The "Neoliberalizing of Race"? Youths' Experiences of School Choice in a Postcolonial City

• In Event: 44.036 - Neoliberalism, Racism, and School Choice Policy in South Africa, Canada, and the United States

Abstract

Objective:
Emerging research indicates that the recent trend of choosing an elementary or secondary school, rather than attending the school to which one is assigned by a public school board, exacerbates racial divisions and social segregation by creating new social ‘bubbles’ and ‘enclave schools’ in diversifying urban contexts (André-Bechely, 2007; Butler, 2003; Gulson, 2011; Henig, Hula, Orr, & Pedescleaux, 1999; Kotok, Frankenberg, Schafft, Mann, & Fuller, 2015; Levine-Rasky, 2008; Lipman, 2011; Wells, 2009). Within this growing body of literature, some researchers have paid attention to how students of different racial backgrounds experience and negotiate ‘race’ in the processes of school choice and in their chosen schools (Bunar, 2010; George, 2007; Reay & Lucey, 2000). Nonetheless, underexplored is how diverse youths experience and engage in meaning-making of race, and how they do so with a sensitivity to historical and contemporary meanings of race and racial divisions, as entrenched in an urban geography and in local discourses of race. This presentation aims to fill this gap by drawing on critical youth and race scholarship, and by examining how youths reify race, racial identity and race relations as they experience the neoliberalization of the education system in the form of school choice.

Theory & methodology:
Critical race theory’s critique of the ‘neoliberalization of race’ is applied to analyze the neoliberal state’s failure to recognize race as an organizer of historical and contemporary inequalities (Goldberg, 2009; Hernández, 2016; McDermott, Frankenberg, & Diem, 2015). In doing so, this presentation draws from a phenomenological study of 59 students (ages 11-19) and analyzes how neoliberal market reforms of education reconstruct, rather than erase, racial divisions and meanings in the era of school choice in a post-colonial city in Canada.

Analysis & conclusion:
The presentation first examines racial minority youths’ lived experiences of race, through the instances of social closure and spatial disadvantage, when they choose schools in historically affluent, professional and white neighborhoods. Second, it sheds light on how race is being reified through the renewed production of racial meanings, racial identities and race relations in the processes of school choice and in the increasing use of standardized examination results, which reclassifies students by race. Lastly, the presentation illustrates how race continues to divide and further foreclose youths’ choices of specialized schools. By examining these intersections of race and neoliberal education reforms, this presentation discusses the persistent and renewed racial inequalities and tensions in a post-colonial Canadian city.

Significance:
This presentation will showcase an empirical study of the contradictions of neoliberal education reforms. Although the ideology of neoliberal policy reforms suggests that school choice is color-blind, student narratives indicate that race continues to be important in their school choice and social experiences. The neoliberal educational processes of choice, competition and mobility regenerate racial anxieties and racial meanings/categorizations. As such, while a small number of high-achieving racial minority students may be rewarded for their high achievement, racial inequality and divisions continue to be pervasive (Ley & Lynch, 2012).

Author

• Ee-Seul Yoon, University of Manitoba