White suburban parents reframed segregated schooling as earned rewards of individual merit

Evidence

The one theme that never appeared in the CPA’s defense of neighborhood schools was any acknowledgment of the finding at the heart of Judge McMillan’s decision: that government policies had shaped the stark patterns of residential segregation that produced school segregation in Charlotte- Mecklenburg. The white parents who joined the antibusing movement thought of the location of their homes and the proximity of quality public schools as nothing more and nothing less than the individual rewards for their own willingness to work hard and make sacrifices for their children’s future. This pervasive philosophy of middle-class accomplishment naturalized the glaring metropolitan inequalities in educational opportunity and finessed the internal contradictions in the meritocratic ethos through an unapologetic defense of the rights of children to enjoy the fruits of their parents’success. The spatial landscape and futuristic ethos of the white suburbs shaped a fundamental approval of the status quo, grounded in a historical narrative that emphasized the family privileges of class and consumerism rather than collective remedies for past discrimination. This suburban ideology of racial innocence underlay a predisposition to reject-or more often to fail even to consider-the abstract proposition that the government’s culpability in concentrating black residents in a certain part of the city should have any personal impact on middle-class lifestyles. With few exceptions, public discourse in Charlotte simply did not address the question of whether black families systematically relocated to the at UCSF LIBRARY & CKM on March 14, 2015 juh. — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 42

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘Grafting & Growth’/‘sacrifice’ pattern of how a stabilizing ideology rebrands — this is the mechanism by which a class/political ideology converts unequal structure into earned individual virtue.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: what did the CPA say instead in its public defenses — what positive alternative narrative of neighborhoods and ‘community schools’ did they mount?
• DEFINE: Defines ‘suburban ideology of racial innocence’ — the mechanism by which segregated geography is read as the absence of racist intent.
• XREF: connects to: White middle-class parents framed suburban privilege as earned individual reward, erasing government-sponsored segregation — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 42; Affluent parents pursue segregation while sincerely believing they favor equality — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 981; White families conflate inherited advantage with earned merit. (+3 more)

Broader Connections

• White middle-class parents framed suburban privilege as earned individual reward, erasing government-sponsored segregation #corroborates (0.97) — Matthew D. Lassiter, The Suburban Origins of “Color-Blind”…, 42
• White families conflate inherited advantage with earned merit. #expands (0.90)
• Affluent parents pursue segregation while sincerely believing they favor equality #qualifies (0.78) — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education, 981
• Local colonial schooling shapes Antillean boys to identify with whiteness and disavow their blackness #exemplifies (0.72)
• Excluded whites reframed their segregationism as a defense of beleaguered rights #complicates (0.72) — Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight, 102