A Second Redemption? Racism,Backlash Politics,and Public Education

It may seem like distant history now, but nearly 150 years ago the United States experienced its first civil rights revolution (Reconstruction). Boundaries of national belonging formally expanded in dramatic fashion under the Fourteenth Amendment, which declared all persons born within U.S. territory citizens. Black men were granted the franchise by the Fifteenth Amendment, and some went on to hold elected office. The Civil Rights Act of 1866 expanded legal protections to black citizens, permitting them to create and enforce contracts, purchase, sell, or lease property, and participate in court proceedings. In sum, initial steps toward black empowerment spanned multiple fronts. It was in the area of education, however, where perhaps the most radical change occurred. Consider the words, for example, of Du Bois (1910):

It was the question upon which black voters and legislators insisted more than anything else and while it is possible to find some vestiges of free schools in some of the Southern States before the war yet a universal, well-established system dates from the day that the black man got political power. Common-school instruction in the South, in the modern sense of the term, was begun for Negroes by the Freedmen’s Bureau and missionary societies, and the state public-school systems for all children were formed by Negro Reconstruction governments. (P. 797)

War-torn and impoverished communities greatly sacrificed for education (Foner 1988). Many formed societies to finance the purchase of land, construction of schoolhouses, and finance of teacher salaries. Black teachers soon replaced white missionary teachers across the South (Fairclough 2000). The Freedman’s Bureau worked to turn over confiscated properties, along with other local resources like books and furniture, to schools established for newly emancipated slaves. Meanwhile, other communities and national organizations banded together to establish institutions of higher education like Shaw, Atlanta, Fisk, and Tougaloo, with the purpose of training future generations of black leadership. Taken together, all these trends signify a deep belief that education was a precondition for fuller civic participation.

Pushes toward racial democracy like these would be short-lived. Southern whites retaliated with violence to alleviate their own sense of humiliation and distress (see Decosta-Willis 1995), in a movement that would tellingly be labeled “Redemption.” These “Redeemers, the self-styled saviors of the South,” writes John Hope Franklin ([1961] 1994), “resorted to ruse, conspiracy, and violations of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments” in efforts to put “blacks in their place” (p. 211). Meanwhile, whites of the North remained “ashamed [they] had to call in the black men to save the Union, abolish slavery and establish democracy” (Du Bois [1935] 1992:711). Underlying the beliefs of whites across the sectional divide, as the works of Manning Marable ([1984] 2007) and George Frederickson (1971) reveal, was the notion that black people were subhuman. They possessed, so whites assumed, a diminished capacity for self-control and abstract reasoning let alone self-governance, and therefore were unworthy of democracy. Under this guise, whites justified their abandonment of Reconstruction and any radically envisioned alternatives (Foner 1988). Whites’ inability to conceive of blacks as fully belonging to the American public led to the denial of not only rights and protections but access to governmental institutions and “public” resources.

Specifically in education, perhaps more than other government domains, whites resorted to a variety of strategies to preserve racial domination. They structured schools so black students attended segregated institutions that were overcrowded, deficient in adequate learning materials, and often lacking in qualified instructors (J. D. Anderson 1988). Later in this era, standardized tests were implemented alongside the eugenics movement to measure students’ intellectual abilities. Of course, the criteria of evaluation presupposed biological differences between racial groups and a natural hierarchy of white supremacy (Gould 1981). Much of the curriculum came to emphasize a vocational focus, one that placed blacks on a path toward permanent serfdom and economic disenfranchisement (Du Bois 1903). And when white small farmers demanded more public schools for their children, the money for those schools came from public funds reserved for black students (J. D. Anderson 1988). After that, “every cent spent on [black public schools] was taken from Negro rents and wages, and came back to property-holders [i.e., elite white men] tenfold in increased opportunities for exploitation” ([1935] 1992:665; see also Einhorn 2001; McMillan [1955] 1978). In short, whites saw blacks and their race-traitor allies as shaking the rules of racial engagement: So in retaliation, they responded by establishing new barriers of racial exclusion.

Fast forward nearly a century, and are we witnessing history repeat itself? Of course, the racial rule of today is unlike that of the past. The modern racial structure, as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (1997) explains, persists in pervasively insidious ways that are institutional, covert, and seemingly nonracial. That said, some striking historical continuities do exist. Activists of the Black Freedom Struggles pushed for minority inclusion in mainstream institutions during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Among the targets of their resistance were integrated neighborhoods, access to better jobs, and a universal social safety net—all gains that would signify acceptance into larger society. Decades later, we have witnessed large-scale shifts in the very institutions that represented access to the public in these struggles. Indeed, this understudied phenomenon could represent a Second Redemption to follow what historians like C. Vann Woodward ([1955] 2002) and others have identified as the “Second Reconstruction.”

