Feeling Displaced, Enacting Resistance: Race, Place, and Schooling in the Face Of Gentrifying Forces

• In Event: 2484 - Section on Sociology of Education Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 19. Race and Ethnicity in Education 3

Abstract

Detroit is a dynamic city with a dynamic history, yet it has come to symbolize both white flight (beginning in the 1940s and accelerating in the late 1960s) and black flight (beginning in the 1990s and reaching its apex in 2000). While Detroit’s black population continues to decline, its white population increased by 18% between 2010 and 2015. Along with these shifting demographic trends comes shifting residential and educational landscapes that amplify the racial, economic, and spatial inequalities marking present-day Detroit. As a case study of how a not-for-profit, public charter school can be a vehicle for resisting gentrification, this paper examines the role of “place” in one school’s navigation of an increasingly gentrified Detroit and its commitment to primarily serving youth of its neighborhood. Drawing upon the literature of human geography and sociology of education, and utilizing GIS software, this paper overlays the mapping of demographic realities with the mapping of human stories. Specifically, this paper seeks deeper sociological understanding of the relationship between place and people, school and neighborhood over time; and analyzes the trajectory of schooling that has a geographic-specific commitment in a landscape of state education law that affords enrollment to students regardless of place.

Authors

• Chasity Bailey-Fakhoury, Grand Valley State University

• Lisa M. Perhamus, Grand Valley State University