Why I believe schools need to be diverse

Gloria Steinem was the founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus and a leader of the American feminist movement for the past sixty years. Fifteen years ago, I went to hear her speak about social movements and her last line stuck with me.

Here’s what she said.

“If you want to have fun and laughter and poetry and music at the end of the revolution, you have to have fun and laughter and poetry on the way.” — Gloria Steinem

Steinem was speaking about “keeping sane” during a revolution. Since I heard her speak, I’ve been fortunate enough to start a public charter school. Today, our school has built a diverse community amidst some of the city’s most segregated schools. When I think about why schools need to be diverse, I think about her advice.

Today, diverse schools are more rare than ever. According to a national study by Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, “the United States public education system is now steadily consolidating a trend toward racial resegregation that began in the late 1980s.”

Meanwhile, multiple generations after Brown v Board of Education, research has shown that the benefits of integrated schools are tangible. A 2015 longitudinal study by the economist Rucker Johnson at the University of California, Berkeley followed black adults who had attended desegregated schools, which were typically better resourced and higher performing. The study showed that these adults, when compared with their counterparts or even their own siblings in segregated schools, were less likely to be poor, suffer health problems and go to jail, and more likely to go to college and reside in integrated neighborhoods. They even lived longer. Critically, these benefits were passed on to their children, while the children of adults who went to segregated schools were more likely to perform poorly in school or drop out. Johnson is interviewed here.

Like fresh air, diversity benefits everyone. Researchers from Columbia Business School found that “When [we are] surrounded by people ‘like ourselves,’ we are easily influenced, more likely to fall for wrong ideas. Diversity prompts better, critical thinking. It contributes to error detection. It keeps us from drifting toward miscalculation.” In other words, diversity is not charity. It creates the best outcomes for everyone.

Personally, I came to this belief slowly. As a white male, I am aware of my privilege and cautious about trying to suggest I know what’s best for everyone. As a principle, I believe people deserve spaces where they can be themselves and the right to self determination. When you surround yourself with others who look like you, it can help to affirm your own identity. Diversity should never imply certain communities are good and others are bad, especially since the state’s chronic disinvestment of schools with mostly Black and Hispanic students — a legacy of redlining — has created a self fulfilling prophecy of “failing schools.”

Still, when I picture the future, I picture a more diverse world.

Like Gloria Steinem, I’ve come to believe we cannot wait to start building that world. We need to build it now — in our schools. I believe we need to build diverse school communities where every child can flourish so our country can become a diverse society where any adult can flourish. In a social movement, the battle prize and battle field are often the same thing.

“If you want to have fun and laughter and poetry and music at the end of the revolution, you have to have fun and laughter and poetry on the way.”