Your Children are Very Greatly in Danger by Justin Murphy
In Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger, the veteran journalist Justin Murphy makes the compelling argument that the educational disparities in Rochester, New York, are the result of historical and present-day racial segregation. Education reform alone will never be the full solution; to resolve racial inequity, cities such as Rochester must first dismantle segregation.
Drawing on never-before-seen archival documents as well as scores of new interviews, Murphy shows how discriminatory public policy and personal prejudice combined to create the racially segregated education system that exists in the Rochester area today. Alongside this dismal history, Murphy recounts the courageous fight for integration and equality, from the advocacy of Frederick Douglass in the 1850s to a countywide student coalition inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement in the 2010s.
This grinding antagonism, featuring numerous failed efforts to uphold the promise of Brown v. Board of Education, underlines that desegregation and integration offer the greatest opportunity to improve educational and economic outcomes for children of color in the United States. To date, that opportunity has been lost in Rochester, and persistent poor academic outcomes have been one terrible result.
Your Children Are Very Greatly in Danger is a history of Rochester with clear relevance for today. The struggle for equity in Rochester, like in many northern cities, shows how the burden of history lies on the present. A better future for these cities requires grappling with their troubled pasts. Murphy's account is a necessary contribution to twenty-first-century Rochester.
https://books.google.com/books/about/Your_Children_Are_Very_Greatly_in_Danger.html?id=IeBbzgEACAAJ&source=kp_book_description
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1rQr2JwxQqX_4u39zknguBJ43FaBi0YbAiHfdgkx4RpU/edit#slide=id.p
Connections - interview with Justin Murphy
https://justinmurphywriter.com/resources/
I really enjoyed this book. I liked reading about Rochester's history albeit not exactly positive. But it gave me perspective and I learned a lot. I had no idea Rochester's story of race has been being written since the early 19th century and I better understand how segregation occurred here over time.
ReplyDeleteBecause I teach 8th Grade ELA, I don't recommend this book for my grade level. I think this would be better suited for junior or senior classes.
In terms of using this text as a resource, I would not use this in tenth grade, besides as a means to share background information and connect any anchor texts to the history of Rochester.
ReplyDeleteI believe that this book is not only important to read in general as a Rochester Native, but especially as an RCSD teacher. I enjoyed at the beginning of book the connection to James Baldwin, in addition to the title of the book. Baldwin, places a great stress on teachers to make a difference in students' lives and although I believe in making a difference as well, there is only one step in Murphy's book that looks directly at teachers.
I think it is important for actionable steps to be identified in a book like this, because without them, all of the history can seem overwhelming to fix.
From Renee Dastyck
ReplyDeleteI was really shocked when reading “Your Children are Very Greatly in Danger”. I had a little understanding of the history of Rochester. The book was an eye opener to the actual history of Rochester. Growing up in a surrounding suburb I never really knew what was happening until I became a teacher in the district. It saddens me that this has been going on for so long and nothing seems to be changing.