Jelani Cobb’s Class Notes was a very insightful read for me because as a girl born and raised in Brooklyn, I’ve only gone to Queens only a handful of times in my life and I didn’t know much about what it was like to go to school there. However, as I was reading about Jamaica High School, it reminded me about about my own high school, Midwood High School. Cobb had said “Jamaica’s population reflected the demographic tides in Queens; its classrooms were laboratories for the shaping of better Americans.” Midwood was also known for its diversity and how it reflected the neighborhoods around it. With almost 33% of the student population identifying as Asian and another 33% identifying as African American, the majority of the students in my school were from minority and immigrant families, all looking for a good education and to enter college after graduation. It was great to read about how Jamaica was at the forefront of proper representation of the neighborhoods around it, but it’s sad to hear it having to close after such a remarkable legacy.
Though I never knew the specific fact that New York has the most segregated school system in the country, it’s not a surprising fact. Although my high school was diverse in its student makeup, it was as if there were two separate schools in one building. As mentioned before, my previous high school has a large African American student population, however, I hardly interacted with that “part of the school.” Throughout my four year, I almost never had class with many African American students present. We all hung out in different places with hardly ever being able to interact with one another inside and we never really made an attempt to interact with each other outside of school unless there was the need to. I suppose in its own subtle way, we, the students segregated ourselves, but the school played a part in it as well.