“Suited to Their Needs”: White Innocence as a Vestige of Segregation

Abstract

Discourses that supported de jure segregated schools often invoked White innocence in the form of altruistic motivations. These same invocations are found in more contemporary school policy discourses. The authors of this article argue, based on the concept of intertextuality of discourse, the existence of contemporary schooling policies as vestiges of segregation.

Notes

¹ We use the 1950s as a cut decade in response to the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education of 1954 that ended de jure segregation.