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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Education by Dispossession: Schooling on the New Suburban Frontier Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5q28d3pm Author Alexander, Rebecca Anne Publication Date 2012 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Education by Dispossession: Schooling on the New Suburban Frontier by Rebecca Anne Alexander A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Education in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Patricia Baquedano-López, Chair Professor Zeus Leonardo Professor Ananya Roy Fall 2012 Education by Dispossession: Schooling on the New Suburban Frontier © 2012 by Rebecca Anne Alexander Abstract Education by Dispossession: Schooling on the New Suburban Frontier by Rebecca Anne Alexander Doctor of Philosophy in Education University of California, Berkeley Professor Patricia Baquedano-López, Chair Both the housing bubble and the subprime meltdown ratcheted up levels of class and racial inequality to levels not seen since the 1930s. In the nation’s increasingly diverse suburbs, this has meant both new forms of interaction and new forms of division. This dissertation looks at these dynamics through the eyes of an often-ignored subject— youth. Through an ethnographic examination of young people’s transition to high school during the subprime crisis, I explore the ways in which a new economic paradigm—one based largely on dispossession—is transforming the educational and cultural lives of both very wealthy and very poor suburban youth. I introduce the framework of “education by dispossession” as a means of linking the current economic paradigm to the ongoing transformation of the educational institutions, ideologies, spaces and practices these youth encounter. 1 This dissertation is dedicated to: My parents Thank you for an inspiring childhood. I love you. i Table of Contents Dedication i Table of Contents ii List of Figures iv List of Tables v Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Education by Dispossession p. 1 Dancing with Dispossession p. 2 Introducing Parkside High School p. 2 Research Questions p. 4 Theoretical Frameworks p. 5 Methods p. 10 Researcher Positionality p. 13 Outline of the Dissertation p. 17 Nine Focal Students p. 19 1: Redlined: A History of Schools and Borders p. 22 Unmapping Race: Producing a Colorblind Map p. 23 Remapping Glenwood: Education by Annexation p. 26 Putting Racism on the Map: Fighting Back p. 30 Integration p. 30 Community-based and afro-centric schools p. 34 Anti-Displacement p. 35 Searching for a Contact Sheet : Mapping the High School Transition p. 38 2: Colorblind and Subprime: New Geographies of Dispossession p. 41 Making a Home in the Bankrupt Bank: Camella’s Story p. 43 Naming Borders p. 46 Uprooting p. 47 Makeshift Bordering p. 50 The City as a (Bankrupt) Home p. 52 3: Predatory Equity: Schooling on the Suburban Frontier p. 54 Uneven Development: Segregated Schools, Colorblind Borders p. 54 Huerta and Valley Vista: A Portrait of Inequality p. 56 Divestment: Foreclosing on the Public p. 58 Privatizing Glenwood: Sub-Prime Education p. 61 From the Suburban Frontier to the Education Frontier p. 64 4: Lock Up, Lock Down, Lock Out: Criminalization in the Transition to High School p. 66 Lockdown p. 67 Lockout p. 69 ii Lock Up p. 73 Borders and the Pedagogy of Dispossession p. 76 5. The Girl in the Mango Truck: Schooling and the Commodification of Struggle p. 77 Memo and Maria: Everyday Illegality in Middle and High School p. 78 Huerta Middle School: The Normalization of Illegality p. 81 From Much Farther Away: Parkside Teachers and Undocumented Youth p. 84 Beyond Narratives and Romance p. 87 Becoming Legal: The Stroke of a Pen p. 88 6. Education as Gentrification: How White Kids Act White p. 90 About Acting White p. 92 The Danger of (Not) Being White p. 93 I Guess His Mom Couldn’t Take Care of Him Because She’s Taking Care of Me p. 95 Producing and Resisting White Public Space p. 97 The White Man’s Burden and the Integrative Imagination p. 101 7: Post-Racial Obama(nations): Race-Talk at Parkside High School p. 103 Hope and Violence p. 105 A Note on Methods and Silence p. 106 Mr. Washington’s Class p. 108 Creating a Public, Creating (Un)Safe Space p. 109 Maintaining (Un)Safe Space, Interpreting Dissent as Violence p. 109 Enacting Violence through Colorblind “Race Talk” p. 111 Violent Stories p. 113 Contextualizing Dispossession p. 113 Racial Violence, Terror and “Safe Space” p. 115 Critical Hope p. 117 Toward a Post-Race Becoming p. 119 8. Beyond the Educational Frontier p. 120 References p 124 iii List of Figures Figure 1: Map of Glenwood High School Attendance Boundaries 1987-1988 p. 24 Figure 2: Text from a racial covenant from a Parkside property p. 28 Figure 3: Sign designed by a realtor to produce White flight p. 29 Figure 4: 1957 Glenwood School District Boundary Proposals p. 31 Figure 5: 1962 Proposed Glenwood High