School Integration in the New Jim Crow: Opportunity or Oxymoron?

Abstract

In this article, I consider the limitations of school integration research that overlooks Black research perspectives, White policy interests, and the paradox of race in the New Jim Crow—America’s system of racial caste in the post–Civil Rights Era. Applying critical race theory as critical policy analysis, I discuss the importance of theorizing race in school integration research and recentering Black citizenship and equality as fundamental goals of school desegregation. I conclude with a call to desegregate the research on school desegregation through critical policy analyses that deconstruct liberal education policy agendas, create new policy knowledge, and reject the institutionalization of Black educational inferiority.