Abstract
This article documents minority youth sense-making around the concept of diversity and the founding of a youth activist group that seeks spaces for policy thinking and protesting against racial inequalities in selective enrollment schools. Utilizing the sociological theory of racial formation and the concept of racial projects (Omi and Winant in Racial formation in the United States, 3rd edn, Routledge, New York, 2014), this article draws on data from a critical ethnography. The author argues that youth activists offer a critical perspective for researchers and policy-makers in the face of neoliberal school choice policy. Findings reveal that youth activists understand a lack of diversity as racial imbalance in high status schools, and that they expose structural inequalities that are embedded in policy structures and processes such as selective enrollment high schools. Implications are discussed to show how re-conceptualizing policy as a racial formation can bring structural and institutional racist practices into view in hopes of transforming district policies to offer access to high quality schools for all students.
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Notes
All names in this article are pseudonyms.
For the 2015–2016 academic year, the district contained approximately 49,000 students. White students make up approximately 45% of the district while African American students make up 46%, and yet Brownview Magnet contains less than one percent of African American students. This contextual information shows the disproportionate number of white students at the highest status school in the district.
As will be discussed, the exclusionary nature of the selective enrollment schools in Brownview relate to the fact that language learners, students with special needs, and students from racial minority backgrounds are not reflected in the student body. That said, this article focuses on the lack of racial diversity because that is how youth made sense of diversity in the study.
The examination of race as it relates to education policy, specifically neoliberal choice policy, and its effects on youth and communities of color is in need of critical inquiry. For more, see a recent issue in Educational Policy edited by Dumas et al. (2016) for this important and growing area of study.
By “minoritized,” I draw from Gutierrez and Rogoff’s (2003) work that posits that the practice of labeling students’ cultural differences with individual traits such as being “low income,” “at risk,” or any “othering” language is part of the institutional ascription process of identity that allows for hierarchies in schools and society (Gutierrez and Rogoff 2003). This ascription process positions young people as outside the educational policy-making process and reproduces inequality in schools and society.
Each time I refer to school choice or the word choice in this article, I do so skeptically because of the body of literature that argues school choice policy has detrimental effects on low income communities of color, especially when families lack social and cultural capital (Lareau 2003) or access to knowledge and resources to gain admissions to selective enrollment schools. In fact, “choice” policy becomes a way to perpetuate inequality (Condliffe et al. 2015; Cucchiara 2013; Lareau and Goyette 2014; Orfield and Frankenberg 2013; Pattillo 2015; Sattin-Bajaj 2014).
Omi and Winant (2014) provide other examples of code words such as “get tough on crime,” or “welfare handouts” to argue that code words function to “race-bait less explicitly while making full use of traditional stereotypes” (p. 218).
The youth learned from being students at this selective enrollment school and from the news after the watermelon incident that the coach of the football team was removed. After backlash in the community and against the board, the (white male) coach was reinstated to his position at the local selective enrollment school and instead the school board superintendent (a female African American) resigned. The community protested at what they perceived to be a forced resignation of the superintendent because she had attempted to fight on behalf of the racial minorities and she called attention to the racial undertones of the “watermelon incident,” and the subsequent discovery of the lack of diversity at Brownview Magnet. The board accepted her resignation to the dismay of many community members. The local newspaper reported that at the board meeting when they accepted the superintendent’s resignation community members were chanting, “Down with the racists,” and “See you at the polls,” referring to the election of the school board.
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Acknowledgement
The author wishes to thank the youth in this study for their candid reflections regarding the sensitive issues, especially Charlie and Amelia. Their efforts were powerful during a difficult time in the community and the continued struggle against racial inequity. The author also wishes to thank Joy Howard and Keonya Booker for their constructive and thoughtful feedback on early drafts of this manuscript. The author also wishes to thank Ian O’Byrne and Kyra Koehler for their assistance in the final stages of preparation.
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Rodriguez, S. “My Eyes Were Opened to the Lack of Diversity in Our Best Schools”: Re-Conceptualizing Competitive School Choice Policy as a Racial Formation. Urban Rev 49, 529–550 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-017-0415-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-017-0415-z