How to Win Friends and Influence White People

The Morris district in Northern New Jersey has long championed diversity, even as its student body has changed and nearby schools remain deeply segregated. Each elementary school in the district draws from multiple neighborhoods, with a constant open zone at the center (where the poorest families live) where students are assigned to schools in order to maintain racial and economic diversity.

A school in Brooklyn uses a lottery-based acceptance system to ensure a diverse class. And instead of sorting the struggling kids from the gifted, they embedded an honors program which kids can opt into without changing classrooms.

In 2019, close to half, or 45 percent of white students scored proficient or above in reading comprehension, compared to 18 percent of Black fourth graders, and 23 percent of Latinx fourth graders. However, research shows that exposing students of color to books that reflect their culture increases reading comprehension and motivation. In the wake of those disparities, American teachers are beginning to reckon with the lack of diverse authors they teach. Some teachers are launching social justice classes, requiring more diverse books, and challenging norms.

You can’t force people to make friends across ethnic lines, but you can invite them to at least meet each other. In the split town of Rotherham, the National Citizen Service program brings together 16- and 17-year-olds, some white and some with Pakistani heritage, to meet and discuss their differences openly. Participants say it’s a powerful experience.

Historically there has been stigma and pushback to bilingual and immigrant programs, but some counties are starting to embrace diversity as key to economic development. Greater diversity spurs innovation, entrepreneurship, and population growth in rural areas, recognition of these benefits has eased the stigma and encouraged more immigrant programs.

For many years, Leschi Elementary was a divided school - white kids were overwhelmingly enrolled in Leschi's Montessori program, while students of color were most likely found in the "contemporary" classes. In 2014, staff decided to combine the two curricula, offering all students a "Best of Both" blended model. Leschi now openly encourages conversations about social justice and inclusion among both students and parents and while there was some initial attrition after the change, most families are now quick to point to the clear benefits of the school's shift.

A school in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, has been specifically engineered to reflect the true diversity of NYC. It's one of the only schools in the district that does so: 39% white, 33% black, 20% combined Hispanic and Asian, and 8% "other."

All over the country, students are using the internet to call out racism. Young people are publishing open letters, creating Change.org petitions and Google Docs “with lists of racist people in their classes, and using online platforms to organize protests.” In Boston, teens from the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center wrote an open letter asking school officials to address the wave of anti-asian hate crimes. After the letter, officials issued a resolution. Although, in some instances these actions do result in change, sometimes it can result in censorship towards students of color.

Hate crime laws apply to a narrow range of conduct, and often fail as a response to bias incidents that constitute hate speech but are not in themselves a crime. When high school students working on a history class project produced a video with a song treating the KKK and racist murders as a joke, the school and community responded not with prosecutions but with community dialogues to air differences of opinion about the incident. Students of color then formed a group, Project D.R.E.A.M., that expanded the conversations to the entire school, educating a mainly white community about the impact of racism.

Milwaukee is one of the most segregated cities in the country. Nationally, a Gallup poll found that 55% of Americans believe “race relations between Blacks and whites to be either "very or somewhat bad." To improve race relations, the YMCA in Milwaukee created a course called, “Unlearning Racism.” Participants ranged in race, occupation, and age. The class covered topics like white privilege and how to address racism. It also required students to engage in discussions about racism.