Multimedia Analysis Post #1: Audio Story Analysis
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Nice White Parents explains how white parents are the most powerful force in shaping the public school system in the United States. From the fallout of Brown vs. the Board of Education to present day, a reporter’s account of what she sees in the New York public school system shows that nothing has really changed.
A reporter for the New York Times, Chana Joffe-Walt, spent five years following parents at the Boerum Hill School for International Studies, located in Brooklyn, New York. She also researches its long history as a public school.
After Brown v. Board of Education, the United States most states actively began desegregating schools. The only outlier, New York, never took action to desegregate its public schools, and the city’s schools are still the most segregated in the country.
The first episode, the Book of Statuses, begins with the most recent change BHS underwent, an influx of white enrollment at a predominantly Black and Puerto Rican public school.
Due to competitive enrollment are a nearby school, hundreds of white children were rejected for enrollment. One of the parents toured BHS, and he mentioned to the principal that if the school were to begin a French program — a program that the man would help start — the school wouldn’t be nearing the accreditation requirements because of low enrollment.
The school board agreed, and white parents began enrolling their kids into BHS. Within the same year, the white parents began controlling the school’s finances, prioritizing programs their kids were involved in. Additionally, classes began to be taught in French, claiming that learning a new language would introduce the children to a world of opportunities.
It must be noted that a considerable amount of the Black and Puerto Rican kids were bilingual, speaking both English and Spanish.
She doesn’t used any music or sound effects, but she uses audio from interviews and news clippings. She includes interviews from dozens of people. From teachers, to students, to administrators, to parents, she doesn’t leave a stone unturned.
The rest of the podcast has the repetitive idea that white parents control what a school does, where a school is built, what a school teaches and who is enrolled in a school.
She interviews a teacher who work at the school for over 40 years. During her tenure at BHS, the school underwent over ten name changes. She worked there when BHS was an elementary school, a middle school, a high school, a boarding school and a liberal arts school.
