“Thank God for Mississippi!” How Disparagement of the South Has Destroyed Public Schooling in New Orleans—and Beyond

Abstract

It is not uncommon to reference dire conditions in the South to make the nation appear more racially equitable and economically advanced by comparison. In this essay, I argue that the meanings and complexities surrounding commonplace disparagement of the South are not only troubling, but serve to advance the forms of race and class power ostensibly under critique. I do not contend that depictions of the South as racially oppressive are inaccurate or wrong. Rather, my purpose is to reveal that southern exceptionalism is a farce; the North has played a pivotal role in perpetuating White supremacy, which is a national problem, not a regional one. Second, disparagement of the South, seemingly premised on critiques of White supremacy, is likewise premised (with contradiction) on the marginalization of historic traditions of Black education and resistance. Third, when combined, these tendencies enable the most destructive forms of educational reconstruction to be advanced as solutions to what historically has been called the “Negro Question.” To develop my argument, I draw on critical theories of place and race; historical scholarship on the Jim Crow North and South, Black education, and resistance; analyses of popular culture, with a focus on historical and symbolic representations of the South; and a decade of research on school reform in New Orleans, where privately managed charter schools and alternative teacher recruitment—reforms bankrolled by White northern philanthropists—have been advocated as the means for refining southern space, uplifting the race, and modernizing public education to align with business. In the final analysis, I show how conceptions of place and region influence, often in unacknowledged ways, the racial dynamics of urban educational reform in the South and ultimately the nation, much to the detriment of African Americans.

Notes

Throughout most of this essay, references to North and South are specific to the U.S. North and the U.S. South. I do not wish to portray the United States (or part of it) as “the” North or “the” South. The construction of core and peripheral regions across the globe (e.g., North/the West and South/the Rest, First World/Third World) is problematic on many fronts. To streamline language in this essay, however, I do not delineate U.S. North and U.S. South in each instance.

The “separate but equal” ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson was issued by White Supreme Court justices—most of whom had roots in the “free” state of Massachusetts (Medley, 2012).

For more on advocacy of the New Orleans model nationwide, the elite policy networks surrounding it, and grassroots resistance to such reform in New Orleans, see Charter Schools, Race, and Urban Space: Where the Market Meets Grassroots Resistance (Buras, 2015).