"States' Rights" - the Refuge of Racism

With the recent success of the Tea Party and resurgent popularity of Ayn Rand and libertarianism, I think it is useful to trace the history of these strains of thought, as embedded in the "states' rights" discourse. It is important to remember how particular constellations of conservative thought have been shaped by race related issues since the founding of United States. It is too easy to become seduced by the myth that these debates have centered around abstract, noble considerations of individual rights and protection from tyranny. In fact, the debates have always been grounded in very practical concerns about race.

Some of the Founding Fathers were famously uneasy about the issue of slavery, believing it to be cruel and inhumane, even while continuing to own slaves themselves. There was strong opposition to slavery, to varying degrees, from different quarters. Hence, there was a real concern among slave owners that, if the Constitution were ratified, or if the federal government were strong, the abolition of slavery could easily enter into the Constitution. Now, of course, there were other concerns, one of which related to the economic relationship among states. However, that economic system was founded on slavery. The history of race in America has always been entangled in economic concerns, and that is important to this day.

Up until the time of the Civil War and beyond, the South united under the slogan of States' Rights. Resentment toward federal government intervention was particularly salient during the Reconstruction Era. Jim Crow seemed to be a nice way around many of these meddling regulations. ...Until the liberal activist Supreme Court screwed everything up by mandating the desegregation of schools.

It was this desegregation issue that fueled the States' Rights movement for decades. The Republican Party as Americans know it today (or, at least until it started to disintegrate as of late) and the Religious Right that formed its most loyal and important base both took shape in the 1970s. Once again, there were issues fairly unrelated to race that concerned Evangelicals: feminism, sexual liberation, social unrest, etc. Yet, it was the desegregation issue that ultimately spurred them to action. Religious schools were told that they would lose their tax-exempt status if they were segregated. And boom, the Religious Right is formed.

Lately there has been a shift in the Evangelical community, with the younger generation becoming more focused on social justice than social issues. The biggest detractors of "Big Government" are now often more libertarian in orientation. They are worried about all of the taxpayer money being spent on entitlements and social services. They want to cut spending and balance the budget. On the face of it, this seems purely economic. However, examine the discourse a bit, and it is not hard to find racially loaded words and images, playing on the correlation between race and poverty. Tea Party gatherings are no stranger to overt, blatant racism. There is a fear that lazy black and brown (illegal immigrants) people are living high off the hog on the taxpayers' hard-earned money.

And then there is good old fashioned re-imposing racially biased voting laws.

Unfortunately, it seems States' Rights has had less to do with upholding individual dignity than reinforcing a racial caste system.

School Choice is Segregation

At the same time that Brown v. Board of Education, the Elementary and Second Education Act, and A Nation at Risk were shaping the educational landscape, another movement was emerging in opposition to these developments.  This counter-movement, premised on ideas of "choice" and privatization, has increasingly sought to undermine the enterprise of public education itself.

The "school choice" movement originated as a means of avoiding desegregation orders, particularly in southern states.  It was one loophole in the Brown v. Board of Education ruling.  The states/districts employing "choice" programs insisted that they were simply allowing students to decide where they wanted to go to school rather than mandating school assignments and implementing forced bussing.  The reality, however, was that they had devised a way of maintaining segregation of the schools.

Later, after the federal government began allocating funds for low-income schools, and after A Nation at Risk salvaged the Department of Education and inaugurated a discussion about national standards, the "school choice" movement morphed into an attempt to undercut the federal government's role in education entirely.  "Privatization" and "vouchers" became the buzzwords of the day.

In the 90s the attention started to shift toward charter schools, which are more palatable versions of voucher schools (mainly because public money does not go to religious schools).  Charters schools have become a raging fad, and there have been a number of popular books and documentaries (for example, Waiting for Superman) trumpeting the success of these schools.

All flying in the face of the fact that now there is undeniable evidence that voucher systems and charter schools do not do what their advocates claim they do.  A handful of charter schools are very good; but most aren't any better than the average public schools, and some are far, far worse.  Furthermore, even with non-discriminatory admissions policies and established under a guise of helping the neediest students, charter schools still tend to exclude the most disadvantaged students:  either directly in the admissions process or by "weeding them out" after they have enrolled.  [For more information about charter schools, vouchers, and school choice, I would recommend the book The Death and Life of the Great American School System:  How Testing and Choice are Undermining Education by Diane Ravitch (a former proponent of these reforms).  It is, at the very least, a much more accurate account of the past few decades of reform than films like Waiting for Superman.]

The reason the "choice" movement has become so successful (in terms of its popularity only) is because it is neoliberal ideology in unadulterated form.  "Choice" advocates claim that competition will spur a "race to the top" (shout-outs to Obama's education policy!) in which bad schools "die out" and good schools proliferate.  But that is not how free markets work, number one, and number two, capitalism has strangled the freedom of the market.  What choice and competition actually do in every case is reinforce the existing socio-economic hierarchy and make it much harder for those on the bottom to "rise up."  Choice and competition in the realm of education is a case in point.  The real effects of vouchers and privatization of the education system, as far as it has been implemented, are increasing segregation and widening gaps.

In fact, the "school choice" movement is a perfect demonstration of the way in which education is used to reproduce the social order.