I’m finally getting around to reading this terrific but gut-wrenching essay by Nikole Hannah-Jones, published last week in The New York Times Magazine. (Gift link.)

Hannah-Jones sent her daughter, Najya, to “a segregated, high-poverty school” in an effort to upend the status quo that often resulted in Black students attending underfunded schools. Najya eventually challenged her mom on that decision.

Glancing between her and the road, I told her everything that I had said a hundred times on stages, in interviews, in discussions since I had made her a symbol of how the choices we make can help sustain — or dismantle — educational inequality. I talked about the deep inequality in New York’s schools and how, like those Black families who came before us, we had an obligation to be part of the struggle of our larger community. Even if her schools were not academically the strongest, I explained, her father and I knew that we could provide for her tutoring and any other assistance to make up for what her school may have lacked.

But my child just shook her head, her face a mask of disbelief, and something else: betrayal.

“So you had money to send me to one of the best schools, and you chose not to?” she said, hurling her words. “Because other kids are disadvantaged, you didn’t want to put me in a great school?”

As a product of the New York public school system who did well in middle school and well enough in high school, I commiserate with both the author and her daughter. My mom made a different decision for me, first enrolling me in a private middle school the year I moved to America, then transferring me to a public intermediate school. Then, rather than having me attend the nearby (but academically weak) high schools, my mom insisted I apply to more academically challenging—and racially and economically integrated—schools. I eventually attended a well-regarded public high school that required interviews and high academic potential (and an interest in the medical sciences) to get in.

My private and intermediate schools were mostly Black, in mostly lower-middle-class Black neighborhoods that were walking distance from home, while my high school was a fully integrated “magnet” school an hour (and two buses) away in a mostly upper-middle-class white neighborhood.

If I had a kid, I’m not sure which decision I’d make. On the one hand, I’d want my child to have the best opportunities available to them, academically, socially, and culturally. On the other, I would not want them growing up in a bubble of privilege, wealth, racial isolation, and perceived superiority.

As I sit here today, I’m not sure which path I’d choose. Each of my school experiences was extremely valuable, but I’m confident that had I continued the expected path and attended my neighborhood high school, my life would have gone very differently: my magnet high school was one of the first in Brooklyn to have a computer science program.

I would want the same for my child. Yet I recognize that an “I got mine, and so will my kid” attitude leaves behind a population of children who could otherwise benefit from my having gotten mine. Hannah-Jones, again:

We desire to be let off the hook by these realities — that we tried and we failed; by the shamble of decades of halfhearted efforts; by how insoluble it is to achieve equality in a nation with our history. Instead of fortifying our determination to fight for integration, we have instead chosen to succumb to a collective apathy in the face of a system so devastatingly unequal that it puts at odds trying to be a good person with trying to be a good parent.

But for all of our justifications, including mine, an undeniable verity remains. As long as we continue to rescue our own children from the failing schools where we allow other people’s children to languish simply because those children have been born Black and poor in a nation of racism and riches, there is no absolution here. Not for me. Not for you. Not for any of us.

Set aside some time to read this (and some more for the This American Life episode #898, “An Argument”—Overcast, Apple Podcasts).