“Anchoring” white community: White women activists and the politics of public schools

Abstract

This article discusses the political clout wielded by a group of white women who participate in “Presidents’ Committee,” an organization of Parents Association presidents in a New York City Community School District. The school district, like many urban areas, is experiencing an exodus of white families to the suburbs, which are seen as offering better resources and a safe social distance from blacks and other non‐whites. In this context of social change, white mothers who participate in Presidents’ Committee push at gender boundaries in the public sphere by professionalizing motherhood and watching over potentially corrupt political practices. At the same time, their activism can be understood as a key component of local efforts to reproduce “white” community. Through this ethnographic analysis, “whiteness” is unpacked as a construct that is fractured by gender, class, and place of origin, while remaining a resilient idealized resource with which to reproduce a black/white racial binary.