Urban Policy Without Broaching the Topic of Race, Really? Response to David Imbroscio’s “Urban Policy as Meritocracy: A Critique”

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size

Notes

Imbroscio uses this term to refer to policies adopted by political liberals in the contemporary American sense. However, this label is applied inconsistently in the article. For example, the No Child Left Behind policies that were championed by George W. Bush during his governorship in Texas and while he was president became the centerpiece of Republican Party education reforms that linked standardized testing with other initiatives aimed at expanding charter schools and school choice. These policies were continued by the Obama administration (Lipman, ), but it is an obfuscation to define them as liberal urban policies.

Critiques of governance models adopted by anchor institutions extend to the cooperatives that form the basis of the Cleveland Model discussed by Imbroscio. For instance, Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives have been criticized for having management and leadership structures superimposed on them by local foundations, paying substandard wages, offering no union protections to workers, and placing whites rather than minorities in leadership and decision-making positions (Schepartz, ; Grevatt, )

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Robert Mark Silverman

Robert Mark Silverman is a Professor and the PhD Program Director in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at the University at Buffalo. His research focuses on community development, the nonprofit sector, community-based organizations, education reform, and inequality in inner city housing markets. He has published in Journal of Urban Affairs, Urban Affairs Review, Urban Studies, Urban Education, Community Development, Journal of Black Studies, The Review of Black Political Economy, Housing Policy Debate and other peer reviewed journals. He is co-author of Qualitative Research Methods for Community Development (2015), and co-editor of Schools and Urban Revitalization: Rethinking Institutions and Community Development (2013) and Fair and Affordable Housing in the US: Trends, Outcomes, Future Directions (2011). He is also editor of Community-Based Organizations: The intersection of Social Capital and Local Context in Contemporary Urban Society (2004).