Craft_2024-10-23-Meckler === Doug Dangler: Laura Meckler is national education writer for the Washington Post, where she covers education across the country, as well as national education policy and politics. She has reported on the White House, presidential politics, immigration, and health care for the Wall Street Journal, as well as health and social policy for the Associated Press. Her honor is include a Neiman fellowship and Livingston award for national reporting. And she was part of a team that won the George Polk award for justice reporting. She's also the 2024 winner of the Ohio book award for a book about Ohio or in Ohio, in for her book Dream Town: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity. Welcome to Craft, Laura Meckler. Laura Meckler: Thank you so much for having me. Doug Dangler: , First, how did you find out that you'd won the Ohio Book Award for a book about Ohio or an Ohioan? Laura Meckler: I believe it was an email. So, every so often, in the flood of emails that we get, there's one with some good news. Doug Dangler: Okay. And who was the first person that you told? Laura Meckler: That's a good question. My first job was in Ohio. It was at the Canton Repository. And there was a group of my friends from back when we all worked there, that we were on a chain about this where they were congratulating me for being a finalist and there was some joking around about the whole thing. And I believe I might have responded to that chain to let them know that in fact I had won . Doug Dangler: Okay, excellent. Laura Meckler: I mean my husband I think is kind of sick of hearing about news about this book. Perfectly honest. Although of course he was happy for me as well. Doug Dangler: Right, right. He hasn't started calling it Nightmare Town or anything like that. Laura Meckler: Not yet. No, he actually loves Baker. He loves Cleveland. Whenever we're, when we spent two summers here while I was working on the book, even though we live in Washington DC and, he was looking around at house prices going, you know, it's actually pretty nice here. And I. told him we should come back in February and see how he felt about it then. Doug Dangler: There may be a little bit of a difference at that time of the year. Laura Meckler: Yes. Doug Dangler: So tell me about Dream Town, Shaker Heights, and the Quest for Racial Equity, which carries the description on your website. Can a group of well-intentioned people fulfill the promise of racial integration in America. Laura Meckler: This is expansive history of Shaker Heights and about its long term work relationship with issues of race. It's really told in three acts, if you will: the founding of Shaker Heights as an elite and wealthy community that drew people looking to escape the city, at a time when the black population was rising and where they were really setting Shaker out as a bit of a refuge, for people who were looking for sort of the finer things in life. And then the second act, if you will, is about what happened when the first black families did successfully move into the community and the response, which was really different than what we saw in most of the country. It was really an embracing of integration and a working to stabilize neighborhoods so that they would be, in fact, not resegregate essentially flip from white to black, which is what typically happened. But in fact, share community together and find ways to fight back against some really strong forces of systemic racism in the housing and real estate industries. And also that work on integration in housing was followed by the similar work in the schools, an early voluntary busing plan, absent a court order, just an effort to try to integrate the elementary schools, as part of the Shaker school system, which together with the housing work really built Shaker's national reputation as a place that was taking this stuff on. And then finally, in more recent years, a real grappling with achievement gaps between black and white students in the schools and how they can assure that the school system is really delivering the same high quality education that I received to all students. So that's sort of a big picture overview that the book is really, though, it's not a policy book or a dry history, if you will. It's really told through people. Each chapter is anchored by a different person who is important at that point in the narrative and we learn about the people who really shaped this community. Doug Dangler: And you grew up in Shaker Heights, correct? Laura Meckler: Yes. Doug Dangler: So you interviewed people that I assume you knew one way or another for quite a while. Is that an accurate statement? Laura Meckler: Well, I interviewed more than 250 people total. So some of them were people I knew, but most of them were people who I didn't know before I started working on the book. And I think that that was actually something I was really mindful of. Obviously, as a reporter, it's my job to talk to a wide range of people and that was certainly my goal in any work, but certainly in this work. But it's really important in something like this, especially writing about race as a white, I'm a white myself, to be sure that I'm getting a diversity of views, a diversity of experiences, because this is a diverse community and that's what this book is about. So I was very intentional about making sure that I was talking to people who had a wide range of experiences. Doug Dangler: Right. And what I was interested in on that is, what kinds of internal tension did you experience? Because you might have known these people in one way or another, because race is often a difficult topic. And so you're coming to people you may have known through other means and talking to them about race, which is often, fraught. Laura Meckler: Yeah, you know what? I actually didn't find that part of it fraught, certainly, the people who I know. One thing you should know about Shaker Heights is this is a place that talks about race a lot. And it has been doing that for decades. it's not like an under the radar kind of thing. It's something people talk about. I was just at the high school this morning actually talking to a class of students who had, read the book and were working on projects about the history of Shaker. This is something that is talked about. and it was when I was a kid and is still the case today. So, I mean, it isn't really awkward to talk to people about race. People expect those conversations, I think. Of course, in cases of talking to people who I have a personal relationship with, most of the people who are featured in the book are not people I have a personal relationship with, but it's just always really important to be really clear about when you're taking notes and what might end up in the book and when you're just having a friendly conversation. But most of the people who I knew who are in the book are really people who I kind of have a little bit of one step removed from, or people I'm not particularly close with. Like, for instance, one of my history teachers is featured in the book. But it's not like we're close personal friends. Doug Dangler: Right. You say that there are a lot of discussions of race in Shaker Heights. What are some of the most common kinds of discussions on race that you've had? Laura Meckler: I think discussions I've had, but also that the community has had on its own. I think, one of the discussions that has been true for many years has been the discussion of the achievement gap in the schools and the fact that white students generally perform at a much higher level