about some historical things, but we see connections, obviously to today and history is prologue. And so, I think this will be a relevant conversation.

Andrew: Dr. Rooks has been on the podcast before. She was part of our Brown v Board series. She wrote an incredible book, Cutting School, in which she coined this term “segrenomics” about the kind of financial incentives that exist in our system to maintain segregation and her new book, Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children is really a deep dive at the harms that were caused by the ways that we went about desegregation, particularly to the Black community.

Dr. Val: So, it was actually on the tour and her explaining her first book Cutting Schools, where she was having conversations with Black communities that really challenged her own thinking and her own experience as someone who went to both segregated schools and integrated schools.

And so, the opportunity to go back into her family history, to really understand more, is how this book was born.

Andrew: Yeah, you know it reminds me a lot of Michelle Adams’ book, who we had on, who also brought a lot of her own personal story to the table. And she really talked about the tension within the Black community at the time of Brown v Board, about whether or not this was really the right way forward. Whether or not integration was going to be the tool that, that some people certainly believed it would be. And there were certainly other people who were concerned about what the implications might be, particularly to Black teachers and Black community institutions.

Dr. Val: Yeah, so it's, it's a, this is a provocative conversation. And I think one that really asks you to question what your beliefs are and, and why you believe certain things, and what is worth fighting for.

Andrew: I mean, we, we say we have nuanced conversations here. This is the Integrated Schools podcast, and, uh, we are gonna talk about the ways that past integration attempts have failed. So, let's take a listen to Dr. Rooks.

[THEME MUSIC]

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Hi, my name is Noliwe Rooks and I am the chair and a professor in Africana Studies at Brown University, and I have a little bit of a fancy title, the L. Herbert Ballou University Professor of Africana Studies.

Dr. Val: Beautiful!

Andrew: Very fancy. Well, well earned. And you have a new book that just came out called Integrated: How American Schools Failed Black Children. I'm, I'm wondering, to start, can you tell us about Williams Elementary in Clearwater, Florida, It was closed in the sixties, you grew up playing in the ruins of it. Tell us the story of Williams Elementary.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Yeah, what Williams Elementary School was, was a segregated Black school, built on a Black cemetery, given to a Black community, but it's built on the bodies of Black people.

To get the land they went to a local church and asked for the land next to the church, which was a place that Black people were buried. City officials promised “We'll move the bodies.” And people believe that, but a local grave digger, Mr. Larkins, told a reporter in 2020 that he knew there were more bodies under this ground, that everybody knew it and no one would listen to them.

So they build this school that ends up being central to a Black community and to the ability of Black children and Black people to create safety and community, and learning, and space for Black life. And it's called Williams Elementary School.

Andrew: Yeah,I found this story of Williams Elementary, is such a compelling way to frame what is ultimately a story about your grandparents, right?

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Thank you for that. Any opportunity to talk about my grandparents, which is the story of Williams Elementary, and to talk about Black educators at that period in what a lot of people call the nadir of Black history, Rayford Logan in particular coined the term. And what it means is this low point in Black history when Jim Crow was highest and what, why that's important, is when Jim Crow was at its height, in the South, when rights were under attack, when the idea of Black survival and politics and organizing were being stamped out every way possible, it's educational institutions and teachers that really come to the fore and start to shape an infrastructure for Black life, politics and education.

And I grew up playing in its ruins. We were drawn to this building, that at the time was a ruin, everything was boarded up. This is a squat cement, unlovely thing. And, you know, about the age of 10 and you're just exploring your neighborhood, you discover the building that you can actually walk into.

And there were overturned desks and books that were there. The, the blackboards were still there. So, it was just a place to play and I didn't think about it much, until one day my grandmother started telling me the story of the school, and that she had been the reading teacher, and my grandfather had been the principal.

And she is who made clear to me in a way I hadn't understood before that every adult that I knew, that I had in my life, had been teachers around that school. Teachers and plumbers, and beauticians and hairdressers. Everybody had some connection to the school.

And it was something for me to realize how central that school had been, and because it was closed was the reason I didn't understand its centrality. In the same way that the school was now a ruin, the understanding of what an educational institution had meant and could be was also in ruins.

And so, I talk about Williams and ruins as a way of understanding, uh, integration efforts and the ways that they were implemented, and their impact on Black people.

Dr. Val: You share so much of your personal family stories and you mentioned that you never spoken about your father a lot, and you, you're telling stories of your son. So why is it important to excavate our own personal stories in understanding the history of schooling in this country?

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: No, thank you for that. You know, the reason that I started down the path of writing the book, I had, I had written another book about education before, called Cutting School, and that book is about privatization and segregation and the kind of ecosystem of funding. It was published during a real rise in the “school choice” movement, charter schools.

And so I was having a lot of conversations in church basements and in schools, in people's living rooms. And I found myself constantly kind of in this battle where I was saying to them, “Integration is good. We were all happy when integration came.” And people were saying things to me, like, “But we had great teachers in the Jim Crow era. Why are you saying that all the schools had to go?”

What I came to understand is my understanding of my family history actually was pushing against what I was saying. So that's why I had to start to include them. 'Cause I knew my grandparents, I knew they were great teachers. I knew they had been teachers in the Jim Crow era - and I had been out in public with them, more importantly, and I knew that people in the community appreciated and valued what they had done.

People would, would regularly come up and say, Mrs. Brooks, my grandmother, you know, who was a reading teacher, regularly, people would thank her for the, the time and attention. Or regularly my grandfather, who taught political science, but then ended up being the principal at the Black high school, people would regularly thank him for his intervention in different kinds of ways. And, and I didn't really think about it. And I didn't connect it to this idea of integration.