Again, this is no more evident than in education. Whites staged “massive resistance” to Brown v. Board of Education (Bartley 1999), whether by electing segregationist candidates (Black 1973), dispersing from desegregating schools and into private schools (Andrews 2001; Clotfelter 2004; Fairlie and Resch 2002; Porter, Howell, and Hempel 2014), or moving away from districts under mandatory desegregation orders (Rossell and Armor 1996). In Prince Edward County, Virginia, whites even shut down schools for five years rather than integrate the district (Bonastia 2011; Brunn-Bevel et al. 2015). More recently, charter schools (Bonastia 2013; Renzulli and Evans 2005) and selective public schools like magnets (Freidus and Noguera 2015; Meeks, Meeks, and Warren 2000; Quiroz and Vernon 2015) have provided means for white students to resegregate into elite institutions collecting a disproportionate amount of public money. School district gerrymandering (Connerly 1999; Leigh 1997; Siegel-Hawley 2013) and white flight to suburbs have produced exclusive public schools in all-white communities (Logan, Oakley, and Stowell 2008). Even nominally integrated public schools racially divide resources on the basis of tracking, placing white students in “advanced” classes and black and Latina/Latino students in regular or remedial curricula (Diette 2012; Lewis, Diamond, and Forman 2015; Tyson 2011).

Despite court-ordered integration, school districts, governed by elite board members, were reluctant to implement measures that would anger constituents by actually succeeding in integration (Peterson 1977). But even these halfway measures are now being phased out, as court decisions discontinue the consideration of race in school assignments and claim white harm from policies benefiting racial minorities (Donnor 2012; Freidus and Noguera 2015). Lack of clear standards and oversight, combined with overly optimistic projections of goodwill and the effectiveness of “non-judicial mechanisms” to “assure equity in the resegregated minority schools,” have meant that dismantling court-ordered desegregation results in resegregation (Orfield and Thronson 1993:761). Clotfelter and colleagues (2008) have shown that, for North Carolina, ending race-conscious policies has segregated schools even further. Lutz (2011) replicated this finding nationally, showing that in districts whose desegregation orders are dismissed, resegregation undoes about 60 percent of the desegregation order’s effect within 10 years. Trends in school district consolidation and division are still driven by race (and income): in Ohio, districts are less likely to consolidate if their populations differ racially or economically (Brasington 2003). A Propublica study found “the number of apartheid schools nationwide has mushroomed from 2,762 in 1988—the peak of school integration—to 6,727 in 2011” (Hannah-Jones 2014:110).

Race- and class-based funding inequalities between schools persist (Roscigno and Tomaskovic-Devey 2006), driving inequality in education outcomes (Condron and Roscigno 2003; Logan, Minca, and Sinem 2012). These disparities are not the “natural” outcome of individuals sorting themselves—they must be contextualized historically and as outcomes of political campaigns renegotiating deservingness and public goods. In places such as California, we have seen antibusing movements transform into antitax crusades that frame integration initiatives as racial redistribution of a coercive tax state (Henricks and Embrick 2016; Lo 1990). This white pushback has been channeled to the ballot box, effectively cutting off education funds through constitutional limitations on property taxes and institutional barriers to progressive taxation like supermajority requirements (Sears and Citrin 1982; see also Martin 2008). Supplanting these revenues, the growth of piecemeal tax systems and alternative funding mechanisms like education lotteries mean that poor people and minorities are bearing more of the burden of public school funding (Henricks 2014; Henricks and Embrick 2016).

More than prejudice and racial animus, white backlash is a form of opportunity hoarding that has its eyes locked onto dollar signs. Even well-meaning, tolerant whites advance their racial interests in discrete ways when they promote vouchers or oppose funding equalization on market-driven, laissez-faire notions of “free choice” (Lewis and Diamond 2015; see also Lewis-McCoy 2014; Quiroz and Vernon 2015). These interests converge with entrepreneurs and profiteers who see education as a source of profit (Bell 1976). Rooted in a deep but “hidden” history, charter schools, for example, originate from racist legacies of segregation academies (Bonastia 2011). Though these schools were private and nonsectarian, white public officials who resisted integration siphoned tax dollars to empower white parents to select from a menu of schools and decide which “products” suited their needs (Bonastia 2013). Together in this “second redemption,” both groups of whites advanced black exclusion from public education, or in some cases outright exploitation, to preserve their own bottom line—both in literal and symbolic terms.

