Black parents make expensive choices and answer impossible questions when it comes to educating their children. One such question, “In what ways will you sacrifice your child?” forms the predicate for most every question Black parent will answer. Not if, but how?

Choose the “best” school and leave the child vulnerable not only to the viciousness of children taught to believe in their superiority or send the child to an underfunded public school and sacrifice academic rigor and personal safety.

Nikole Hannah-Jones laid out this challenge in a recent essay about her family’s choice to send her daughter to a public school, only to have her daughter challenge that choice years later. A vulnerable Hannah-Jones pummels herself for that decision, but either choice had harmful consequences for her daughter.

There really wasn’t a “right” decision.

Her essay, “In Fighting for Every Black Child, Did I Betray My Own?” bookends a 2016 essay, “Choosing a School for My Daughter in a Segregated City.” The Pulitzer-Prize winning author described the decision as a moral stand against inequality.

Having railed against such inequality, Hannah-Jones seemingly could not abandon the public schools and the Black students trapped there by enrolling her child in a private, PWI (predominately white institution).

Her daughter, Najya Hannah-Jones, sought a better school and found herself initially behind her peers despite years of high grades in public school. She felt as though her mother had sacrificed her education on an altar of racial solidarity.

If Najya’s anything like her mom, she’s brilliant. But she may not fully understand the painful “why” behind her parents’ decision. She may not know what she doesn’t know about insidious structural racism.

We know for example that funding tends to follow white children. So Black parents, who also want the best for their children, try to gain entry to those schools, and some of those parents have found themselves prosecuted for dreaming big for their children. The harshness of those penalties speak to the intentional separation of privilege and resources inherent in how American communities fund schools.

At a 60th anniversary symposium about the historic Brown v. Board decision, which was intended to end segregation in schools, the former head of the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund said school integration had regressed, leaving some districts as separate as they were before Brown.

That’s the real issue: Wide swaths of Americans don’t want integrated schools, and they elect legislators who have waged a pernicious campaign of public-school disinvestment.

The Wichita school district, my childhood district, has proposed a bond issue to keep pace with lavish suburban facilities. As a columnist at The Wichita Eagle, I fought for a 2008 bond issue. At the time, many schools there still lacked air conditioning.

For context, a Texas judge recently ordered the prison system to air condition all its prisons by Dec. 31, 2029. If the bond doesn’t pass, just know that some Wichita students won’t enjoy perks that Texas prisoners will soon enjoy.

The hostility aimed at Black students generally — in public or private school — remains a feature in schools, like the trauma they endure while matriculating. A posted warning in my grade school gym read, “Black marks are ugly.” It was meant to discourage heel marks, but I can remember a couple of students pointing at the sign, then at me, and then giggling.

As discrimination goes, that wasn’t horrible, but many aren’t so lucky.

I once reported about a dark-complected middle school student whose classmates and teacher referred to him as “dark man,” and “dark Vader.” Percy, the wounded child, wouldn’t fight back. He’d absorb what he could, then lay his head on his desk and cry.

Najya likely overlooked this probability in her criticism of her parents’ decision.

The Supreme Court struck down school segregation by acknowledging its inherent harm to Black children. It didn’t change many hearts, though. White families fled to all-white, suburban Christian schools.

This surely constituted part of the calculus Nikole Hannah-Jones used in decision-making. Many Black people have similar stories, not just about school, but about workplaces, social clubs and more. Race was an organizing principle for this nation, regardless of what U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts believes.

Universities may look favorably at students graduating from such institutions, but the question remains: How much harm will Black students have to endure while attending a “better” school?

Will your Black child get leadership opportunities? Will teachers ignore your child’s raised hand in class? Will your child see themselves in literary or historical content? Will an instructor or administrator feel threatened by braided or natural hair?

How often have stories surfaced about schools suspending Black students or denying them diplomas because some ignorant administrator didn’t understand the cultural significance of braided or natural hair?

Entrusting a Black child to such institutions can prove a pyrrhic victory — a win that comes at too high a cost. This is the educational equivalent of “the talk” Black parents have with teenagers learning to navigate being stopped by police.

Be careful about judging Nikole Hannah-Jones. If you’re celebrating her moment of vulnerable honesty, it’s likely people like you who created this social-educational Hobson’s choice in the first place.

To Black parents, be careful about this decision.

Private school tuition might be way more costly to your child than you think.

Mark McCormick is the former executive director of the Kansas African American Museum, a member of the Kansas African American Affairs Commission and former deputy executive director at the ACLU of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.