OP-ED: Ms. Susan’s house and what Black children deserve

Last month, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones published a raw, unguarded essay in the New York Times Magazine about the educational choices she and her husband made for their daughter, Najya. They had the resources, status, and time to choose differently, but still sent her to a mostly low-income Black school. I kept comparing Nikole’s story to my own and to the long educational road ahead for my son. I keep coming back to one line: As long as we rescue our own children from schools where we let other people’s children languish, she writes, there is “no absolution here.” Reading Nikole’s piece made me realize that the question of what we owe our community starts long before kindergarten. It starts at the very foundation of a child’s education, and in Harlem, that foundation is at risk. Ms. Susan has lived in Harlem and taught its children for more than 40 years.

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