Um, and so the family stories are for me in dialogue with the ways that we understand the history of education, because they nuance them. It's not just my family. My family, I think, stands in as a representation for other families. That's one story of what I know to be thousands.

Um, but the big story of it was there were educational institutions flying high, educating Black children. And those teachers knew it and those children knew it and the community members knew it.

And so, how it is that I, in publishing that last education book, was only able to talk about Black education as something that had been controlled, destroyed, uh, needed to maybe be improved, but never actually told the truth of what was happening in many of those schools. Which pushes back against this idea, that comes out of Brown v Board in a lot of ways, that schooling was subpar, that children were being harmed, that the teachers were not good enough.

And so, this book is my attempt to understand my, my grandparents’ reality, how that impacted my father's. mine and my son's, our educational trajectory such that my son is completely integrated. He is, he, he doesn't know, he doesn't know a Black educational system. He had one Black teacher, in the third grade.

There's so many things he will never know, but that he grieves that sense of community. And that we, as his parents, grieved for him the ways that we had to advocate for his humanity regularly. That was less true for me, who experienced both segregated and integrated education. And then from my grandparents who had no idea, they had no idea when they advocated for integration that it would be the destruction of Black communities. None. That wasn't the argument that they were making.

They wanted the opportunity to prove the lie of Black inferiority that these blanket, um, prohibitions against letting Black children in White institutions, what that meant. They knew that to be a lie. And for those who wanted to move in those areas, they wanted that to be possible. They did not mean that they wanted to give up what they knew was working.

And the disconnect that I was having as I stood in those classrooms and talked to Black parents and Latinx parents, often about this, this pull. What it means to send your babies to hostile territory. And they felt like they were sending their babies to hostile territory and being told “That's the only way they can get where you want them to go. There's no other path that's gonna get them there, but this.” And I knew it was a lie and I, I, I turned to my family to, to prove the lie.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And you write on page 10, “Indeed the only difference between White and Black schools was the value placed on the students educated there.”

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Yeah. One of the things that's surprising to many people is, uh, how against Brown v Board Black people in Topeka, Kansas were. Um, which that's the, the school district - it's Brown, Board of Topeka, Kansas.

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: And the thing about Kansas schools is the ways that they dealt with not wanting to educate Black and White kids in the same buildings, was they made all schools separate but equal.

But unlike in the South, in Kansas, the, the schools that educated Black children were actually equal. The buildings were as new and strong, had the same HVAC were laid out in the same way. Like, it, they were in fact comparable to what White students had in infrastructure, curriculum, books, labs, all of it.

Black people in Topeka and across Kansas. actually thought things were working pretty well from an educational standpoint. And, and because things were working well for their children, a majority, 56% on the eve of the decision, were kind of like, “We, we're, we're good! What's missing? What is it that we feel we have got to have, that this integration is going to bring about?”

'Cause they said, “This is our livelihood.”

Dr. Val: Oh my gosh.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: “This is our jobs. These are our children. This is our community.” And whatever idea they have about segregation as the weapon, as the thing - they felt White supremacy, and some other things were at, at issue - but they, that segregation was the, the, thing, they were like, “You're gonna damage us in ways you can't even acknowledge.”

So, at its inception, in the courts, and it as a, as a kind of project, it was deeply contested and Black people were deeply divided about it.

It's a story that well contextualizes some of the feelings that can go along for a lot of parents with sending their kids to schools where they're, they are, uh, not in their neighborhoods, they're not known, they're not nurtured, they're not seen as human beings.

The things we talk about, you know, good teachers that like to see a kid and are able to find the little spark, the little gem that other people can't find important to them. That was more difficult for White teachers, who were not used to Black children who were quite frankly, afraid of Black children.

Integration has a complicated history, and as we see in our present, with the education and under-education of so many kids, and the purge of Black children from elite college campuses, it, it's unfinished work.

How do we turn these educational institutions into mutually beneficial spaces for people across ethnicity, race, and gender?

Dr. Val: I no longer believe they didn't understand Black children.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Oh, what do you think? Tell me.

Dr. Val: I, I don't know. Like, just looking at this moment now, it's not something they don't know or understand. I think these are, are choices about the value. Like, the sentence that I read to you about the value of Black and Brown children.

And when I went to college for educating young people, no one was like, “Here's how you teach White children. Here you go. Here's the blueprint.” And yet, apparently we feel like we have to do that with Black, Brown, and Indigenous children all the time because we just can't get it.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: These are all things that I didn't know. I mean, some, this, is, this, is why I'm an academic and and I'm an academic 'cause I'm a nerd! So, there are certain strings that I end up kind of pulling. And when my, my mother told me - I was asking her about my grandfather- she said, “You know, he, he is a member of the NAACP. He fought for integration.” But she said, he, that he told her once, “But, you know, daughter, I don't think they're gonna love our children over there. And I'm not sure what to do with the fact that we are sending our children to people who won't love them.”

So even as he understood the, the, rightness of the argument against Black inferiority, he understood love as as a central component of education. And it's not a component that ever gets talked about in terms of teacher education and training.

What they wanted, what they were arguing for, was to, to send the adults first.

Dr. Val: Yes, yes!

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Send the Black adults to White schools, White adults to Black schools. The janitors, switch them, get the administrators. Like, have some exchange among the adults that they understood would be a learning period, and somewhat rocky. But once the adults figured it out, then you invite the children in large numbers.

