Opportunity Hoarding: How White Parents Maintain Racial Advantage in a Suburban High School

• In Event: Exploring Suburban School Inequality

Abstract

The last three decades have seen substantial increases in the percentage of Asians, Blacks, and Latino/as who live in suburbs and attend suburban schools. The emergence of new patterns of student diversity and racial differences in students’ outcomes has led to greater attention being paid to racial achievement gaps. Efforts to address the black/white achievement gap often focus on some version of the question “what’s going on with the black kids?” However, the gap involves a relationship between racial groups that often advantage whites disadvantage blacks. Here, we examine one suburban school district where residents pride themselves on their liberalism and the racial diversity of their schools but where racial disparities in students’ outcomes remain. We use this case to tackle the difficult question of why racial persists in such schools.
Methods
In this paper, we draw on 170 interviews with parents, students, teachers, and administrators at Riverview High School conducted between 2003 and 2007. Riverview is a comprehensive high school located in a suburb of a major Midwestern city with a racially and socio-economically diverse student population. When out research began, the school served 48% white students, 40% black students, 9.5% Latina/o students, and 3.1% Asian students. Our semi-structured interviews lasted between 45 and 90 minutes. The interviews were professionally transcribed and “cleaned” by members of the research team. We analyzed the data with the assistance of qualitative data analysis programs. We used open coding to identify initial themes and then used more thematic coding.
Theoretical Framework & Results
To understand why race-based educational outcomes in Riverview are so entrenched we instead must ask, “what role do white parents play here?” We show that while white families reported deliberately choosing to live in Riverview because they wanted their children to be educated in a diverse community, these same parents’ concerns about making sure their children have every educational advantage available means they are often deeply ambivalent about (if not explicitly hostility to) changing the rules and practices that benefit their children (and disadvantage others). We show how these parents engage in a process best described as opportunity hoarding – the process through which dominant groups who have control over some good (e.g., education) regulate its circulation thus preventing out-groups from having full access to it (Tilly, 1999; Massey, 2007; Walters 2007). Opportunity hoarding is a powerful framework because it helps us see the unbroken link between whiteness and educational advantage even as its form has evolved.

Scientific significance
As U.S. schools become more racially diverse, we need to more effectively educate all students. By identifying the practices that maintain educational inequality we enhance our ability to challenge these processes. Our research shifts the focus away from black students and parents and toward the important role of other actors (e.g. white parents). It also provides theoretical insights that will help researchers and practitioners understand and challenge the reproductive tendencies of educational institutions.

Authors

• Amanda E. Lewis, University of Illinois at Chicago

• John B. Diamond, University of Wisconsin - Madison