School Boundaries p. 32 Figure 6: Glenwood City Elementary School District Boundaries 1920s-Present p. 37 iv List of Tables Table 1: Key features of Huerta Middle School, Valley Vista Middle School and Parkside High School p. 12 v Acknowledgements My deepest gratitude goes out to the nine young people who were the center of this study and to their families, without whom this work would not have been possible. Jacqueline, Dijon, Sevite, Memo, Tasha, Talli, Caz, Maria, and Jason, I am honored to know you and am inspired by you. Thank you for opening up your lives and your homes to me and for sharing your insight, wisdom and love. I am also very thankful for the teachers, administrators, volunteers and staff members who opened their schools and classrooms up to this project and took the time to sit for interviews, tour me around, coordinate meetings and discuss their work and their students. While this dissertation sometimes shines a bright light on the limits of the work these educators were doing, this should not be taken as a critique of them as individuals. They cared about their schools and worked hard, within their own vision, to try to make them extraordinary. By and large, they approached their work with love, passion, caring, kindness and a deep concern for the young people in their charge. This work would not have been possible without the guidance and support of my dissertation committee. Patricia Baquedano-López, my chair, has been the most incredible mentor, guide and friend. I can only hope to grow into such a beautiful scholar and teacher, to treat the world with so much love and humility, and to develop the rigor, discipline and deep theoretical vision that are the true mark of her caring and careful praxis. It is a profound honor to work with her. Ananya Roy has guided my imagination, illuminating a world of paradox and contradiction, of possibility and limits, and of critical wonder. Her theoretical light and scholarly vision are extraordinary and I feel privileged to have been able to share in them. Lastly, Zeus Leonardo whose work continues to inspire both myself and my students, has been critical source of feedback and inspiration. The courageousness of his voice and clarity of his vision push us ever toward greater humanization and liberation. Numerous other mentors and faculty members were also important in shaping the early stages of this work. In particular, Ingrid Seyer-Ochi, whose methods course lay the foundation for this project and who served as a key source of guidance during the proposal development and data collection phases of this project. Harley Shaiken also assisted during the proposal and data collection phases of this research and read early drafts of some chapters. Staurt Tannock was a source of both inspiration and theoretical insight during my early years of graduate school. Jean Lave contributed substantially to my understanding of positionality and research methods, Barrie Thorne deepened my understanding of gender, and Gillian Hart provided valuable feedback on early versions of the dissertation proposal. Generous funding provided by the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) and the Spencer Foundation has also helped in the timely completion of this work. Christine Trost, Deborah Lustig, David Minkus, and Larry Rosenthal at the ISSI provided feedback throughout the data collection and early phases of writing and analysis. Their insight and support were invaluable and I could not have done this without them. Judith Warren Little also assisted in the very early phases of this research as a part of the Spencer Foundation Training Grant. The staff in the Graduate School of Education have cleared roadblocks, navigated bureaucracy, braved crumbling infrastructure, and dug up funding to make my work vi possible. I am particularly indebted to Deborah Friedman, Ilka Williams, and Rosandrea Garcia, and Karen Sullivan for their kind, creative, and constant support. The faculty and staff at numerous campus centers have aided in my development and given me the opportunity to contribute to important work along the way. Lisa García Bedolla, Rosaisela Rodríguez, Verónica Vélez, Christina Chong, Alejandro Jimenez Gonzalez at the Center for Latino Policy Research continue to generate deep dialogue and policy-relevant research on issues immediately relevant to Latino communities. Kysa Nygreen, Patricia Sánchez, Soo-Ah Kwon, Andrea Dyrness, and Collette Cann forged the Center for Popular Education and Participatory Research as young graduate students, deeply shaping my early work. And Andrew Furco and Mary Sue Ammon provided early support and guidance at the Center for Service Learning Research and Development. I am also thankful for my colleagues and friends at New College and the Center for Critical Environmental and Global Literacy, Sudia Paloma, Shefali Shah, Jeremiah Jeffries, Laura Prival and Inji Elghannam, for the vibrant, critical engaged educational work they do.