Continuing Conversations on Race and White Privilege: Educational Equity in New Jersey and Beyond

 New Jersey is the sixth most segregated state for Black students and seventh for Latinx students, which may surprise those who view the state as having excellent public schools. This workshop uses the Emmy-nominated short film The Third Rail, which explores the 2018 Latino Action Network v. State of New Jersey lawsuit challenging ongoing segregation, as a foundation for further discussion.

We’ll look at our own experiences, backgrounds, and the history that shapes today’s realities. Together, we’ll consider what makes a school “good” and who gains from those ideas. Participants will discuss how communities can work together across differences, even when facing hard truths about complicity, privilege, and what real accountability means.

Antika Singh is a second-generation South Asian American educator and founder of Empowered Voices. She holds an MSEd. from Bank Street College of Education and spent 12 years teaching history in independent schools, centering marginalized voices and challenging traditional pedagogy. Having attended both NYC private schools and New Jersey public schools, she combines lived experience with deep curricular and instructional expertise. Through Empowered Voices, Antika provides educational consulting services, including curriculum development, professional development, youth programming, and more. Recent projects include supporting NYC Department of Education’s Office of Community Schools and developing “Inclusive Perspectives for Social Studies” for Milwaukee Public Schools, a guide that identifies omitted histories in each chapter of a standard textbook. Antika is committed to transforming Social Studies curriculum—particularly in New Jersey—to ensure fuller, more complex histories are told. She recently earned a New York Emmy nomination for co-producing a short film on educational equity in NJ.

This Continuing Conversation is co-sponsored by The E Pluribus Unum Project.

To register for this free Zoom program click here.