Instead, they moved children and left the adults in place. And because it was a one way move, nobody was moving White children to Black schools. It was all moving Black children to predominantly White schools. They didn't know them. They didn't, they, they mistrusted their humanity. They didn't, um, they, they didn't love them.

Dr. Val: Yeah.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: How have we not really grappled with that as we are today still dealing in a lot of ways with that, that sense of, I mean, you could call it love, you could call it belonging?

Just this simple thing of, “Well, perhaps you gotta get adults that know how to do it before you can tell kids how to do it,” is, is still almost untried. It's almost unheard of! Um, and still something I think that we're working our ways through.

Dr. Val: Dr. Rooks, I really appreciate that because I do think knowing someone is different from loving someone. And you are a back-to-back guest talking about love, and Andrew and I were just talking about we need to talk more explicitly about love in this work. Because that's clearly a characteristic of the future that we want for all of us and our young people.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

Andrew: Yeah. You talk about the love of the individual student. Your book just before this was about Mary McLeod Bethune. There was also kind of baked into her ethos that I know, you know, influenced your grandparents, that influenced a lot of people in that era. Not just a love for individual children, but also a love for Black people broadly.

This idea of, your success is determined not by your own personal success, but how much you then also kind of give back and lift up your community.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: I knew my grandparents, I knew their friends. I knew that the political engagements that they had. In Florida, it's not just that those teachers were amazing in terms of literacy and math. They were activists in a whole different, uh, register that made me start thinking about Black schools as community centers, and political incubators similar to the ways that we often talk about the Black church–

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: –in the mid 20th century Civil Rights Movement.

And I hadn't thought about schools as performing a similar kind of role, but because in Florida, almost 80% of Black teachers were also members of the NAACP, what these teachers do is get involved in politics with a capital P, in electoral politics. And they band together and they start another organization called the Progressive Voters League.

These teachers in 1940 organized Black teachers into a lobbying group and body so that they were swaying elections in Florida. They're saying, we have 25,000 registered voters who we control, who will vote for you if we tell them. What will you give Black people? What is it that you can promise our constituency?

And you had White politicians living up to the promises they had made. Where you had never seen it in Florida. You, it just never happened! So this kind of mobilization around the protection for Black life, that had to do with equal pay and safety from violence as well as “Baby, can you read?”

Dr. Val: Right.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Um, you know, “Baby, do you know who Harriet Tubman is?” Because these are things that will protect you. It was external and internal. They worked on the internal fortitude that Black students needed, that they thought, they needed to know about history and tradition. and, politics and to play chess, to understand the stars, astronomy clubs. Um they, they gave them all of that and, but were also organizing to make a world that they could come and exist in.

And that's so far beyond what I understood Black teachers to be before I started this project. And it made me grieve, understand the need to dismantle what was dismantled. So if you have that kind of power. I mean the, the Florida State Teachers Association, the, Black teachers association, which my grandfather was part of, Mary McLeod Bethune was part of, uh, Henry Moore, bunch of folks, were buying property. They were using the pension funds of the, uh, organization to buy property in Tallahassee so that they could expand their lobbying activities.

And then Brown v Board came and it, and their move toward shoring up these kinds of politics, purchasing this property ends up being pulled back, because in the aftermath of Brown v Board, the White resistance, the political and united White resistance and their understanding that, “Wait a minute, teachers are the ones, we need to look at them a little bit. We hadn't seen them like this.” And they declare war on the NAACP, which is a declaration of war on Black teachers in Florida at the time.

Andrew: Because 80% of them are members of the NAACP already.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Yes. And they got that. They went after Black teachers. 'cause they understood, they understood that Black community and Black politics, that Black power in a whole other register then Stokely Carmichael would utter it some decades later was located in Black schools and Black teachers. And I don't think that, uh, Florida or elsewhere that we've recovered from fully.

Andrew: Right. I mean, like you were saying, the teaching was not just about math and reading and science, but was also about activism, was also about y ou know the fortitude to go out and fight for a better world, not just for yourself, but also for your whole community.

And yes, you can imagine the fear that that would instill in the White power structure to say, “Oh wow, look at, look at how quickly things are changing. Look at how much power is being consolidated in this place. What are we gonna do to, to undermine that?”

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Yeah.

Dr. Val: I'm from Florida and it was wanting to be in conversation with my grandfather that sparked my own dissertation efforts. He was a, a history teacher, after coming back from serving in, in the military, and he drove officers during the Nuremberg Trials. You know, came back and went to school at Bethune Cookman.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Okay!

Dr. Val: Yeah. Before becoming the first director of Head Start in Sarasota County.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Wow.

Dr. Val: And so, but as you were speaking, I was like, man, I am so thankful for my Black AF education in Florida! Like, because I felt so centered in my identity and loved in that. And although it is very obvious we didn't have the, the same resources, I wouldn't trade that for anything! You know? And I felt whole and I felt loved and I felt seen. And yeah, we only had a handful of AP classes, but I'm here. I'm Dr. Val!

And whenever I'm thinking about the decisions I have to make for my own children, I don't wanna sacrifice their wholeness. And, that was why I made the decision I've made for their own schooling. Am I disappointed in some of the opportunities they have? Absolutely. You know, do they have a strong sense of identity and, and, feel loved? They do. And, and I hate that it's one or the other that I have to decide.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: And that’s the hard, that is the hard choice. You know, you can choose to spend all your money and live in an upper middle class, wealthy neighborhood and send your kid to a school in the community, but you're basically paying for it with your taxes and your kid very often will be what I call an “only lonely,” which I experienced, my son certainly experienced, where there's a handful.