Despite rhetoric from school reform advocates about the potential for “school choice” to remedy racial inequality (see Ravitch 2013 for a discussion), the relatively recent expansion of charter schools has not disrupted the above trends. They have exacerbated them. Several studies show charter schools are even more segregated than traditional public schools (Bifulco and Ladd 2006; Booker, Zimmer, and Buddin 2005; Frankenberg, Siegel-Hawley, and Wang 2011) and that parents leaving public schools for charters put their children in more segregated environments (Garcia 2008; Renzulli and Evans 2005). This trend of charter segregation is often obscured by using national-level averages rather than district-level segregation (Renzulli and Evans 2005).

Education entrepreneurs can (cynically or credulously) profit from the race-based devaluing of public education by promising to improve schools, although actual improvement is rarely required as a condition. Meanwhile most charters are comprised by community-control advocates of white teachers and administrators, paralleling those of the anti-busing movements following Brown (Bonastia 2013). The expansion of charter schools and other selective enrollment schools that hog school funding (Quiroz and Vernon 2015) is occurring at the same time as the targeting and dismantling of teachers’ unions (which have become especially welcoming to black workers due to antidiscrimination protections), whether through programs like state antilabor actions (Giersch 2014), nonunion charters (Malin and Kerchner 2007), or American Legislative Exchange Council pressure (G. L. Anderson and Donchik 2014).

Struggles in major cities provide illustrations of some of the seismic shifts in contemporary education. While Chicago and New Orleans are both unusual cases in which traditional governance has been suspended, their innovations may represent the future for the rest of the nation. In Chicago Public Schools, for example, only half of the white children living inside the district attend public schools (compared to 80 percent of black children), and when they do, they are more likely to attend selective enrollment or magnet schools that draw a disproportionate amount of school funding (Moore 2014; Quiroz and Vernon 2015). Meanwhile, thanks to elites’ recommendations (Lipman 2002), Chicago has undergone mass closure of schools comparable to other cities like Philadelphia. School closure has become a common cost-cutting strategy as states and localities reduce funding, although a Chicago-based research shows that the costs associated with closing the school can outweigh the savings (Caref et al. 2012).

Most of these school closures occur in Chicago’s poor and minority neighborhoods, leading to what activists call “school deserts.” The emphasis on savings, property value, and student performance rarely gets at the social impact of school closures on neighborhoods. The growing conception of education as an individual market choice, where children and their families compete for slots at the “best” schools, comes at the expense of seeing schools as a metaphorical and literal public site. As members of the Chicago Teachers Union wrote in 2012, “The massive school closings that have been part of CPS’ broader strategy dating back to the 1990s have drastic consequences: they tear apart school communities, disrupt deep and strong relationships between students, parents, and teachers, and dismantle organizations which are often students’ only centers of stability and safety” (quoted in Caref et al. 2012:3).

While the overall number of charter schools is still low, certain cities are serving as “test sites” for a future in which public education no longer plays a role. New Orleans serves as an interesting case to track from civil war to post–civil rights. New Orleans schools were a model of early integration after 1863 (J. D. Anderson 1988). But whites swiftly abandoned the schools in favor of private education (Spain 1979). Following Redemption, the schools were resegregated (DeVore and Logsdon 1991). After a local parental lawsuit was folded into Brown, the state of Louisiana passed new laws making desegregation more difficult (Parsons and Turner 2014). When this failed, white students abandoned public schools for private ones (Bankston and Caldas 2002). Parsons and Turner (2014) describe how a public school system that had been fairly balanced racially in 1960 was 93 percent black and under 3 percent white in 2010. They note that post–Katrina reforms erase attendance zones and free charter proliferation. By consequence, these reforms have cemented disparities: Two-thirds of the few white students left in the system attend three well-funded, selective-admission schools. In 2015, New Orleans lost its last public school to become an entirely charter system. One study found that post–Katrina New Orleans now has more white teachers than black, when black teachers once outnumbered whites four to one (Dixson 2015). Parsons and Turner (2014) argue that the racial arrangements and conflicts in New Orleans show historical continuity. We would specify that this history shows repeated cycles of white backlash against black children’s access to education and integration.