and have historically been in higher level classes. Now, of course, there are exceptions to these things, but as a general rule, the lower level classes were disproportionately filled with black faces. And that is something that's been discussed repeatedly over, and certainly in the schools context over many years. Doug Dangler: Do you feel like the racial integration has gone well, but the racial academic achievement gap that you describe is something that Seems intractable. What's your take on that now having done the book? Laura Meckler: Is it intractable? Is that the question? Is it going to be with us forever? One of the things that is important to understand about Shaker Heights is that there's also a lot of economic diversity and that, in fact, the economic gap, which is heavily racialized has grown wider over time. In 1990, median black income in the city of Shaker Heights was about 65% of median white income. By 2020, it was 35%. So that's, a product of the black community in Shaker growing less wealthy over time, not individual people, but people leaving who were wealthier and new arrivals who have had less money over time. So what you have is essentially is a school system that is working to educate kids of very different levels of advantage, and that overlays with race. So you have two very combustible things put together, and that's hard. Like, it's really hard. It's much easier to teach a kid who's parents have every advantage, who has gone to science camp from the time they were five years old, who when they're struggling in math, the parents can just, hire a tutor and it's no big deal. All of these things are just a thousand advantages that come with wealth. On the flip side, I was just in this class today, there was a young black woman in the class who said, I would have liked to have taken some higher level classes, but I'm really worried I wouldn't be able to have time to do the homework because her mom or her parents work at night and she has to watch her younger siblings. So it's just a very different levels of advantage and that affects school. So is this intractable? I'm not prepared to say that, but this is hard. Doug Dangler: Right. Yeah. And I didn't mean to imply that I feel that that's the case or anything. It was following on the question, that you had sought to answer at the beginning that was on the website, if Shaker Heights has worked so hard at racial equality, why does a racial academic achievement gap persist? And I think that it makes a great deal of sense to say, well, there's always economics that are in the mix that confound things. Yeah. Does that economic disparity, help to explain the racial academic achievement gap that you see? And that's Laura Meckler: It does. Doug Dangler: Yeah, Laura Meckler: It is a huge factor, but it's not the only factor. And we should keep in mind that race and racism are still part of this equation too. And I will say that I talked to a lot of black students, alumni, and parents. While I was expecting to hear stories of implicit bias and feeling like their kids or they were not treated the same, I was surprised that virtually every single person I talked to had a story along those lines, whether it was having to fight to get their kid into a higher level reading group or one, black alum who went on to be ex extraordinarily successful in life. top universities. He was taking typing during summer school at the high school, and the assistant principal came up to him and said, you know, don't worry about that class that you failed. , This principal or assistant principal just assumed he's a black kid in summer school. He was there because he failed the class and those kinds of things are damaging. So it isn't just economics. It's also race, but the 2 work hand in hand at times as well. These are tough issues and there are things that I think the school district is grappling with. Doug Dangler: You know, it's funny, you say these are tough issues and I. have stumbled over several of my questions, trying to formulate them in ways that are not going to be problematic, I guess, because we're always so concerned about trying to grapple with things like this and be sensitive to a multitude of different kinds of factors. So, yeah, I think it's very difficult, to talk about. you Laura Meckler: know, it's difficult to talk about, but it's also important to talk about, and it is important to be careful with our language and, and there's something I was very careful writing about and consulted with a lot of black friends in writing this book, asking them to read it before it was published, including also paying two different people one from the publisher and one for me to read the book ahead of time to make sure I was communicating the way I wanted to, but it is important I think that it can't just be people of color engaging in these conversations, you know, white people have to be talking about this stuff too, even when it's hard. Doug Dangler: Yeah. Do you feel more or less optimistic about the future of Shaker Heights having done this book. Laura Meckler: It's a really good question Doug Dangler: in racial terms. Laura Meckler: Yes. No, I know what you meant. It's a good question because before I started this book and really it started with a story I wrote for the Washington Post. So let's say before I started the reporting before I came at the subject as a journalist, as opposed to just as a alum or a child of the city. I had a very rosy view about the whole thing. I was pretty optimistic. I felt like this is a place that was special. This is a place that had done things that other places have not. And I felt really good about it. So I was in a pretty good place. And now I know a lot more. It isn't all a rosy story. There are mixed motives. There are not heroes and villains. There are just like people making mistakes and trying hard. And that's really what the book is about. This is not five easy steps to racial equity. it's nothing like that. It's hard work. And I learned a lot. For example, when the first school busing plan was adopted in 1970, my mom had told me, that she spoke out in favor of it, and I remember thinking, , well, what is that? That doesn't sound like a big deal to me. I mean, wasn't everyone in favor of it? And I learned, from looking and seeing the archives and seeing the letters, no, everyone was not in favor of it. There was some real ugliness. So, I know a lot more now, and it was hard. And I grappled with that question. Am I still optimistic about this place? And on some level, you might come away from this work and say, you know what, they've tried for a long time and not succeeded. So, maybe it's time for the participation trophy. But honestly, that is not how I felt. I actually felt still enormously proud to be from this community, a place that is still trying. And even if they have not succeeded in everything that they want to do, the fact that, you know, 70 something years after the first black families moved into this community, it is still racially diverse. The school district has economic and racial diversity, which is a lot more than you can say for much of the country. So I am optimistic. I'm still feel good about it. But it's not a rosy optimism. It's not a blind faith. It's an informed. optimism, and it's one, that is hard earned. Doug Dangler: Laura Meckler, thank you very much for talking to me today. And, congratulations again on winning the Ohio Book Award for a book about Ohio or an Ohioan for Dreamtown: Shaker Heights and the Quest for Racial Equity. Laura Meckler: Thank you so much for having me.