Back in 2016, The New York Times Magazine columnist Nikole Hannah-Jones published a landmark essay on modern-day school segregation detailing her and her husband’s decision to send their daughter, Najya, to P.S. 307, a majority-Black, underperforming low-income school located in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Ten years later, she wrote a follow-up: “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” In the new essay, Hannah-Jones revisits their principled decision, details the positive and negative impacts, and grapples with her daughter’s subsequent dissatisfaction with their choice. Just like in 2016, the new essay has elicited a strong reaction. Some have excoriated Hannah-Jones for her parenting choices, while others have sympathized with the tough decisions that parents, particularly parents of color, have to make within limited and unequal school systems.

In the new episode of This American Life, reporter Chana Joffe-Walt spoke with Hannah-Jones and Najya, who is now 16, about their experiences and disagreements. Here are some of the most notable moments.

The good things about P.S. 307

As Hannah-Jones recounted her family’s experience at the Brooklyn elementary school, she mentioned the positives of her daughter’s early years at the institution — pointing to the diversity of the school body and its educators that provided a welcoming community for young Black children like Najya.

“She got to spend her first six years of education in a school where most of the kids look like her. She had a Chinese American educator. She had incredible Black educators. She had Caribbean educators. Amazing Black History Month celebrations,” she said.

“They used to have the students do these self-portraits,” continued Hannah-Jones. “And she would always — when she was young — make herself a dark-skinned Black woman, which I was like, Yes, so you are, as a Black girl, seeing yourself in that lens and not in the lens of this outside world that is saying that that’s not beautiful or that’s not something to aspire to.” And so, in her formative years, she didn’t have that experience that I had of feeling less than other kids, of feeling like, is there something wrong with Black people, feeling different. She didn’t have that.”

But Najya doesn’t remember all that much from elementary school

For the first time, Najya Hannah-Jones was able to give her own perspective on what life was like for her at P.S. 307.

“It was just regular. It was fine,” she said.

“Yeah, I don’t really remember a lot from elementary,” she continued. “I was really into art. I liked to draw a lot. I was — yeah, I was loud. I still am chatty.”

When Joffe-Walt asked if she ever thought about why she was attending that school, Najya said it never crossed her mind. “No. It was just a school that she picked for me. I didn’t really care about it. I wasn’t ever thinking about stuff like that,” she said.

“It didn’t feel........

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