Dr. Val: Yep.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: And you feel it. You know, it affects you in different ways. And, my husband and I, as both educators and people who had attended integrated schools ourselves, we could help him navigate it.

Dr. Val: That's what I can do. Right? That's a privilege that I have. Right.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: I knew enough. And so the way we know how to keep him safe is for him to understand the, the unequal and inherently unequal power dynamics that he's entering. And him being a child is not gonna protect him from that. That's what is, that's what my husband and I believe deeply.

But these are, these are the ways we had to talk to our child so that he could survive in these elite spaces. It worked. He's, he, he's healthy, he's sane, he's whole. He he has a good racial lens analysis, he understands those dynamics. He's got a job. He connect - It worked. But it took both of us, flat out. Flat out, everything we had to keep him safe, in those environments. And we're formidable! I will say, we are formidable!

Dr. Val: Right!

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: And it took everything–

Dr. Val: Absolutely.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: –to keep him safe, to get through it. Now, I don't think that's available to everyone. Not, 'cause they're not formidable, but we have, like the, the, we just have privileges that we could bring to bear–

Dr. Val: Correct.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: –that other people don't. So what happens to other people's kids?

Andrew: Yeah. You wrote, “I remember how fully we as a family came to understand that schools were places of great opportunity, and at the same time that Black children required layers of protection to survive them whole.”

And, you know, Linn Posey-Maddox has a piece about there, No Choice is the “Right” Choice for Black Parents, that you've got either the, sort of, resources and academic opportunities, or their soul. And, you know, which one are you gonna try to supplement? Which one are you gonna try to be the buffer, provide those layers of protection?

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: And this is why I, I feel that period that I'm engaging, the pre-Civil Rights, pre-Brown v Board Black educators and Black education, because they had to build and inspire and ensure that Black children understood who they were and could be, and who other Black people had been, if they were gonna have any chance of surviving the drumbeat of negativity about Black skin and Black culture.

And so, they tried to build up hard, you know, with the cultural significance. They built up the children as best they could. And, uh, I talk about how my grandfather was aneducator, but he had a driver who carried a gun. He basically had a bodyguard, because he got death threats, and the Klan were burning, burning crosses on the, on the front lawn. Um, because again, they understood education.

The Klan is not coming to burn a a cross on your lawn really 'cause you're teaching children “two plus two equal four.” They may not like that anyone's teaching them that. They may wish you were teaching them “two plus two equal five.” But no one's gonna actually, um, come and try to tear down everything, 'cause you have taught them. But they will, that you taught them “You are a human being.” That you are, uh, worthy of, that you come from people who have done and been. And you too have the right to do and be. That, that people teaching that they will burn a cross.

Dr. Val: That's the threat.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: So having that full sense of what teachers were, who they were, and the worlds they were creating, I think is one of the contributions that this book makes. And you have to see this as a part of what integration destroyed. We know what it built, but what did it destroy?

And we have to pay some attention to, to how few children, actually Black children, um, from the fifties on have been able to benefit. Like, we have this idea that, “Oh, Brown v Board came in and now everybody has the opportunity to go to high quality, high performing schools for Black children.”

That is just not the case! And has rarely been the case, to, to devastating consequences.

Andrew: Yeah. It's like the story that gets told about the progress focuses on the exceptions, focuses on the people who made it out. The people, you know, you made it out.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Me, I did.

Andrew: Yeah! You had this, this family, you know, everybody in your family had been educators. Grandparents who were deeply involved, this kind of upbringing in both integrated and segregated schooling, and a lot of grace, a lot of fortunate opportunities that kind of led you out.

And then, and it's easy to point to that and be like, “Well, look like if she made it out, then like, the system must be working.” But I think that, that, what your book really highlighted for me was the ways that when we focus on those stories, it allows us to ignore the ways that then the White power structure dismantled all of the things that let that be possible in the first place, right?

So the, the teaching core that your grandparents were a part of, that gets obliterated in the wake of, of Brown, there isn't the same Black church, Black neighborhoods, these institutions have been obliterated in, in the wake of that. And, and that was the part that I think I had, you know, I, I knew some of those stories - we had Leslie Fenwick on talking about the law loss of Black teachers, but I think what feels, and maybe it's just this political moment, but certainly feels to me a much more like intentional “Mothers of Massive Resistance,” you know, undermining of these institutions that is the cost that, that came along with that.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Mm-hmm. People will easily say, uh, “We should just, make sure we train and hire more Black teachers and that will fix it.” But I'm saying there was something much more comprehensive that was destroyed.

It's not Black people with Black skin teaching. Not all Black people actually like Black children. So, like, this is the, the thing I'm kind of like, there was a moment–

Dr. Val: That part, that part!

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: –where there were communities that, that liked, that understood, knew, valued, liked, and loved Black children. And they built from there. Um, it was not the Blackness that was that, that the love was inherently there. Because not all, not all Black people are good for Black kids.

Dr. Val: I'm, I'm glad you said that because I don't want our White and other non-Black listeners to feel like they can't be good teachers to Black children.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: They can absolutely be good teachers.

Dr. Val: It's about the love! It's about the love. It's about seeing that value. And so I'm, I'm really glad you said that.

Andrew: Your story is one of success. You made it out, your son is thriving. Your father had a TV show, and yet, reading the book, it does not feel like a triumphant story. I feel like there's some piece of that kind of, uh, you know, “Mary McLeod Bethune ethos,”that your grandparents had. That, like, your success is not just about getting yourself out, but it's about elevating your community.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: I don't think there's any piece of any story that I tell that does not have the seeds of hope in them. There's always some people who are organizing and thinking and trying. That's just not the story I'm telling. Like, I don't wanna tell the story of hope. I'm trying to get, get people to understand why the hope was required.

