Loading...

What’s Race Got To Do With It?

How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality, Second Edition

by Edwin Mayorga (Volume editor) Ujju Aggarwal (Volume editor) Bree Picower (Volume editor)
©2020 Textbook XIV, 216 Pages

Summary

The first edition of What’s Race Got to Do With It (2015) addressed a moment when those working on the ground—activists, educators, young people, and families—were trying to understand and fight back against neoliberal education reforms (e.g., high stakes testing, school closings, and charter schools), while uncovering what race had to do with it all in the context of a supposedly post-racial United States. In the years since, the steady and grounded work of social movements has increased the visibility and critique of privatization, market-based reforms, and segregation; demonstrating the interlocking connections between racism and capitalism. In this period we have also seen an intensified attack on public education (alongside other public infrastructures) and a return to a more overt "racism as we knew it." This new edition of What’s Race continues the examination of neoliberal education reforms as they are being rolled back (or reworked) to track the changes and continuities of recent years—revealing the ways in which market-driven education reforms work with and through race—and share grassroots stories of resistance to these reforms. It is hoped that this new edition will continue to sharpen readers’ analyses concerning what we are working to defend and what we are working to transform, and provides a guide to action that emboldens the collective struggle for justice.

Table Of Contents

  • Cover
  • Title
  • Copyright
  • About the author
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited
  • Contents
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction to the Second Edition (Edwin Mayorga / Ujju Aggarwal / Bree Picower)
  • Chapter One: High-Stakes Testing: A Tool for White Supremacy for Over 100 Years (Wayne Au)
  • Chapter Two: Data Analytics: Population Racism and the Dangers of “Objective” Educational Data (Edwin Mayorga / Tom Liam Lynch)
  • Chapter Three: Keys to the Schoolhouse: Black Teachers, Education Reform and the Growing Teacher Rebellion (Brian Jones)
  • Chapter Four: School Choice: Raced Rights and Neoliberal Restructuring (Ujju Aggarwal)
  • Chapter Five: Mayoral Control: Reform, Whiteness and Critical Race Analysis of Neoliberal Educational Policy (David Stovall)
  • Chapter Six: School Closings: Racial Capitalism, State Violence and Resistance (Pauline Lipman)
  • Chapter Seven: Charter Schools: Demystifying Whiteness in a Market of “No Excuses” Charter Schools (Terrenda White)
  • Chapter Eight: Philanthrocapitalism: Race, Class and the Nonprofit Industrial Complex in a New York City School (Amy Brown)
  • Afterword: A Letter to the Resistance (Rick / William Ayers)
  • About the Editors
  • About the Contributors
  • Index
  • Series index

cover

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Control Number: 2019053321

About the author

Edwin Mayorga is Assistant Professor of Educational Studies and Latin American/Latinx Studies at Swarthmore College. He is completing his first book, Dominance and Sobrevivencia: The Barrio and Latinx Education in the Midst of Racial Capitalist Urbanism.

Ujju Aggarwal is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School. She is completing her first book, The Color of Choice: Raced Rights and the Structure of Citizenship in Education, a historically informed ethnography of choice as it emerged in the post-Civil Rights period in the United States.

Bree Picower is Associate Professor at Montclair State University. She is the author of Practice What You Teach: Social Justice Education in the Classroom and the Streets and co-editor of Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice.

About the book

The first edition of What’s Race Got to Do With It (2015) addressed a moment when those working on the ground—activists, educators, young people, and families—were trying to understand and fight back against neoliberal education reforms (e.g., high stakes testing, school closings, and charter schools), while uncovering what race had to do with it all in the context of a supposedly post-racial United States. In the years since, the steady and grounded work of social movements has increased the visibility and critique of privatization, market-based reforms, and segregation; demonstrating the interlocking connections between racism and capitalism. In this period we have also seen an intensified attack on public education (alongside other public infrastructures) and a return to a more overt “racism as we knew it.” This new edition of What’s Race continues the examination of neoliberal education reforms as they are being rolled back (or reworked) to track the changes and continuities of recent years—revealing the ways in which market-driven education reforms work with and through race—and share grassroots stories of resistance to these reforms. It is hoped that this new edition will continue to sharpen readers’ analyses concerning what we are working to defend and what we are working to transform, and provides a guide to action that emboldens the collective struggle for justice.

“The editors of What’s Race Got To Do With It understood the urgent need for this second edition. They help us make sense of the perils and possibilities of this moment and lay out an essential race-class analysis so we might understand and attack the many-headed hydra of educational injustice today.”—Jeanne Theoharis, Distinguished Professor, Brooklyn College of CUNY; Author, A More Beautiful and Terrible History: The Uses and Misuses of Civil Rights History

“The first edition of What’s Race Got To Do With It was critical in orienting educators and activists in the struggle against institutional racism in our schools in an era largely marked by ‘colorblind’ racism. Now, with a white supremacist in the White House, the editors have thoroughly updated the book to analyze the open attack on Black and Brown students and equip antiracists to fight back by joining the social movements—test resistance, Black Lives Matter at School, community schools, educator strikes, and others—that are turning our schools into sites of resistance.”—Jesse Hagopian, Ethnic Studies Teacher; Editor of, Teaching for Black Lives

This eBook can be cited

This edition of the eBook can be cited. To enable this we have marked the start and end of a page. In cases where a word straddles a page break, the marker is placed inside the word at exactly the same position as in the physical book. This means that occasionally a word might be bifurcated by this marker.

