Beyond the Black/White Binary: Reconceptualizing Integration for Racial Justice

• In Event: The Persistence of School Segregation and Opportunities for Change: Lessons From New York City

Abstract

Purpose
Despite decades of research demonstrating that students benefit from integrated learning environments (Johnson, 2019; Wells et al., 2016), school districts have largely failed to create and sustain schools that reflect our multiracial realities. That failure has been magnified as the U.S. school-aged population rapidly diversifies (NCES, 2022), making past enrollment and diversity plans insufficient for the contemporary United States. New York City and many other districts leverage school choice as a strategy to navigate this contentious political landscape. However, policies such as New York City’s often advantage constituencies with the greatest social and political capital (Orfield & Frankenberg, 2013; Sattin-Bajaj & Roda, 2020), raising additional questions about the relationship between school diversity and educational justice (Freidus, 2022; Horsford, 2019). This theoretical paper provides a new approach to analyzing school integration, one that addresses our multiracial context, political realities, and an expanded vision of justice.

Framework
District diversity and enrollment plans are often grounded in the Brown decision, which serves as the foundation for equity efforts (Ladson-Billings, 2004; Orfield et al., 2014) but fails to address contemporary demographics in the U.S. (Clarke et al., 2006). Current conceptualizations of race and diversity in integration, enrollment, and diversity plans are largely oriented around a Black/White binary, which neither captures the complexities of the contemporary, multiracial United States, nor addresses inequality experienced within and among different racial groups (Ochoa, 2013; Horsford, 2019). Such models frequently ignore Asian American students or group them with White students (and Latinx students with Black students), reflecting the common under-theorization of how Asian American students are racialized (Fu & Blissett, 2023; Lee et al., 2017). What is more, enrollment and diversity plans frequently fail to account for substantial political and ideological resistance, undermining their impact (Holme et al., 2014; Diem et al., 2018). To address these tensions, this theoretical paper analyzes school diversity as a racial project (Omi & Winant, 2015; Turner, 2020), conceptualizes race as relational (Kim, 1999; Molina et al., 2019), and incorporates an expanded understanding of justice (Fraser, 1997).

Modes of Inquiry
We draw on existing literature and documentary analysis from recent policy efforts to examine how debates over district demographics in demographically diversifying locales such as New York City, have been framed and reframed over time and the implications for the contemporary multiracial reality of the United States.

Conclusions and Significance
The aims and strategies of enrollment plans do not reflect the complicated views and racial justice concerns of a multiracial constituency (Castillo, 2022; Clarke et al., 2006). In Fraser’s (1997, 2005) terms, these plans may redistribute educational resources even as they undermine political representation and curricular recognition of families of color, as well as interracial solidarity (Robles, 2006; ross, 2021). Moreover, conflicts over equitable school enrollment have been intense, ongoing, and central to the development of American racial ideologies (Bobo, 1983; Delmont, 2016; Dumas, 2016; Kinder & Sears, 1981). We therefore argue that it is time to radically rethink integration, enrollment, and diversity plans, their aims and strategies, and the processes by which they are developed.

Authors

• Erica O. Turner, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Alexandra J. Freidus, University of Connecticut

• Adriana Villavicencio, New York University

• Richard Blissett, University of Maryland - Baltimore County