All these examples allude to broader concepts authors of this special issue develop: that the reshaping of public institutions like education comes in part from whites’ inability to fully include blacks in their conception of the American public. While whites say they accept the moral weight of blacks’ claims to equal civil rights, they seem more reluctant to fund services and institutions that benefit blacks as equal citizens (Sears and Citrin 1982). The existence of a racial backlash against civil rights-era gains has been posited for decades (Aoki 1995; Harris 1994; Klarman 1994). ¹ Aoki (1995) describes it this way: “there is, of course, the explicit meaning of backlash as ‘lashing back’ at those who have wronged you. There is also a more subtle meaning implicit in the idea of backlash of ‘getting back to,’ ‘returning back to,’ or ‘restoring’ a real or imaginary status quo ante of a simpler time, before those that prompted one to ‘lash back’ were on the scene” (p. 1468).

What is more, the very term public has acquired derogatory connotations where institutions or services have become associated with blacks (cf. Brown 1999; Edsall and Edsall 1991). Several historians have addressed the white “backlash” as an indirect effect of the Brown decision (e.g., Bartley 1999; Black 1973). The most pessimistic scholar in this vein alleges the backlash against Brown was itself more significant than the extent to which the ruling motivated black civil rights activism (Klarman 1994). Guinier (2004) finds prescience in two Brown arguments “whose prognostications came closest to describing current realities”:

In his oral argument before the Supreme Court in the companion case of Davis v. county school board, Atty. Gen. Lindsay Almond of Virginia argued that integration would ‘destroy the public school system as we know it today’ because the ‘people would not vote bond issues through their resentment to it.’ Colgate, then president of the University of Virginia and a former governor of Virginia, testified that desegregation would ‘impair the opportunities for both races’ because goodwill toward the public school system would be ‘badly impaired,’ which would lead to a ‘sizable falling off of the funds required for public education.’ Indeed, urban and rural public schools became stigmatized as the dumping ground for those with nowhere else to go. (p. 113)

Besides the evidence presented above, several studies have shown troubling indicators that, as Guinier claimed, racial resentment has decreased support for public education in general. Demography scholars have found that as the proportion of elderly residents in a district increases, the support for public school spending decreases—but the support decreases even faster when the children in district are of a different race than the elderly people (Figlio and Fletcher 2012; Poterba 1997). And this may not hold only for the elderly: Both citizens and state governments are more responsive to white students’ scholastic needs. Hartney and Flavin (2014) found that states enact legislation promoting teacher quality in response to low performance of white students, but not black students, and that similarly, white survey respondents’ concern about school quality was tied only to white students’ performance. The proportion of white students enrolled in public school continues to decrease (National Center of Education Statistics 2015) to the point where public schools became majority–minority in 2014 (Pew 2014), whether due to shifting demographics, white flight, or a combination (Fiel 2013). Given these trends, it is urgently necessary to synthesize the findings of a half-century of race, political economy, and education research, as we have begun above.

If struggles between power and resistance over education have revealed anything to scholars of race, it is that the whole notion of the public is a politically contested battleground in which racial groups assert their collective interests. These contestations are embedded within a larger social context of asymmetrical power relations between racial groups, and they cannot be divorced from concrete battles over resources that are fought on uneven ground (Bonilla-Silva 1997; Feagin 2006; Feagin and Elias 2013). In other words, the public may be open to contestation, but access and control over it remains mostly a white enterprise. This is because, as Bonilla-Silva (2003) argues, those racialized as “white,” which can and does change, inhabit “the visible uniform of the dominant racial group” and possess an “embodied racial power” (p. 271, emphasis original).

Nonetheless, racial domination is neither totalizing nor finished (Hall [1981] 1990; Jackman 1994). The open-endedness that permits it to change over time represents the very cleavages that help facilitate its contestation. Whites have vested interest to preserve the status quo because they stand atop the racial hierarchy, whereas people of color are positioned to transform it (Bonilla-Silva 1997; Doane 2006). Such ongoing conflict is what makes institutional domains like the public a dynamic phenomenon. Education can be either a democratizing social force or a site for inequality reproduction and racial repression (Lewis 2003)—perhaps even both. Questions of the public, what constitutes it, who defines it, and whom it should serve all represent contentious matters of racial politics. Yet what we know of the public as a racially contested concept has been one subject that remains relatively unexplored by academics generally and sociologists specifically. Much discussion of the public remains at an abstract philosophical level, without considering the term itself as representing a historically specific constituency that also shifts over time, responding to political and social pressures. This special issue seeks to fill this theoretical and empirical gap by leading a discussion of contemporary racial trends in education with special attention paid to racially motivated revisions of the public, all with the intent of generating a broader hypothesis about race and belonging in the modern era. To focus the scope of this agenda, contributions to this special issue deepen the discussion on the shifting state of public education.