The Ideological Architecture of Whiteness as Property in Educational Policy

Abstract

In this article, I follow federal policy mandates and educational policy narratives to trace the resolution to inequality that was constructed post-Brown v. Board of Education, and what this resolution might tell us about the reconstitution of the racial state despite the extension of universal civil rights. I examine how the definition of harm espoused by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown, which identified harm as internal (or related to the psyche rather than as material), elided the question of resources and allowed for the continuance of race-based inequality in education to be explained as resulting from an embodied inferiority. I suggest that what has come to be termed the achievement gap is indicative the way in which this post-Brown resolution to inequality is articulated. I examine a substratum of the achievement gap—the word gap—that has become an increasing focus of recent education policy initiatives.