Category: Daily Life

First Place

Demetrius Freeman / Freelance
“Little Sun Girls”

Second Place

Qiang Li / Freelance
“Orphan Monks in Myanmar”

Third Place

Søren Bidstrup / Berlingske
“USA 6”

Award of Excellence

Stephanie Keith / Reuters
“Sacred Lakota Ride”

Award of Excellence

Maya Alleruzzo / Associated Press
“Message from Dad”

Award of Excellence

Amnon Gutman / Freelance
“To Be At Peace”

First Place

“Little Sun Girls”

BROOKLYN NY. — DECEMBER 14 2018: Students at the Little Sun People Private Preschool do the hair of dolls during play time in Brooklyn, New York.

Though New York City has tried to desegregate its schools since the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the school system is now one of the most segregated in the nation. But rather than pushing for integration, some black parents in Bedford-Stuyvesant are choosing an alternative: schools explicitly designed for black children.

Afrocentric schools have been championed by black educators who had traumatic experiences with integration as far back as the 1960s and by young black families who say they recently experienced coded racism and marginalization in integrated schools. Both groups have been disappointed by decades of efforts to address inequities in America's largest school system.

“Some of us are pro-integration, some of us are anti- and others are ambivalent,” said Lurie Daniel Favors, a member of Parenting While Black, a newly formed group of Brooklyn parents. “Even if integrated education worked perfectly — and our society spent the past 60-plus years trying — it's still not giving black children the kind of education necessary to create the solutions our communities need.”