But in, in telling it, I, I think that there's enough to, to sort of point toward what it takes to build. Where I come down is to go back to this thing that White communities have fought for - uh, neighborhood schools and community schools, and Black people have fought for as well, but always generally been told, “It is to your best interest to put yours on a bus and have them go farther away.”

And what, what I've come down to is I don't have any reason to believe that widespread integration practices in education or housing are about to break out anytime soon. And I think we should acknowledge how still relatively segregated we are.

And because it is, at the moment, uh, legal, I, I'm not sure this will continue, but it is at the moment legal for Black people to live different places, to attend whatever schools they want to. The barriers against that mean that we are still overwhelmingly segregated by race, ethnicity, language, and poverty.

And given that I, I started to wonder what is the utility of still proclaiming that integration is the educational policy law of the land when we're looking at, in point of fact, it's not happening in the majority. There, it, we have examples, it happens, but it's not, it's not the majority.

And so, if what we have are hugely underfunded, segregated schools and, and the one thing, honest to God, we've never tried is separate but equal. Like we have not actually tried that.

Now, I say that while understanding, that integration, when allowed to work is preferable. Like, it really is. If you can have actually have, have schools, accepting kids, and everybody feels like they belong and everyone feels affirmed in the schools that are high performing and, and hugely funded. In the instances where we've seen that, everyone benefits. It is preferable. There's nothing better that you wanna do systemically. It's just such a small number of places where that works.

Andrew: This is that Du Bois quote from, from 1935. Michelle Adams was on, was talking about that, he says, “Other things being equal. The mixed school is the broader, more natural basis for the education of all youth. It gives wider context, it inspires greater self-confidence and suppresses the inferiority complex. But other things seldom are equal. And in that case, sympathy, knowledge, and the truth outweigh all that a mixed school can offer.”

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Exactly. I could, I mean of, obviously I could not have said it better than W.E.B. Du Bois [chuckles], but I always have that caveat 'cause people become horrified and, like, “She's arguing for separate but equal.” I am not. I'm saying integration is the best thing. We're not there, we're not close to there. We're moving back in another direction. And in the meantime what we're doing is leaving a majority of kids in precarious circumstances.

And so, if in fact there was a way to ensure the “equal,” because when we've seen the equal ensured, like in Topeka, Kansas, you have people saying, “I might have been part of Brown v Board, but my God, my teachers, I love them and everything about them, they were family to us.”

I tell a story about my grandfather who ends his life, uh, estranged from the NAACP because Florida being Florida, what they decided to do, instead of integrate, at the university levels, they decide to found a chain of nine separate but equal community colleges. And they are completely equal. The, they're gorgeous.

And members of the NAACP by then are like, “But it's just a complete sellout to even work at these schools to embrace these schools.” But they had the best teachers, with the best credentials, and the fabulous facilities.

And my grandfather again, ends his life there educating the Black kids who he always wanted to educate and to support. And the people from the community, they come back and they, they constantly say, “This ‘separate but equal’ saved our lives.”

My grandfather though, ends up at odds with the NAACP; they are calling him a sellout and “Uncle Tom.” How could he participate in a system that is going back to “separate but equal,” But for him, again, he was like, “The children still have to be educated. And if you give me another place to educate them, if you give me another way to support them, I will go there. I will do that. But they, this, this is where they are. This is where I can find them. This is where I can help them. And that outweighs this disdain.”

And so yeah, he, he ends up an outcast after a lifetime um, of fighting for this. But that's 'cause his North Star was the education, the full education of as many Black kids as he could get his hands was his. That was his North Star.

Dr. Val: And he had to go where they were.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: And he had to go where they were. But also, that's an example of “separate but equal” really working pretty well! So, what I'm saying in hostile times, in, in, in spaces where what should be yours is not available to you. If educating these kids, keeping them safe, loving them, giving them what they need to get to the next, uh, step. If that's required, I, I, I'm not sure it's not worth a conversation.

What I talk about, as an example are the community schools movement that is getting quite a bit of funding, which is nothing but “separate but equal” funding, is what I would say.

We don't wanna call it that! We're calling it all wraparound services. And what you're doing is leaving segregation untouched and then trying to figure out how to put those communities of love and care back around them. It seems to me to be at least worth a good try, because the thing about “separate but equal” previously was always, it was never equal. It was just never.

So when you come along and be like acknowledging the reality, it is not an enforced, I mean, you don't say “Only poor people can go to schools with poor people.” Obviously we're not gonna pass, and I don't know, this administration might pass those laws, I don't know. But the goal would not be to pass those laws, but to let children go to neighborhood schools where they can develop bonds, feelings of community, safety, be in proximity to their neighbors and teach them there. I, I think it's worth trying.

But I tap dance so much 'cause of course people are like, “You're a segregationist!” I’m really not.

Andrew: Yeah, I mean there's so much nuance there, because just simply sending a bunch of Black kids to the local neighborhood school.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: That is not the point, no.

Andrew: Doesn't, doesn't, doesn't also do it, right? If this teaching force is still 80% White and doesn't believe in the full humanity of Black kids.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Exactly.

Andrew: And it’s created a concentrated place for kids to learn racism as elementary school kids which is not, is not, is not a win either.

I mean, I take the point that, you know, in, in this moment we have segregated schools. Undeniably our, our education system has gone back to being segregated.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: I mean, the other big story I think in the in, the book is how formidable the resistance of White parents and politicians has been to the foundational idea of integration.

