81.032-3 - Interrogating Suburban Schools: Race, Class, and Opportunity in the Suburbs

• In Event: 81.032 - MTCC Roundtable Session 37

Session Type: Roundtable Session

Abstract

Over the past three decades, suburban communities have experienced vast demographic changes that challenge dominant conceptions of these spaces as exclusively white heteronormative middle-class enclaves. Across the country, communities of color have flocked to suburban communities for educational opportunities, housing, and employment, but have also migrated because of policies of displacement. This panel explores this changing landscape by centering the experiences and voices of marginalized families and their children in suburbia. The panelists address the myriad of ways that families and students navigate suburban schools, and how educational policies and school practices shape their experiences. Ultimately, we offer an alternate vision of what suburban communities and schools should be, by pushing against homogenizing discourses around whiteness, suburbia, and educational resources.

Sub Unit

• Division G - Social Context of Education / Division G - Section 2: Differences and Intersectionalities

Papers

• Black in the 'Burbs: Parents, Community, and Schooling in a Predominantly Black Suburb - Linn E. Posey-Maddox, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Latinx Youth in White Suburbia: Understanding Identity, Opportunity, and Belonging - Gabriel Rodriguez, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

• Middle-Class Korean Americans and the Racialized Pursuit of Educational Advantage - Eujin Park, University of Illinois at Chicago

• "We Were Being Undermined": Resistance to Teachers' Racial Justice Work in a Suburban High School - John B. Diamond, University of Wisconsin - Madison; Van T Lac, The University of Texas - San Antonio