Educational Geographies: Post-Brown v. Board Conjunctural Analysis

• In Event: Fugitive Spaces and Geographies of Spatial Justice throughout Social Contexts of Education

Abstract

This study uses conjunctural analysis to trace the historical reproduction of racial regimes in U.S. education from Brown v. Board (1954) to the present. Drawing on the recent work of Ruth Wilson Gilmore and Bettina Love, we employ archival policy analysis, legal review, and critical historiography to identify five conjunctures through which educational geographies have been reconfigured to maintain White supremacy: Post-Brown Displacement, Race-Evasive Realignment, Neoliberal Consolidation, Crisis and Triage, and Backlash and Reformation. We demonstrate how race-evasive discourse, neoliberal policy, and surveillance have recoded structural inequality into ostensibly neutral systems of social (d)evaluation and differentiation. Findings call for historically grounded, abolitionist policy shifts to foster social and institutional transformation and to abolish oppression formations in schooling or wherever else they may form.

Author

• Dennis Williams, University of Virginia