"A Wound Not Yet Healed": Diversity Ideology and School Choice in a Post-Brown Suburb

Brown v. Board of Education marked a key moment in the struggle for racial equality in the United States (Hallinan, 1998; Linn & Welner, 2007; Mickelson, 2018). Holding that segregated schools could never be equal, Brown was declared to shape a more equal and just educational system for Black Americans. If school segregation is an indicator of a racist society, integrated schools, are expected to represent progress toward an equal one. However, we know that this project has largely been a failure as schools are more segregated today (Orfield, Kuscera & Siegel-Hawley, 2012). Yet, education stakeholders maintain that diversity is key to a successful learning environment, which contrasts with majority-Black schools (Berrey, 2015). Why then, would some Black parents reject the option of diverse schools and seek out schools with a higher Black student population?

This dissertation examines a community where many parents are navigating that exact choice. Since 1967, Black students from the historically-Black 5^th Ward in Evanston, IL take the bus to integrate schools throughout School District 65, when the district desegregated and then closed the ward’s only all-Black Foster School. Then after decades of organizing in the 5^th ward community, Evanston’s District 65 announced plans in March 2022 to open a new elementary school in the 5^th ward. As a result, the creation of this new school in this neighborhood is challenging the district’s diversity ideology and understanding of racial inclusion. I analyze interview data, content data of the new school formation process, and archives to examine:

1. How do Black families value neighborhood schools in a district that historically employed busing and school choice to create racially-diverse schools?
2. Why would Black families reject diverse schools in their district for a neighborhood school?
3. How do Black families navigate the choice to enroll in their community’s first neighborhood school since desegregation?

The absence of a neighborhood school in this historically-Black area leaves many Black students in the district to commute farther than their peers, less likely to have neighbors that attend the same school, and at risk in schools that mask experiences of racism behind student diversity (Lewis and Diamond, 2015; Lewis-McCoy, 2014). While the 5^th ward community spoke against the disparity of a missing neighborhood school in a Black neighborhood since 1979, they continuously faced resistance against opening a new school including concerns that opening a new school in the 5^th ward would re-segregate the district. It was not until the end of 2020, following a climatic period of racial uprisings, when their advocacy was given renewed attention.

This dissertation extends literature on neighborhood-school effects that often focus on urban schooling by contributing a longitudinal and qualitative examination of school choice and diversity ideology within a suburban context in the post-Brown era. I argue that the process and implications of desegregation have led Black families to distrust organizational initiatives promoting racial equity and to reject racially-diverse schools and programs.