Historicizing Black Educational “Choice”: Toward Black Educational Self-Determination

Abstract

The linking of school choice and charter schools to the legacy of Black alternative education and civil rights initiatives is a central discursive galvanizing and organizing tool for charter proponents, as it aims to provide legitimacy to the charter movement, while simultaneously coopting Black critiques of the institution of education as a means to further neoliberal restructurings of the state. In this paper, I posit there exists a conceptual and political distinction between school choice and efforts of Black educational self-determination, an approach to challenge white dominance and supremacy. The paper engages in a historical analysis exploring the history of school choice and Black educational self-determination.