Obama's American Graduation Initiative: Race, Conservative Modernization, and a Logic of Abstraction

Abstract

The American Graduation Initiative stands as the cornerstone of the Obama administration's higher education agenda. To investigate the state of the politics of education in the Age of Obama, this article employs critical discourse analysis to unveil the hidden meanings and ideological commitments inherent in Obama's policy discourse. Read within and against the backdrop of what Apple (2006) called the era of conservative modernization, Obama's policy discourse relies on a logic of abstraction that serves to promote a falsely “postracial” society in which hegemonic notions of education are perpetuated.

Acknowledgments

The authors are part of a collaborative research collective known as the Disruptive Dialogue Project. All authors contributed equally to this article but have elected an egalitarian authorship rotation order among and across different publication products.

Notes

Reflective Coda: As criticalists, we value positioning our own dissident perspectives, even as we seek to write this article from a consensually unified voice. As such, we wish to end our analytical commentary on the politics of higher education in the age of Obama by sharing our dissensus—the nonagreements we share as we reflect upon the analyses we presented in this article. Primarily, our nonagreements stem from the role and responsibility that President Obama might play himself as the chief executive of the United States and, ergo, primary executor of the policy discourse we analyzed for this article.

Ryan wishes to make clear that he holds President Obama responsible for the effects of AGI's complicity with conservative modernization. Yet, I (Ryan) make note that Obama's administration is ensnared within the discourses of the era of conservative modernization, just as any other policymaking agent might be. Therefore, rather than vilifying Barack Obama, the man, I wish to hold his presidency accountable for failing to exercise the agency that his position affords him in potentially disrupting the hegemonic bloc that perpetuates the conservative modernization of the academy. In short, the Obama presidency has failed higher education. And it will continue to fail if it promotes policy such as AGI—policy that reifies market-driven conceptualizations of higher education while seeking to codify knowledge and perpetuate the “othering” of nondominant subjectivities in American life.

I, Penny, agree with Ryan and add an additional perspective. As we have shown through this analysis, the complexities of discourse can be slippery and perpetuate the era of conservative modernization, whether it is intentional or not. However, intention to disrupt is not enough; action is desperately needed to interrupt the cycle of cumulative oppression and privilege across race, gender, and class. Although some may say “at least the administration is doing something,” the policy, as we have reflected upon, reifies inequities. Yet I see all too clearly the ways in which any critique of the current administration could be utilized by people with a conservative modernization perspective to tear down the current administration in order to promote their own agenda. In this vein, I (Penny) add an air of hope: that this article contributes to unpacking the complexities of discourse, and the ways in which power across race and class is embedded in such discourse, in order for the Obama administration to take the stand that Ryan mentions previously—one that does not perpetuate the ideas of a postracialized American Worker and limit community colleges to that of workforce development for an individual benefit, but one that recognizes historic and contemporary inequities, engages in explicit “truth telling” about such inequities, and works toward equity in education.

Aaron remains concerned with what he sees as the intensification of conservative modernization, particularly within the field of education that coincides with the Obama administration assuming power. Although I (Aaron) maintain an ethical position of hope, I find myself disillusioned with policy “changes” and initiatives that increasingly seem to fortify and otherwise concentrate the vagaries of conservative modernization. In particular, I remain troubled by the ease with which national educational policies ignore collective identity in favor of understanding individuals on their own (ahistorical) terms. By ignoring the historical development of inequity and their historical manifestations in our education systems, we all too easily lay claim to a position of “post”—postracial, postclass, and so on. Yet we are never fully beyond our collective histories (as the term “post” would seem to imply), never untouched by such identities. Thus, hopeful change can occur only through the rejection of the logic of abstraction, refusing the very norms that uphold such initiatives and make them commonsensically feasible. Rejection, resistance, and collective action—therein lies hope.