Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits (Historical Studies of Urban America)

In a radically unequal United States, schools are often key sites in which injustice grows. Ansley T. Erickson’s __Making the Unequal Metropolis__ presents a broad, detailed, and damning argument about the inextricable interrelatedness of school policies and the persistence of metropolitan-scale inequality. While many accounts of education in urban and metropolitan contexts describe schools as the victims of forces beyond their control, Erickson shows the many ways that schools have been intertwined with these forces and have in fact—via land-use decisions, curricula, and other tools—helped sustain inequality. Taking Nashville as her focus, Erickson uncovers the hidden policy choices that have until now been missing from popular and legal narratives of inequality. In her account, inequality emerges not only from individual racism and white communities’ resistance to desegregation, but as the result of long-standing linkages between schooling, property markets, labor markets, and the pursuit of economic growth. By making visible the full scope of the forces invested in and reinforcing inequality, Erickson reveals the complex history of, and broad culpability for, ongoing struggles in our schools. Presents an argument about the interrelatedness of school policies and the persistence of metropolitan-scale inequality. While many accounts of education in urban and metropolitan contexts describe schools as the victims of forces beyond their control, Erickson shows the many ways that schools have been intertwined with these forces and have in fact--via land-use decisions, curricula, and other tools--helped sustain inequality. Taking Nashville as her focus, Erickson uncovers the hidden policy choices that have until now been missing from popular and legal narratives of inequality. In her account, inequality emerges not only from individual racism and white communities' resistance to desegregation, but as the result of long-standing linkages between schooling, property markets, labor markets, and the pursuit of economic growth. By making visible the full scope of the forces invested in and reinforcing inequality, Erickson reveals the complex history of, and broad culpability for, ongoing struggles in our schools. --From publisher description Making inequality, 1945 - 1968 -- Metropolitan visions of segregation and growth -- Desegregation from tokenism to moderation -- The curricular organization of segregated schooling -- The spatial organization of schooling and urban renewal -- Remaking inequality, 1968 - 1998 -- The road to busing -- Busing resisted and transformed -- Busing lived and imagined -- Busing renegotiated -- The long road to the end of desegregation -- Conclusion