Marketing diversity: selling school districts in a racialized marketplace

Abstract

Schools in the US and across the globe are increasingly engaged in marketing practices to attract and retain students and families. This study examines why and how administrators and school board members in two public school systems in the US seek to market their schools. Using in-depth case studies, a socio-cultural approach to policy, and critical race perspectives, I trace administrators’ and school board members’ logics about marketing, and specifically their emphasis on marketing the racial ‘diversity’ of their students. I find that despite differences in economic circumstances and community orientations to racial inclusion, leaders in these two competitive, under-resourced, and demographically changing school districts target upper- and middle-class White families, draw on discourses of global cosmopolitanism, and commodify racial diversity as a competitive advantage for upper- and middle-class White families that leaders believe do not see inherent value in students of color. This attempt to use racial diversity as a ‘selling point,’ varies in its particularities in each district–one district acknowledges and emphasizes how all students may gain from interracial and intercultural interactions and knowledge while the other district leverages abstract notions of diversity, removed from actual children of color – a consequence, in part, of district leaders’ uniquely racialized marketplaces. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of these findings.

Keywords:

• Diversity
• marketing
• racial capital
• multicultural capital
• whiteness
• school districts

Notes

1. The global rise of politicians who promote anti-immigrant, nationalist, and racist sentiments can be understood as a response to the growing existence and acceptance of diversity worldwide and as evidence of the continued contestation of this development.

2. I used US Census data and school district enrollment data to identify the five medium sized districts undergoing demographic changes. I analyzed unemployment rates, average household income, and poverty rates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the US Census to determine each city’s economic circumstances. To identify attitudes toward immigrant arrival in each city, I reviewed newspaper articles about recent immigration and demographic change and local government policy related to immigrants and non-discrimination.

3. In reducing, focusing, and organizing important information in a compact manner, data displays help to examine data systematically – comparing within and between sites, identifying differences or patterns – and to draw or verify conclusions.

4. Whiteness is flexible and works in a multitude of ways to value White identifications and identities and deny value to cultures, institutions, and people not associated with whiteness. As Stacey Lee kindly reminded me (personal communication), schools that have relatively large percentages of Asian students also have been viewed as less than ideal because, following the racialization of Asians in the US, these schools are perceived as too academically rigorous (e.g. Spencer 2015).

5. One could argue that White middle-class students and families also may be commodified as district leaders try to attract them and reap resources from their presence. Yet, unlike many people of color, these families appear to be the ones who gain continual advantage from their racial identities. Even as their presence is valued, at least in part, for its instrumental value, they enjoy substantial leverage within their school systems.