How widespread and violent, destructive, this resistance so many White parents and politicians seem to have had just to the very idea of sharing classrooms with Black and Brown kids. For, for the most part indigenous too.

And that resistance hasn't gone anywhere. Here's what we've learned, if nothing else, um, trying to force White parents to do this thing that they feel is not in their best interest of them or their children. They're saying, “I have to protect my children, and their futures, and their educations.” And there is no parent among us that does not understand that protective kind of thing.

Dr. Val: Not one, yup.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Now, they're wronghead, wrongheaded and racist. I get that. But I understand the impetus, uh, in, in a strange way. And some of it is, uh, just, just naked White supremacy, probably all of it is naked White supremacy.

Andrew: It may be partially, partially clothed White supremacy.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Yes, there may be a little bit of clothes.

Andrew: It’s like White supremacy in a suit. I mean, this, this is the most insidious part of it is to me that, that I feel like, you know, so, so much of our work is about trying to kind of unpack and, and uncover is this, this Elizabeth McCray's Mothers of Massive Resistance that “We've, we've put a nice suit on it.” We've made it look like it is “just about taking care of your kids.” It is just about that understandable shared impulse that we all have to protect our kids. And it's not about White supremacy.

Because so many White parents who engage in the further segregation of our schools would say that they're opposed to White supremacy would say that what they want is a well integrated schooling system. And yet, that, you know, the, the, the kind of nefarious work that has been done behind the scenes to…

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: To keep that from happening. Mm-hmm.

Andrew: And to make you feel like you're not actually part of it when all you're doing is getting what's good for your kid, when actually what you're doing is, you know, is actually perpetuating this system.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Yes. I believe that is true. I do not believe we have imagined spaces otherwise, though.

Dr. Val: Mmm.

Andrew: Mmm.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Yes, there's, there is racism and White supremacy, and greed! Just naked greed! And selfishness involved in, in what's happening. But I think we have a paucity of imagination when it comes to what kinds of spaces and communities we want to create that are reaching across things like race.

And what it comes down to, in the United States at least, is yes, White parents profess desire for things like integration, but they never, ever wanna be forced to do anything.

So you will readily find people who say they support all of the goals, they just don't support any, any workable method, any of them. They don't like busing. They don't want suburbs to have to participate. They don't wanna redraw district lines. There's nothing they want to do to make it happen.

Andrew: I mean, that's what we try to do every day, right? Is like, you know, I've opted out of my neighborhood school and sent my kid to a school where she was the only White kid in the kindergarten class. I voluntarily desegregated my kids.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: That's Integrated Schools’ theory of change. And, as a former member of the board, I am sympathetic to it. I think for those White parents who want to do that, kids benefit from being in those environments. But it is, it's all voluntary. And it's, there's a paucity of people interested in doing it. But it's something, and in the face of just nothing you know, it's something.

But how do you scale up something that might actually benefit more kids? I'm actually wondering if, uh, actual separate but equal wouldn't be it. But of course the fear there is, it might start off separate but equal and then, you know, they're back to underfunding you. Although then I don't know that you're in any worse shape than where you started. So…

Andrew: What's, what's the path from separate but equal to multiracial democracy?

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Well, I don't know, a path that doesn't involve strong communities. You have to have people who are visioning and defining and fighting for their inclusion in the multiracial democracy.

I think we have to rebuild our idea of what community power and politics look like before we can really keep safe or even engage productively with getting back to multiracial democracy. 'Cause that's a battle. It's gonna be a battle. We're being disenfranchised as well. Undereducated and disenfranchised.

You mentioned I I had a book out about Mary McLeod Bethune that, that came out last July and it's kin to to this longer one. Because, the Bethune book is just in praise of Mary McLeod Bethune in all kinds of ways, ‘cause I believe you can't do that enough.

But they're very deeply connected around this vision, this north star of what, Black people in a White supremacist society, what we most need to know to stay safe and sane, and to stay alive.

And I think that she is a visionary. My grandparents were visionary. I think that generation pre 1955, we're understudying them. That as we go back to a repeal of civil rights law . You have announced your intention at coming at the things that, that shored up Black citizenship, that acknowledged Black humanity in lives. As equal, at least attempted to do that.

To, to be in a period where they're dismantling that. is to ask the question of survival. back in that period when we were not considered, citizens, when we were here walking and breathing, but going back to the Taney court saying, the Black man has no rights that the white man is bound to respect.

What does it mean to have to teach children in this moment of change that, you have, you were citizens - there were rights that white people had to respect. That we won. But to take that away and then say you have to teach children to survive now here where we've known it and now not, that's, that's tragic to me.

But I think that that group of folks, I think that there are people who lived through this and have something to teach us. We need to know 'em. We need to know 'em. We need to find them and we need to understand what they can offer us right now. 'Cause what they offer is not just for Black people. They're offering the nation. They're offering democracy, multiracial democracy. They're, they're offering the United States a way forward.

That's what I'm lifting up. I really am. It is, it should be hopeful, but you gotta drag through an awful lot of scary, to see it or get there. I think

Dr. Val: This is brilliant. .

Andrew: Thank you so much. It's been a fascinating conversation.The book is spectacular. The book before that, the Mary McLeod Bethune book is also spectacular. Um, you've been such an inspiration certainly to Courtney Mykytyn who founded the organization to me over the years. Really grateful for your time and for coming on.

Dr. Noliwe Rooks: Thank y'all both. This was great.

[THEME MUSIC]

Andrew: So Val, what did you think?

Dr. Val: Well, it really gave me an opportunity to interrogate my own thoughts about the benefits of integration, the losses that Black communities experienced. I will say, I always wondered why they decided to integrate schools with lone students, you know, versus educators.

