(Re)Visioning School Integration: A Critical Framework for Examining and Dismantling Barriers to Educational Opportunity

• In Event: Accepting Responsibility for (In)Equity in Education? Critical Policy Analysis Across Contexts

Abstract

“What does an integrated school look like in the current political context? And whose school integration is it?” (Horsford, 2019a, p. 21). These two questions are particularly important to consider in our present-day conceptualization of school integration in a moment when people are taking to the streets to fight for racial equality. The 2020 uprisings have brought increasing visibility and popularity to the Black Lives Matter movement in response to police brutality brought to the forefront after the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police officers. The outrage at his death, as well as countless others, has led to consecutive month-long protests and demonstrations across the U.S. and around the world. In this moment, scholars, activists, and politicians have brought more attention to racial inequities in our society, and media conversations around systemic racism and the institutionalization of inequity have become more popular. The unrest and subsequent discourse have also brought renewed interest to other sociological inequities such as those in education.
Yet, how are we to move forward toward a more equitable society and education system when Black people, as they were when the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision was handed down nearly 70 years ago, are still fighting for society to value their lives? And, as Horsford (2019a) asked, what does school integration look like in the twenty-first century where the majority of students attending public schools are non-white, school choice has hindered the progress of desegregation efforts, and many schools are (re)segregating (Author, 2020; Johnson, 2019)? Clearly, we need to revisit and rethink how we conceptualize school integration today if we want to challenge the forces that have impeded its realization and continue to push for racial equity in our schools.
According to Leonardo (2013), “the collective project of race is diverse and multifaceted, and therefore resists simplification” (p. 2). Indeed, in his justification of a multidimensional theory of race, Leonardo argues for an integrated framework of race in education. In this paper, we bring together three race frameworks to situate historical efforts around school desegregation, examine current barriers to school integration, and consider what actions we can take to overcome these impediments. We analyze the issues through the frameworks of critical whiteness, color-evasiveness, and interest convergence as part of the critical policy analysis (CPA) project (Author, 2014; Horsford, 2019a). While the three theoretical frameworks we describe are helpful in understanding school desegregation, (re)segregation is occurring in the context of a nation undergoing demographic changes and the promulgation of school choice. Therefore, we combine these race frameworks as they offer a much more powerful theoretical approach to CPA, addressing the multi-layered facets of school integration when considered in tandem. As Leonardo (2013) suggested, critical scholars of race must maintain a balance between distortions of hermeneutic criticism and utopian idealism. Thus with both suspicion and empathy, we embarked on a theoretical project to develop a new approach that can lead to a better way to understand what schools can do to achieve integration.

Authors

• Sarah Wenneker Walters, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Sarah Diem, University of Missouri

• Madeline Good, University of Missouri - Columbia

• Brittany Smotherson, University of Missouri

• Vida Nana Ama Bonney, University of Missouri