‘Coming home’ to new homes and new schools: critical race theory and the new politics of containment

Abstract

Older cities in the United States have long been trying to ‘bring back’ the middle class in order to increase tax base. The poor quality of schools and the presence of public housing often were cited as deterrents for attracting higher income families. When the 2000 Census data revealed improvements in many cities, some elected officials and scholars attributed the turnaround to policies such as those aimed at transforming public housing and urban schools. In this article the authors examine these strategies as they have played out in a Chicago community to illustrate how these policies also facilitate the displacement and containment of poor people of color. Utilizing critical race theory, they argue that race continues to guide both education and public housing policy in historically segregated places like Chicago, and that racism is masked by class claims that allow the interests of middle class to trump educational opportunities for poor.