Choosing Race, Choosing Place: Black Families' Racial Subjectivities in Pursuit of Educational Opportunity

• In Event: Dancing in the Rain and Weathering the Storm: Stories of Black Family Agency and Resistance

Abstract

Racial and class demographic shifts have dramatically changed many U.S. metropolitan regions over the past 20 years (Frey, 2014). Social phenomena—including gentrification, Black suburbanization, the growth of school choice options, and economic changes such as the 2008 recession—have spurred families and students’ physical movement. Importantly, these dynamics have shifted relationships between families, communities, and schools in ways that impact equitable educational access and opportunity. In Metropolitan Detroit, known for stark city-suburb divides between predominantly Black Detroit and predominantly white surrounding suburbs (Khalifa et al., 2016), notions of place and race are contested in relation to Black families’ physical movement and demographic change in the region.

In this paper, I employ a critical phenomenological approach (van Manen, 1990) to examine how seven diverse Black families used movement to pursue quality schools and communities in Metropolitan Detroit. Through in-depth interviews with parent/guardians and children, I discuss how families’ perceptions of race and racism in various municipalities were fundamental to whether they deemed schools to be of quality. I draw from theoretical perspectives on opportunity structures that highlight place as particular and lived spaces that are consequential to sociopolitical processes and individuals’ meaning making and agency (Agnew, 2011; Lipsitz, 2007; powell, 2005).

Findings show that while families’ decisions were influenced by the importance of curricula, extracurricular programs, and other vital educational resources, most families did not take for granted that their Black children would be provided with equal access to school resources. Families approached racism as a given in schools and communities. Indeed, several scholars support this finding through their study of Black families’ school choice decision-making and (dis)engagement with schools (Cooper, 2009; Lareau & Horvat, 1999; Mazama & Lundy, 2012; Posey-Maddox, 2017). However, families importantly perceived different forms of racism and discrimination, where despite their experiences of the status-quo nature of racism, some municipalities and school districts were viewed as more racially inclusive than others. In families’ school and community choices, they considered histories of racism and anti-blackness tied to suburban municipalities, the presence of ethnic and racial diversity among students, and most prevalent across the data, the influence of Black teachers and administrators as caring adults in schools.

As opposed to educational leaders viewing families who move school districts through a deficit lens of being a threat to academic and cultural norms, this paper encourages administrators and school district officials to acknowledge and learn from the subjectivities, agency, and labor of Black families that move in search of educational opportunity. This acknowledgment might better position school districts to connect with Black families as educational partners—breaking out of siloed understandings of educational resources and efforts needed to equitably serve and honor Black families and students.

Author

• Dana Gabrielle Nickson, University of Washington - Seattle