Policy in Palimpsest Time: The Role of Education in Remaking the Southern City

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Dismantling Anti-Blackness in Educational Research and Practice (Table 27)

Abstract

This study uncovers the hidden history and politics embodied in a single building and its surrounding neighborhoods, illuminating how space reflects complex relationships between uneven development and market-based education reforms. I analyze continuity and change in the evolution of a Sears Roebuck store abandoned after industry flight due to Black labor resistance to a revitalized office space housing neoliberal education reform organizations. The building and surrounding neighborhoods illuminate the role of several initiatives in politically constructing the city as a “hub” for education reform, remaking the city as a spatial “frontier” for market reforms. Findings show how racial and cultural representation within the building obscure how investment only flows in it’s confines, leaving surrounding Black neighborhoods self-contained sites of disinvestment.

Author

• Rachel E. Williams, University of Wisconsin - Madison