School Colors

Here’s a preview of another podcast, Some of My Best Friends Are, from Pushkin Industries. Harvard professor Khalil Gibran Muhammad and journalist Ben Austen are friends, one Black and one white, who grew up together on the South Side of Chicago. On Some of My Best Friends Are, Khalil and Ben, along with their guests, have critical conversations that are at once personal, political, and playful, about the absurdities and intricacies of race in America. In this preview, Khalil and Ben talk...

This is the second of two bonus episodes recorded live at the Queens Public Library on December 15, 2022. After interviewing New York City Schools Chancellor David C. Banks, Mark and Max reflected on the Chancellor’s remarks and took questions about the making of School Colors, why they chose District 28, and what they learned. This event was co-produced with The CITY and Chalkbeat New York, and moderated by Chalkbeat’s Reema Amin.

This is the first of two bonus episodes recorded live at the Queens Public Library on December 15, 2022. Mark and Max interviewed New York City Schools Chancellor David C. Banks. Banks was appointed by Mayor Eric Adams and is just finishing his first year on the job. The previous leadership of the NYC DOE had supported diversity planning processes in five school districts across the city, including District 28, the subject of School Colors Season 2. Once Covid-19 hit New York, these...

Over the course of this season, we've explored a rich history and complicated present — but what about the future? In this episode, we catch up with parents who became activated on both sides of the debate over the diversity plan. Since the diversity plan never came to fruition, what’s to be done about the inequalities that persist in District 28? Click here for a full episode transcript. Join us at the Queens Public Library on December 15! Are you using School Colors in your own...

"I know this work can take you under if you let it, so I try not to let it take me." Pat Mitchell is the beloved longtime principal of P.S. 48, an elementary school in South Jamaica. She cares deeply about her students, many of whom struggle with poverty and unstable housing. While school was often a place of stability for her students and their families, COVID-19 changed everything. In this special episode, we follow the first pandemic school year through the eyes of Ms. Mitchell. Click...

In 2018, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a plan to replace the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT. For years, advocates had argued that the test favored white and Asian students while systematically keeping Black and Latinx kids out of the city's most elite and well-resourced high schools. But many Asian American parents felt targeted by the mayor’s plan, and they mobilized to defend the test. So when the District 28 diversity planning process was rolled out a...

In some ways, this entire season was prompted by the parents who organized against diversity planning in District 28. So in this episode, we let the opposition speak for themselves. Who are these parents? What do they believe and why? And why were they ready to fight so hard against a plan that didn't exist? Click here for a full episode transcript. Join us at the Queens Public Library on December 15! Are you using School Colors in your own teaching or organizing? Fill out this audience...

Queens has changed a lot in the last few decades — and so has District 28. New immigrant communities have taken root and the district is, on the whole, pretty diverse. But most Black folks still live on the Southside, and the schools below Liberty Avenue continue to struggle. A lot of parents and educators agree that there needs to be some change in District 28. But the question remains: what kind of change? When we asked around, more diversity wasn't necessarily at the top of everybody's...

Until recently, District 28 was characterized by a white Northside, and a Black Southside. For more than a hundred years, we've seen how conflicts around housing, schools, and resources have played out mostly along this racial divide. So how did District 28 go from being defined by this racial binary, to a place where people brag about its diversity? In this episode, we take a deep dive into two immigrant communities — Indo-Caribbeans and Bukharian Jews — that have settled in Queens: how...

So much of the present day conversation about District 28 hinges on the dynamic between the Northside and the Southside. But why were the north and the south wedged into the same school district to begin with? When we asked around, no one seemed to know. What we do know are the consequences. As soon as the district was created, white and Black folks looked over the Mason-Dixon line and saw each other not as neighbors, but as competitors for scarce resources. And the Southside always seemed...

In the early 1970s, Forest Hills, Queens, became a national symbol of white, middle class resistance to integration. Instead of public schools, this fight was over public housing. It was a fight that got so intense the press called it "The Battle of Forest Hills." How did a famously liberal neighborhood become a hotbed of reaction and backlash? And how did a small group of angry homeowners change housing policy for the entire country? Click here for a full episode transcript. Join us at...

District 28 is both diverse and segregated. There’s a Northside and a Southside. To put it simply: the Southside is Black, and the further north you go, the fewer Black people you see. But it wasn't always like this. Once upon a time, Black parents in South Jamaica staged an epic school boycott that led to the first statewide law against school segregation in New York. The Southside hosted two revolutionary experiments in racially integrated housing. So what happened between then and...

Queens, New York is often called “the most diverse place on the planet.” So why would a school district in Queens need a diversity plan? And why would so many Queens parents be so fiercely opposed? Welcome back to School Colors — Season 2. Click here for a full episode transcript. Join us at the Queens Public Library on December 15! Are you using School Colors in your own teaching or organizing? Fill out this audience survey. School Colors is created, reported, and written by Mark...

School Colors is back! Season 2 premieres this week, presented by NPR's Code Switch. To listen, hop over to the Code Switch feed. In Season 1, hosts Mark Winston Griffith and Max Freedman reported from their home turf in Central Brooklyn. Season 2 is all about Queens. Queens is often touted as the most ethnically diverse place in the world. So why would a school district in the middle of Queens need a diversity plan? And why would diversity planning be met with such intense parent...

In Driving the Green Book, broadcaster Alvin Hall and activist Janée Woods Weber drive from Detroit to New Orleans collecting powerful stories about how Black Americans used The Negro Motorist Green Book to find safe havens and travel with dignity during segregation. You’ll hear heartbreaking moments of discrimination and fear, but also find inspiration in the stories of those who built support networks for each other and fought for equality. To understand the way forward, Driving the Green...

The 1954 lynching of Isadore Banks is one of the nation’s oldest unsolved civil rights cases. Unfinished: Deep South is a new podcast opening the case back up to find answers to this fading mystery — and help us come to terms with the unresolved legacy of racism we’re still living with. Listen on @stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts: https://stitcherapp.com/unfinished.

In advance of the New York primary election on June 23rd, BMC hosted a virtual Town Hall with the candidates for Central Brooklyn's 25th State Senate district: Tremaine Wright, Jason Salmon, and Jabari Brisport. For more information, visit http://www.brooklynmovementcenter.org/elections2020.

In advance of the New York primary election on June 23rd, BMC hosted a virtual Town Hall with the candidates for Central Brooklyn's 56th State Assembly district: Stefani Zinerman and Justin Cohen. For more information, visit http://www.brooklynmovementcenter.org/elections2020.

In advance of the New York primary election on June 23, BMC Deputy Director Anthonine Pierre interviews the candidates for Central Brooklyn's 57th State Assembly district: Walter Mosley and Phara Souffrant Forrest. For more information, visit http://www.brooklynmovementcenter.org/elections2020.

This is the second installment of a special series from Brooklyn Deep's Third Rail podcast focused on New York's June 23rd primary elections. How is the Black electorate shifting in Central Brooklyn, generationally and politically? Anthonine Pierre talks to local political analysts Theo Moore and Sandy Nurse. For more information, visit http://www.brooklynmovementcenter.org/elections2020.