Racialized Laws and the Impact on School Choice for Black Families

• In Event: The Last Brick Shall Be the Cornerstone: Re-Mattering Black Educational Lives After the Neoliberal Wrecking Ball

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore the racialized policies behind the reasoning process in which Black families engage when using school choice to locate a suitable school for their children. Due to systemic racism that has been embedded in education and housing policies, predominantly Black and predominantly White school districts are structured in ways that can cause harm to Black children. Choosing either option can have long-lasting impacts on the psyche, identity, and educational achievement of Black students. Lareau (2021) notes, “The problem, as they perceived it, was straightforward: the parents wanted their children to be in a school with an abundant number of racial peers but believed that the available majority-Black schools would not offer their children a high-quality education.” Black families must engage in an oftentimes strenuous reasoning process when using school choice to locate a suitable school for their children.

The foundational question of this research is where choice is available, what reasons do families list for choosing one school district over another? This question will require a deep dive into what policies have been made overtime that helped to structure the education system in a way that harms Black children, as well as point us towards what policy needs to be implemented to remove the harm and provide a sustainable outcome for Black students.

There are racialized policies, laws, and court cases, that underlie why parents choose one system over the other. This paper will lay out the connections between Black parent choice and the following: Plessy v. Ferguson, No Child Left Behind Act, Detroit Redlining (1939), residential segregation and housing laws, school to prison pipeline, and schools of choice laws. Dumas (2013), “As black leaders and parents had long charged, black students are far more likely to be disciplined than any other racial/ethnic group, and also receive longer suspensions. In fact, black students are more than three times as likely to be suspended as white students, beginning in elementary school and continuing through high school.” We will also connect choice to slavery, the Constitution, policing black bodies, law enforcement, affirmative action, and other policies and structures that encourage a mindset that Black children are inferior to White children.

One of the most important stakeholders in re-mattering Black children’s lives is the parent. To dismantle racial injustice, as this year’s AERA theme suggests, we need to we need to do three things: (1) understand where its root by looking at past policies that situated us where we are today; (2) understand what is currently happening in the landscape by talking to the people who are making decisions and are directly affected every single day – in this case families who are making this choice for their Black children; and (3) provide sustainable solutions based on new and innovate research that is obtained from the heavily impacted.

This paper will give history into what has occurred, what Black families are experiencing now, and provide questions that will hopefully lead to solutions and sustainable policies.

Author

• Damiana LaShea Sorrell, Wayne State University