Making the Unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and Its Limits

by Ansley T. Erickson

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.

Genres: Education, Nonfiction, History

416 pages, Hardcover

First published March 22, 2016

About the author

Ansley Erickson is Associate Professor of History and Education at Columbia University.

Reviews

[Nels · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book discusses that educational inequality within Nashville involved the spatial organization of schooling, the curricular organization of schooling, and the public and legal narrative claiming to characterize the inequality within the city. Although Nashville at one point topped the charts for statistical desegregation, those gains did not translate broadly to equal experiences for white, black, and brown children. The book concludes that the contemporary forces creating segregated schools are more obscure but nonetheless damaging to the democratic education of today's students. All that to say, the author helpfully points out that educational inequality is not the sole cause of white flight or a single court ruling but the confluence of educational, housing, and tax policy along with the public narrative labeling societal experiences. Overall, the author effectively illuminated the multiple causes of educational inequality by centering the story around what occurred in Nashville, Tennessee. The book was well-sourced, and as to be expected, the writing was heavily academic. I gave three stars because some of the writing in the middle seemed to less than fluid. I liked the book and would recommend it to others who want to learn about the history of education in the United States.

[John Ward · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quality book on the complexities of school desegregation in Nashville that show larger trends and raises many questions. The writer spoke to a class of mine in summer of 2015, then I saw her on a plane to San Diego. Will read her next publication.

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating.