Independent School Rhetoric and its Role in the Neoliberal Construction of Whiteness

Abstract

Recognizing the monolithic role that neoliberalism has occupied in the United States (US) in the second half of the twentieth century (Harvey 2005) and building on the notions of racial formation and racial projects posited by Omi and Winant (2014), Jeong-eun Rhee (2013) conceptualizes what she calls the “neoliberal racial project” (or the “NRP”). While Rhee (2013) applies the idea of the NRP to understandings of Asian-American identity in the US, this article first seeks to broaden the application of the NRP to include Whiteness. After establishing how the NRP functions to reinforce notions of Whiteness, I argue that independent schools—a subset of private schools in the US—function as fundamentally neoliberal organizations and, as such, perpetuate the ongoing recreation of Whiteness. This is achieved, in particular, through an explicitly market-based approach to educational choice in both language and action. An analysis of a recent report conducted by the National Association of Independent Schools serves as evidence for this claim. The article concludes with some initial suggestions of strategies schools might adopt to combat their tendency to reify Whiteness in those spaces.