Antiblackness Double Time: Settler Colonialism in Gentrifying Public Schools

• In Event: Gentrification, Settler Colonialism, and "Diversity": Research and Professional Development for Counternarratives of "Good" Public Schools

Abstract

When developers and realtors enter predominantly Black and/or Latinx urban communities to build high-priced housing units, lure retailers catering to the rich, and rename the neighborhoods, they are socially reconstructing place and race to market desirability to affluent, mostly white people who would not have thought to live in those communities before. The lives, commitments, culture and contribution of the families of color who have called these urban spaces home for decades are generally ignored or disappeared by gentrifiers unless they provide authentic “ethnic food” in local eateries.
This process of social reconstruction of place and race within gentrifying urban neighborhoods and its effect on public schools is perhaps best explained by examining a world view that shaped the continent of North American, its governance systems and public institutions, including schools. Unlike prior research and theorizing on exogenous colonialism that reveals militaristic or economic purposes of colonial entities that extract resources and then leave, settler colonial research is unique in that it describes the colonizing processes of those who come to stay in the new land (Bonds and Inwood, 2016). Thus, “settler colonization is theorized not as an event or moment in history, but as an enduring structure, premised on “logics of extermination” requiring constant maintenance in an effort to disappear indigenous populations” as rationalized and reinforced by racism. (Wolfe, 2006 cited in Bonds and Inwood, 2016; p. 716).
In this first paper, we illustrate present-day manifestation of settler colonialism through findings from a five-year research and school support project in gentrifying areas of New York City. Based on more than 200 interviews, 50 observations and 15 professional development sessions with educators and parents from six schools as well as dozens of school leaders engaged in “integration work” around the city, we found that the legacy of settler colonialism plays out in two ways:
1. Enduring policies and practices prevalent in public schools derived during the peak of political, economic and ideological colonization and enslavement of people of color across the globe. In the U.S., settler colonialism shaped the relationships of power, domination and control and the anti-Blackness that fueled it. Education has been – and still is -- a tool of that rule – both through resource and opportunity allocated and the curricular narratives about valued knowledge.
2. The surge in gentrification of urban communities that were abandoned by white people after World War II when they settled in the suburbs, is a reincarnation of settler colonialism in urban spaces. It is no wonder, therefore, that gentrifying parents seek public education as they know it – as a set of shared understandings of American history and intelligence that reinforce a racial hierarchy.
By connecting historical context of settler colonialism to the current context of public schools in gentrifying zones of NYC, we demonstrate how these colonial mindsets have become enduring structures and belief systems. The following papers demonstrate the strategies employed by our project and the educators we work with to advance an anti-racist agenda to decolonize education.

Authors

• Amy Stuart Wells, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Diana Cordova-Cobo, Teachers College, Columbia University