←viii | ix→

 

Acknowledgments

This book was born of many years of political struggle, political analysis and teaching for social justice. We have all been members of different educational justice organizations for the past two decades and the shared organizing work, analysis development and relationships that we have been part of are central to who we have become as scholar activists. We want to recognize New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCoRE), the Center for Immigrant Families (CIF), the Parent Leadership Project (PLP), and the national Teacher Activist Groups (TAG) network that includes the Association of Raza Educators, San Diego/Oakland; Education for Liberation Network; Educators’ Network for Social Justice, Milwaukee; The People’s Education Movement, Los Angeles and Oakland; Teacher Action Group, Philadelphia; Teacher Activist Group, Boston; and Teachers for Social Justice, Chicago. It is through these networks that we support each other in the struggle against the racist, neoliberal assault on schools, educators, and youth, in our local communities and across the country. We would additionally like to thank, Grace Ahn, Tania Aparicio, Erin Baugher, and Andrea Wesol for their support in the process of writing this book.

Edwin’s Acknowledgments

We are in a moment where, as author Sandra Cisneros says, “the world we live in is a house on fire and the people we love are burning.” The people I love are ←ix | x→whom I struggle for, and whom I struggle alongside. It’s what makes this struggle a beautiful one, and for that I am so very thankful. That love begins with my spouse, Jen, and our sons, Teo and Julian. Their own commitments to justice and their willingness to endure the ridiculousness of my life show the kind of loving people they are. The world and I are so blessed with your presence. I love you all.

I also want to acknowledge the teachers that have shaped my life as an educator-scholar-activist. Robyn Ulzheimer and colleagues at Public Schools 87M and 165M were there to support me as I stumbled around the work of teaching for social justice in the elementary school classroom. I want to acknowledge and thank Jean Anyon, Michelle Fine, Pedro Pedraza, Ofelia Garcia, Steve Brier, Suzanne Carothers, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore, whose scholarship and politics not only influenced my thinking but also gave me a powerful road map to living my own life as a scholar activist. I wanted to also send a special shoutout to Carmen Mercado, Wendy Luttrell, and Angela Valenzuela, for being steady and kind supporters that I have learned so much from over the years.

I want send a lot of love to my Swarthmore College/Philadelphia communities. I would like to thank my colleagues at Swarthmore College, including Elaine Allard, Diane Anderson, Jennifer Bradley, Margie Linn, Roseann Liu, Joseph Nelson, Ann Renninger, and Lisa Smulyan; and our wonderful department staff Catherine Dunn, Ruthanne Krause, and Kae Kalwick. Your generosity of spirit pushes me to be a better scholar and teacher, and make it such a pleasure to come to work every day. The educators, parents, scholars, and youth of Philadelphia! While NYC will forever be in my heart, the efforts the good folk of Philly have put in to actualizing radical possibilities are truly incredible. I am thrilled to even be in conversation with each and every one of you. I specifically want to recognize Tamara Anderson, Kendra Brooks, Shira Cohen, Kelley Collings, Jerusha Conner, Barbara Ferman, Hanako Franz, Mariko Franz, Caitlin Fritz, Kristen Goessling, Helen Gym, Ismael Jimenez, Pep Marie, Stacy Nzinga, Christopher Rogers, Sonia Rosen, Max Rosen-Long, Zakiya Royster-Morris, Shivaani Selvaraj, Julien Terrell, Akanke Washington, Anissa Weinraub, and Chanelle Wilson.

Details

Pages
XIV, 216
Year
2020
ISBN (PDF)
9781433173868
ISBN (ePUB)
9781433173875
ISBN (MOBI)
9781433173882
ISBN (Softcover)
9781433134968
DOI
10.3726/b16128
Language
English
Publication date
2020 (April)
Published
New York, Bern, Berlin, Bruxelles, Oxford, Wien, 2020. XIV, 216 pp.

Biographical notes

Edwin Mayorga (Volume editor) Ujju Aggarwal (Volume editor) Bree Picower (Volume editor)

Edwin Mayorga is Assistant Professor of Educational Studies and Latin American/Latinx Studies at Swarthmore College. He is completing his first book, Dominance and Sobrevivencia: The Barrio and Latinx Education in the Midst of Racial Capitalist Urbanism. Ujju Aggarwal is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The New School. She is completing her first book, The Color of Choice: Raced Rights and the Structure of Citizenship in Education, a historically informed ethnography of choice as it emerged in the post-Civil Rights period in the United States. Bree Picower is Associate Professor at Montclair State University. She is the author of Practice What You Teach: Social Justice Education in the Classroom and the Streets and co-editor of Confronting Racism in Teacher Education: Counternarratives of Critical Practice.

Previous

Title: What’s Race Got To Do With It?
book preview page numper 1
book preview page numper 2
book preview page numper 3
book preview page numper 4
book preview page numper 5
book preview page numper 6
book preview page numper 7
book preview page numper 8
book preview page numper 9
book preview page numper 10
book preview page numper 11
book preview page numper 12
book preview page numper 13
book preview page numper 14
book preview page numper 15
book preview page numper 16
book preview page numper 17
book preview page numper 18
book preview page numper 19
book preview page numper 20
book preview page numper 21
book preview page numper 22
book preview page numper 23
book preview page numper 24
book preview page numper 25
book preview page numper 26
book preview page numper 27
book preview page numper 28
book preview page numper 29
book preview page numper 30
book preview page numper 31
book preview page numper 32
book preview page numper 33
book preview page numper 34
book preview page numper 35
book preview page numper 36
book preview page numper 37
book preview page numper 38
book preview page numper 39
book preview page numper 40
232 pages