On the charter question: black Marxism and black nationalism

Abstract

This article brings two black intellectual traditions to bear on the question of charter schools: black Marxism and black nationalism. The authors examine the theoretical and rhetorical devices used to talk about charters schools by focusing on how notions of ‘black liberation’ are deployed by the charter movement, and to what end. The authors first use a black Marxism lens to illustrate the character of the racial and economic relationships facilitated by charter schools. Next, the authors use historical methods to contextualize the liberation discourse of school choice proponents within a black nationalist history of school reform. The authors conclude that ‘choice’ rhetoric makes claim to the black freedom struggle without addressing its most enduring commitments to social justice and self-determination, ultimately perpetuating dependency by oppressed people upon their oppressors. The study identifies the limitations of contemporary critical theory to excavate several dimensions of racism in educational policy and highlight the need for scholars to draw on black intellectual traditions to evaluate the theoretical and historical significance of contemporary educational reform.

Keywords:

• education
• charter schools
• black nationalism
• black Marxism

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank the department of Cultural Foundations of Education at Syracuse University for past and continued intellectual and communal support.

Notes

1. We would like to push these critiques a bit further than merely being a manifestation of ‘strange bedfellows.’ Given the history of defunding of poor communities of color in urban spaces, we see the collusion between communities of color and conservative education policies such as charters or vouchers as being a historical project of coercion that we both understand, yet still want to retain space to be consciously critical of these projects and collaborations.

2. See Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism ([1983] 2000) for an analysis of the genealogy of critiques that centralize race and empire in analyses of capitalism.

3. La Paperson is the avatar identity of K. Wayne Yang: http://ethnicstudies.ucsd.edu/people/faculty/yang.html.

4. Examples of this can be seen in texts like Kelley’s Hammer and Ho (1990) and George Jackson’s Soledad Brother ([1970] 1994) and Blood In My Eye (Jackson [1972] 1994] 1990), as well as in the work of scholar/activists like Arundhati Roy, Howard Zinn, and Vandana Shiva.

5. See also, Du Bois ([1920] 2004): ‘“My poor, un-white thing! Weep not nor rage. I know, too well, that the curse of God lies heavy on you. Why? That is not for me to say, but be brave! Do your work in your lowly sphere, praying the good lord that into heaven above, where all is love, you may, one day, be born – white!’” (15).

6. Abu-Jamal and Lamont Hill are working here with Fanon’s ([1963] 2005) critique of cultural and bourgeois nationalism.