Segregation, Diversity, and Pathology: School Quality and Student Demographics in Gentrifying New York

• In Event: What Is Possible and Desirable: Conceptualizing Race and School Quality Across Local Contexts

Abstract

Objectives
In this paper, I explore how stakeholders draw on racialized discourses of diversity and pathology in discussions of school quality. Drawing from an ethnographic study of diversifying schools in gentrifying areas of New York City, I closely examine the relationships between these widespread discourses and public perceptions of school quality. I ask: “What relationships do stakeholders perceive between student demographics and school quality? How do stakeholders employ and resist racialized discourses of pathology and diversity as they describe public schools?”

Theoretical Framework
Critical race scholars have long argued that although whiteness may not be a tangible resource, it is property. Here, I argue that proximity to whiteness, like whiteness itself, is property; it, too, has reputational value derived from being “regarded as a thing of significant value” (Harris, 1993, p. 1734). In doing so, I build upon Bell’s (2002) argument that, in the Brown decision, “white bodies are represented as somehow exuding an intrinsic value that percolates into the ‘hearts and minds’ of black children” (p. 192).

Data and Methods
My data are drawn from a two-year, multi-sited ethnography of diversifying schools in New York, including observations of 34 public meetings; interviews with 30 stakeholders; and analysis of local media coverage. I selected three focal participants based on their articulation of tensions and assumptions in discursive relationships that echoed throughout the entire dataset. I share portraits of how these participants grappled with discourses of diversity and pathology in their discussions of public schools, identifying the “complexity, dynamics, and subtlety” in their thinking (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, p. xv).

Findings
I find that by framing school quality in terms of student demographics, stakeholders often used diversity discourses that overlapped with discourses of racialized pathology. Conversations about diversifying schools revealed that the two discourses were frequently intertwined; many stakeholders considered a “diverse” school ideal because such a school would not include an “overwhelming” number of poor students of color. Many stakeholders paired idealized visions of student diversity with references to the deficits of segregated schools and communities. In doing so, they used student demographics as a shorthand for school quality, judging – or, in some cases, worrying that others would judge – a school based upon who attended it. In short, they proposed that the best way to improve a school was to change its demographics. As they engaged in these braided discourses, these stakeholders reluctantly re-inscribed the stigma associated with segregated schools and the families they serve.

Significance
Integration advocates hoped that changes to school demographics would improve schools, but often failed to explain why. By looking closely at perceived relationships between school demographics and school quality, I illuminate the ways in arguments for increased school diversity contribute to, rather than counter, racialized assumptions about students, communities, and schools. The resulting “racial storylines” (Nasir et al., 2013) influence families’ and policymakers’ thinking about schools that serve primarily students of color. Policymakers, school and district leaders, and public-school advocates must carefully consider the frameworks they use to endorse “school diversity.”

Author

• Alexandra J. Freidus, University of Connecticut