Race and Racelessness in CMO Marketing: Exploring Charter Management Organizations’ Racial Construction and its Implications

Abstract

As schools face growing competitive pressures, researchers have investigated the increasing reliance on marketing and its implications for various racial and socioeconomic groups. Although research has expanded our knowledge of marketing's gatekeeping qualities, it has less often considered the manner in which school marketing efforts contribute to broader, social understandings of race and the characterization of racial groups. Because marketing has historically played a pivotal role in the construction of race and racial identity in American society, this exploratory study considers if and how racial identities are configured in the marketing materials of two prominent charter management organizations (CMOs). Employing critical discourse analysis, this study suggests that the focal CMOs employ a racial discourse characterized by indirect racial references that are supplemented with negative depictions of the communities and racial groups they serve. I argue that the focal CMOs’ racial discourse contributes to the reification of colorblindness, the dominant racial frame that characterizes the manner in which many understand race and race relations. This paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the CMOs’ espousal of color blindness in their marketing materials, noting how the discursive obfuscation of race affects the manner in which educational leaders imagine educational solutions and neglects the continued and unique impact that race has in everyday lives.

Notes

¹ KIPP was the most mentioned CMO with a total of 136 references. Green Dot had the second most with 67 references across the periodicals and DOE speeches. The nearest CMO in terms of references was Achievement First with 50 references, but 90% of these references were made in its regional newspaper—the New York Times—and thus it was not included for analysis because its discursive presence was deemed to be regional.

² Of the 34 total documents, 16 were from Green Dot and 18 were from KIPP.