And so I'm glad to hear that that was the proposed strategy of many people because they understood what our young people would be facing walking in to those spaces where they weren't wanted, and were actively resisted. And so, there's a sense of, of sadness associated with the conversation. A healthy dose of reality, about what the experience was like for many people.

I'm, I still feel committed to integrated spaces, and I understand if some people aren't because they haven't had a positive experience at all. Right. It's like so deep on so many levels

I say that I'm committed to integrated spaces and I am. And I'm committed to public schools, which is where my kids go to school, which also happened to not really be as integrated spaces as they could be. Right. And so, it kind of left me, somber if, if I'm honest.

Here's a fear that I had at the beginning of the pandemic. We had done so much work to be in community with each other from like 2016, right up until the beginning of the pandemic. And I was really afraid that the pandemic would put us back into our silos and we would lose touch with one another and thus lose progress that we were making.

And then the unfortunate murder of George Floyd happened, and I was surprised by the international rally around that. And the momentum that we had as a result of still wanting to come together against injustice

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And so, I think my fear now, is that it feels easy right now to go into spaces where you feel comfortable, but it's not just comfort, it's also loved.

Andrew: Mm-hmm.

Dr. Val: And to ask people to go to spaces where they don't feel loved feels really unfair right now. Right? And so I'm not mad. I'm not mad if people don't wanna go to places where they don't feel loved. And I don't know how to make people love each other if they want to lead with whatever biases or bigoted or racist thoughts that they have about other people.

I don't know how to make someone love someone else in that instance. And so if you're choosing places where you are loved over places where you're getting spat on, I get it.

Andrew: Yeah, I think there's something very powerful in Dr. Rooks, you know, telling her own family story - the way that she brings herself into the story. You know, obviously the book is incredibly deeply researched , but there's so much of her self and her own story in it.

It's not stuff that wasn't known in some way, but the way that she presents it and kind of the conclusion she draws from it was, was heavy. Yeah, definitely left me feeling feeling somber as well.

And I certainly understand that, in kind of the arc of her life she's at a place where she feels like maybe we need to actually try separate but equal. And I get it. I under, I understand that desire. I mean, I think you can't look at the like political and institutional and cultural capital that existed in Black schools and the fact that that is gone and not, not feel a sense of loss, obviously for the Black community, but more broadly, I think for our country as a whole. Like we are all worse off for that stuff being gone.

So, you know, a desire to, to find that again, is something that I understand and appreciate. And, and I still think that, that the only way we win is together.

I think about something that Dr. Vanessa Siddle-Walker said, somebody asked her, you know, like, shouldn't we just go back to separate but equal? And she basically said there, you know, there's nothing to go back to. Those institutions were destroyed. The networks of Black educators that existed then have all been undermined. And so, you know, what, what does it look like to take seriously that loss, to try to rebuild some of that cultural and political and educational capital given where we are right now? And, you know, I don't, yeah, I don't know the answer to that.

Dr. Val: Mm-hmm. You know, I recognize this moment as a storm that we need to move through as we're seeing shakeups in power. I don't feel surprised. and I also recognize that those systems haven't worked for everyone and, and in fact have, may have even caused some harm to certain communities.

And , you know, the most radical of our friends talk about, you know, burning it all down. And if we're honest, it's all being burned down currently. And that, believe it or not, gives me a little hope because what we did wasn't working.

Andrew: Yeah. I think this is why I think it's important to grapple with Dr. Rook's book and you know, she talks about her grandparents generation, Mary McLeod, Bethune, like all these people from that era and, and how in some ways they're understudied and that we really need to look to some of the things that they were elevating as important in that era.

Because I think you're right, like, where I take hope when, when I'm able to find hope, is in the idea that, that we could rebuild. And if we could rebuild, we have to do it better than, than we did in the past.

And I think that's where like really grappling with the harms that were caused by our past attempts at desegregation is important. Because if we have the opportunity to build something different, we have to build something that is better. We have to build something that takes seriously the losses that came from our past attempts.

Dr. Val: I think there are a group of people who say like, this system wasn't designed to support all of us, and so we need to start over.

You know what struck me again, and this has been a theme recently for us, and our guest is talking about love.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And you know, I think we are connected as humans. Like, this doesn't feel like rocket science to me. And so the only way that you are unable to connect on some level is because you don't see the same amount of humanity in a person. That's, that's where I have to live. Right.

And so, no, I don't understand everything that you experience on the daily? Yeah, we might have different hair routines. There's a lot of like daily small things that might be different that I embrace learning about because, hey, I didn't know that was a thing.

Andrew: Right.

Dr. Val: But to understand that you have feelings and emotions, that you experience pain and joy.

Andrew: That you are worthy of love.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And that you, you have brilliance. These are things that are not hard to understand about people. And I know love is one of those squishy words, but certainly it does not require advanced degrees to connect with other humans. It doesn't.

Andrew: And the barriers that we put up are constructed, right? Like we choose to view race as a barrier between understanding of people, but all those differences that you listed, those differences exist within the Black community as much as they exist between the Black and White community.

Those barriers are artificial and we can choose to live into them or we can choose to push back against them. And I still think that, ultimately the way we, in the long run, have fewer people who are living into those artificial boundaries is by our kids learning together. Is by, Thurgood Marshall learning together so that we can learn to live together. Like that is the ultimate goal.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Last night, I was at an event and I made a buddy, a little Latina, first grader, and, we were doing some, some work together. And the facilitator asked the young people what they wanted to be when they grew up. And she's like, I know what I wanna be when I grow up. I was like, okay, tell me. She's like, I wanna be a teacher. I said, well, you raise your hand and you tell them you wanna be a teacher. So she, her little hand shot up. And she was excited to share that she wanted to be a, a teacher.

