New York State Public Schools have a diversity problem. We all know it. And we haven’t done enough to set things right.

A recent New York Times report found specialized New York City academic institutions admitting shockingly low numbers of African American applicants due to an arbitrary high-stakes testing acceptance threshold. State legislators appear unlikely to institute reforms any time soon.

Venture eastward through Brooklyn and Queens, and you’ll reach Nassau County, Long Island, where nationally renowned public schools face that same diversity crisis. There it isn’t some exam keeping people of color out. It is deep-rooted residential segregation.

I grew up in Syosset, New York, an upper-middle-class suburb near Long Island’s north shore. There used to be potato farms sprawling across town. Now it’s mostly parking lots and split-level homes.

Syosset Central School District set me up for success. It set my friends up for success. It sets white and Asian-American boys and girls up for success. And that’s a wonderful thing. But why did I never consider who we were leaving behind?

I wasn’t naïve. I certainly wasn’t dumb. I recognized that my hometown wasn’t racially diverse. It didn’t bother me then, but it does bother me now.

My grandmother shares something with my brother and me seemingly every time we get together — 

If every person had to deposit what troubles them most in a fountain and we’d all get a glimpse of each other’s anxieties, ailments and hurt, we’d each snatch back our own troubles in an instant.

I’ve retained that lesson. I treasure it. It brings me pride to know I’ll pass it on to my children. And I’ll never truly appreciate its full power.

That’s because I’m privileged. My mother and my father chose to settle down in a community acclaimed for its schools. It just so happened to be white.

They weren’t ashamed when they told me, flat out, that racial diversity didn’t matter much to them when deciding where to settle. And so I started down a dangerous track of hypotheticals.

What if my father didn’t encounter any menorahs lining our block’s windowsills when they toured our neighborhood? He mentioned how comforted he felt by seeing them, but said it wouldn’t have been a deal-breaker.

Rattling off my tongue came one bonkers scenario after another. And then an almost rhetorical one: what if our community happened to be majority black? He paused. And I paused. And I interrupted, because why press a question that needn’t be asked? There doesn’t exist a top-achieving public school district on Long Island that’s mostly black.

That pipedream, fantasy, whatever-you-want-to-call-it can’t be sought after because it doesn’t exist.

As I recall, in my Syosset High School graduating class, maybe six of my six hundred classmates were black.

The University of California Civil Rights Project has extensively researched the public school diversity problem in New York. By synthesizing sixty years of neighborhood and performance data, program director Gary Orfield and researcher John Kucsera have determined New York schools to be the least diverse in the country.

Long Island has seen concentrated poverty persist in communities of color. Racial isolation has gotten worse over the last two decades. And here’s the kicker: most black and Latino students attend schools in majority-minority neighborhoods.

National publications often shine a spotlight on Long Island for its astonishing suburban segregation. Garden City and Hempstead are adjacent villages. Garden City has an average income of $150,000 and is 88% white. Hempstead has an average income of $52,000 and is 92% black.

My mother was always able to pick me up from school. There was always a hot meal on my kitchen table and warm sheets to lay over my sleeping body.

I lived and continue to live a blessed existence. The difference wasn’t a test score. It was where I grew up.

You can blame zoning or redlining, whatever law or practice you please. But that won’t change the fundamental and fixed inequality that leads a white boy like me to success while black boys equally as intelligent and equally as creative get looked over.

So will our state make a change? Will you push our state to make a change?