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What’s Race Got To Do With It?

How Current School Reform Policy Maintains Racial and Economic Inequality

Bree Picower editor Edwin Mayorga editor

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Peter Lang Publishing Inc

Published:30th Jan '15

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

What’s Race Got To Do With It? cover

Within critical discussions of school reform, researchers and activists are often of two camps. Some focus their analyses on neoliberal economic agendas, while others center on racial inequality. These analyses often happen in isolation, continuing to divide those concerned with educational justice into «It’s race!» vs. «It’s class!» camps. What’s Race Got To Do With It? brings together these frameworks to investigate the role that race plays in hallmark policies of neoliberal school reforms such as school closings, high-stakes testing, and charter school proliferation. The group of scholar activist authors in this volume were selected because of their cutting-edge racial economic analysis, understanding of corporate reform, and involvement in grassroots social movements. Each author applies a racial economic framework to inform and complicate our analysis of how market-based reforms collectively increase wealth inequality and maintain White supremacy. In accessible language, contributors trace the historical context of a single reform, examine how that reform maintains and expands racial and economic inequality, and share grassroots stories of resistance to these reforms. By analyzing current reforms through this dual lens, those concerned with social justice are better equipped to struggle against this constellation of reforms in ways that unite rather than divide.

«In light of ALL that is happening in American society, it stretches credulity to think that there are still people who think that we are BEYOND race. This collection underscores the way that race is implicated in every aspect of schooling and the editors and contributors take bold, empirically grounded positions that assert once and for all that race has EVERYTHING to do with education and schooling.» (Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
«We cannot understand and challenge today’s pervasive attacks on public education without looking intersectionally. Such is the argument compellingly fleshed out by Picower, Mayorga, and colleagues in this collection of brilliant exposés of neoliberal ‘reforms’ that insidiously widen racial and economic injustices. ‘What’s Race Got To Do With It’ is a must-read for anyone to see the bigger picture.» (Kevin Kumashiro, Dean of the University of San Francisco School of Education; Editor of ‘Six Lenses for Anti-Oppressive Education: Partial Stories, Improbable Conversations’)
«In light of ALL that is happening in American society, it stretches credulity to think that there are still people who think that we are BEYOND race. This collection underscores the way that race is implicated in every aspect of schooling and the editors and contributors take bold, empirically grounded positions that assert once and for all that race has EVERYTHING to do with education and schooling.» (Gloria Ladson-Billings, Professor, Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education, University of Wisconsin-Madison)
«We cannot understand and challenge today’s pervasive attacks on public education without looking intersectionally. Such is the argument compellingly fleshed out by Picower, Mayorga, and colleagues in this collection of brilliant exposés of neoliberal ‘reforms’ that insidiously widen racial and economic injustices. ‘What’s Race Got To Do With It’ is a must-read for anyone to see the bigger picture.» (Kevin Kumashiro, Dean of the University of San Francisco School of Education; Editor of ‘Six Lenses for Anti-Oppressive Education: Partial Stories, Improbable Conversations’)

ISBN: 9781433128837

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: 310g

208 pages