“Your Father Works for My Father”: Race, Class, and the Politics of Voluntarily Mandated Desegregation

Abstract

Background/Context Unlike the situation nationally where desegregation progress is faltering, the school district in Rock Hill, South Carolina, has recently undertaken measures to increase balance in pupil assignment despite considerable local opposition to these measures and the absence of a court order requiring the district to do so. Moreover, while other districts that are also pursuing desegregation increasingly rely on voluntary strategies such as magnets, the Rock Hill school district has relied more on adjusting the boundaries of mandatory attendance zones. This article investigates the conditions and developments that facilitated the school district's voluntarily increasing its desegregation efforts through the use of mandatory strategies. In so doing, the article expands upon our previous work that raises the possibility of a new politics of school desegregation. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study The purpose of this essay is to clarify the meaning of voluntary desegregation; to understand the political, demographic, and other conditions that affected desegregation efforts in Rock Hill; and to relate these conditions to broader issues such as the changed (since the civil rights era) relationship between the federal government and local school districts on issues involving desegregation, the relative merits of race- versus class-based public policy, citizen participation in desegregation planning, and the Supreme Court's consideration of voluntary desegregation. Setting Rock Hill, South Carolina Research Design Case study Conclusions/Recommendations We find that Rock Hill's school desegregation efforts were facilitated by a change in school board elections, the current relatively loose coupling of policy venues on issues involving desegregation, the overlap between the interests of Blacks and working-class Whites in the development of a high school reassignment plan, citizen participation in desegregation planning, and effective leadership from the district's administration. The findings from this case study suggest that in some situations class-based public policy is more effective than race-based public policy, but they also caution equally strongly against making any sweeping claims for the generic effectiveness of class-based public policy. The findings also suggest why and how, contrary to the situation in the civil rights era, the workings of local politics in southern school districts may currently be consistent with the pursuit of school desegregation, not antithetical to it. Because of this consistency, a Supreme Court ruling against voluntary desegregation may be viewed as undermining not only the pursuit of equality of opportunity, but also the democratic ideal of popular sovereignty.

Using Opinion Polling Data to Replicate Non-Experimental Quantitative Results Across Time and Space: An Exploration of Attitudes Surrounding School Desegregation and Resegregation Policies

“…This issue has been the subject of many studies over time, with relevant analyses based on a long tradition within the sociology of education that investigated the dynamics of school desegregation and resegregation in specific urban and suburban school districts across the country. Analyses are of places such as Richmond (Ryan, 2010), Cleveland (Saatcioglu, 2010), Austin (Cuban, 2010), Rock Hill, South Carolina (Smith, 2010; Smith et al, 2008), and Charlotte, North Carolina (Mickelson et al, 2015), to name a few. Parcel and Taylor (2015) built upon this tradition by investigating policy change in assigning children to public schools in Raleigh, North Carolina, with their study coming in 2011, a time proximate to heated debate in Raleigh regarding the relative importance of neighborhood schools and diverse schools, as well as controversy involving public school assignment policies more generally.…”

Who Favors Magnets and Who Favors Charters? Political Ideology, Social Purpose Politics, and School Choice in the Upper South

“…For example, it is possible that Wake's more extended and successful history of magnet schools informs residents' support for magnets (Grant, 2009), compared to Rock Hill, which was less supportive. Smith et al's (2008) work documents local opposition to the district's promotion of desegregation through reassignment in Rock Hill. This local opposition to diversity efforts in the past helps to explain why support for magnets was lower than Wake, given that magnets are associated with desegregation efforts.…”

How Does Parents Involved in Community Schools Matter? Legal and Political Influence in Education Politics and Policy

“…Before PICS, the Rock Hill school board used school attendance zones as a way of keeping its schools diverse. According to S. S. Smith, Kedrowski, Ellis, and Longshaw (2008), Rock Hill's shift to electing school board members from single-member districts had created a board with members from mainly Black neighborhoods and working-class White neighborhoods, who recognized a common interest in avoiding school resegregation. This shift in the electoral system is itself an example of a judicial influence on politics and policy, give that it was a response to the U.S. Voting Rights Act passed in the wake of a 1965 Supreme Court decision.…”