6.0 Learning Objectives and Introduction

Introduction

In 2013, Mayor Rahm Emanuel of Chicago announced that the city would close more than 100 public schools because they were underused, “failing,” or both. Most of the schools (87%) marked for closure served Black students and overall, 80% of the affected students were Black (Ewing, 2018).

Photo 6.1

The Schools Set to Close Served Primarily Black Students

Many schools set to close were in Bronzeville, an area with mostly Black residents. Bronzeville is important historically because southern Black families moved here and to other northern communities during the Great Migration (1910 – 1970). Black families moved north to escape the restrictive and racist Jim Crow laws in the U.S. South. Jewish people, Polish people, and other racial and ethnic groups also moved to Chicago during this era. Each group formed ethnic enclaves and later moved to the suburbs. However, banks, real estate agents, and the city used racist policies that prevented Black people from moving out of Bronzeville (see Chapter 9). Moreover, when these policies were insufficient to keep Black families in Black neighborhoods, both state-sanctioned and vigilante forms of violence kept them in place. As a result, Chicago became and remained racially segregated.

During the 1930s, the U.S. government began constructing public housing. The Chicago Housing Authority built thousands of public housing units for families with children in Bronzeville. This decision led to a many more children living in the area compared to other areas. As a result, Chicago also built many schools in Bronzeville. The city did not fund the schools adequately and they were overcrowded. However,  they still served a key role in the socialization of children and provided relationships and community for all.

Since the turn of the century, cities have demolished most high-rise public housing and have not built new public housing in these communities. As a result of this social change, many of the residents of Bronzeville had to move to other Chicago neighborhoods. These changes reduced the number of children in Bronzeville schools. Thus, many Bronzeville schools were underused and set to close. However, the city did plan to close other Chicago schools that were equally underused but had more White students.

Ewing (2018) used sociological eye to understand school closures in Bronzeville because the city planned to close such an unusually high number of schools. Further,  these closures were not occurring impartially. She used several methods to collect and analyze her data to understand how the city made these decisions and how the community responded. She observed school board meetings and protests about the school closures, analyzed Chicago Public School and Chicago Housing Authority records and public radio stories, and interviewed stakeholders (including parents and teachers). Ewing studied how parents, teachers, and students organized to protest the closures. They attended school board meetings and went on hunger strikes. They recognized that Chicago had chosen schools for closure that served Black students. Their closure reinforced racial stratification because they affected Black students were more than White students.

Schools are a crucial part of a community’s social structure. Attending school can be one of the few constants in some children’s lives. While schools also bolster gender, race, and class inequalities, closing them devastates communities. For Black neighborhoods like Bronzeville, school closures lead to more affluent White people moving into an area. When more affluent people move into a neighborhood (who are typically White, lower-income households (who are typically Black or Latinx) can longer afford to live in the neighborhood and must move (or gentrification) (Pearman, II & Greene, 2022).

What happens to schools and in schools can reduce or reinforce stratification. This chapter focuses on stratification, using the social institution of education to provide examples of how it works.