And, you know, the, the joy is innate.. The desire to connect is innate. Bless that little child. I said, how do you think I am? She said 25. I said, you…

Andrew: No wonder you like her so much [laughter]

Dr. Val: you dear you dear, can be whatever you want. [laughter]

But again, like that was me sitting down next to a smiling kid who just wanted to share her dreams and what she was excited about, and her artwork and her ideas, and ask me questions and be genuinely curious.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And so when we put up those barriers that you talked about, that's what you miss. You miss that genuine human connection. And I think that is absolutely worth fighting for because there was a time where we wouldn't share space together.

And so I don't want us to find ourselves where we can't have those moments. And it feels frustrating to have to force people to want those moments. And I deeply understand that, right? Right now it feels safest to go with the willing. who is willing to go into this with me.

Andrew: Yeah.

Dr. Val: And, and to try to have a critical enough mass to convince people that this, this is a better way.

Andrew: Look at how much better it is.

Dr. Val: Look how much better it is.

Andrew: Right. Yeah. I mean that's certainly the, the hopeful piece is what's possible on the other side of it. And I think the hate and division and forces pushing us apart are strong and feel emboldened right now. And, I still believe that that burns fast and bright and burns itself out. That eventually in the long run, love wins.

And so, so we have to figure out ways to connect with love. We have to figure out ways to love each other better. We have to figure out ways to get into community with each other and love each other. Which I think is, is whenever possible about being in the same physical space with people. That the social media version of love does not sustain you in the same way as being in community with people, as sharing space with people, as finding that real shared humanity with people.

And, and then as we think about this, like, you know what, what gets rebuilt in, in the wake of everything kind of crumbling down, you know, like Dr. Rooks said, like we've never really taken love seriously as a component to what a real education is. And, and I think we have to.

Dr. Val: Yeah. And I think the work that we have to do is that Black folks or any folks who feel like it's a danger to integrate schools and, and other spaces because again, you're not feeling that sense of love, I think the solution to that is to get to the antidote, right? It's not to force people to go into spaces where they aren't loved, but to do that work, to create those situations where people say, this is important enough for us to do, or this makes enough sense for us to do.

Right. I don't, I don't wanna put the weight of integrating on folks who are gonna take the brunt of the hate and the pain. Like I don't, I don't want that. I want us to actually address the issue that keeps them unsafe in those spaces. And I think that was at the heart of the creation of Integrated Schools, right?

Andrew: Yeah, I mean, among the many failures of the past ways we went about desegregating schools was that we asked so little of White families, we asked so little of privileged families. That the idea was, there are good schools, they are White schools, and okay, we will begrudgingly allow Black and Brown kids into them, ignoring all of the beautiful things that were happening in Black schools that Dr. Rooks talks about. All of the, you know, ways that teachers were inspiring kids, we're giving kids the tools that they needed to survive in the world, we're encouraging kids to become advocates for their communities. All of those things that we lost in the wake of that.

And Integrated School's mission from the beginning has been to shift where that burden - to say ultimately we only win together, but the way we get together can't be on the backs of Black and Brown families. It has to be about White families choosing to do something different, and not to just show up somewhere different, but to show up in that place in a different way.

Dr. Val: Yeah. Yeah. And And some would argue we're still not asking enough

Andrew: Yep.

Dr. Val: of White and privileged families. And I think that's a fair argument too.

Andrew: Yeah. Yes, plenty of work still to be done. I'm very grateful for Dr. Rooks, for this book Bntegrated How American Schools Failed Black Children for her unflinching look at this real history in the ways that it shows up now and for elevating the voices of people like her grandparents and her parents. And her book before Integrated, which was called A Passionate Mind in Relentless Pursuit, the Wisdom of Mary McLeod Bethune, also definitely worth getting and reading. There'll be links in the show notes to our bookshop.org site where you can support local bookstores and send some money back to us. But, really highlights these, as Dr. Rooks said, sort of underappreciated figures of the civil rights movement because I think they really have a lot to teach us in these times.

Dr. Val: Absolutely. And so we encourage you not only to continue to get your read on, but to also share the podcast, share what you're learning with others. Do the hard work of engaging in nuanced conversations around these topics. That's the way you deepen your own learning and make it real for you.

Andrew: Yeah. This was a heavy one. Uh, certainly left me a bit somber after the conversation and revisiting it, but I'm really grateful for it. And, hope that listeners, that you got something out of it as well. If you did join our Patreon, patreon.com/integratedschools, you can throw us a few dollars every month to help keep this work going. You can also join us on IS Plus if you're listening on Apple Podcasts right in your app.

Dr. Val: That's not the only way that you can support the podcast, you can also donate at integratedschools.org. There's a red button that says Donate. We would appreciate all of your donations that keep our podcast going.

Andrew: And we wanna hear from you listeners. What did you think? What are you grappling with? How are you finding love in challenging times? Send us a voice memo speakpipe.com/integratedschools, S-P-E-A-K-P-I_P-E.com/integrated schools, or our website integrated schools.org. There's a little, leave us a voicemail button. You can click on that, or you can just email us a voice memo from your phone to podcast@integratedschool.org. We want to hear from you.

Dr. Val: Thank you, Andrew.

Andrew: Thank you, Val. This was a heavy one, but I'm really grateful to be in conversations like these with you as I try to know better and do better.

Dr. Val: Until next time.