Overview

Nestled in neighborhoods of varying degrees of affluence, suburban public schools are typically better resourced than their inner-city peers and known for their extracurricular offerings and college preparatory programs. Despite the glowing opportunities that many families associate with suburban schooling, accessing a district's resources is not always straightforward, particularly for black and poorer families. Moving beyond class- and race-based explanations, Inequality in the Promised Land focuses on the everyday interactions between parents, students, teachers, and school administrators in order to understand why resources seldom trickle down to a district's racial and economic minorities. Rolling Acres Public Schools (RAPS) is one of the many well-appointed suburban school districts across the United States that has become increasingly racially and economically diverse over the last forty years. Expanding on Charles Tilly's model of relational analysis and drawing on 100 in-depth interviews as well participant observation and archival research, R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy examines the pathways of resources in RAPS. He discovers that-due to structural factors, social and class positions, and past experiences-resources are not valued equally among families and, even when deemed valuable, financial factors and issues of opportunity hoarding often prevent certain RAPS families from accessing that resource. In addition to its fresh and incisive insights into educational inequality, this groundbreaking book also presents valuable policy-orientated solutions for administrators, teachers, activists, and politicians.

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9780804792134

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Reviews

Inequality in the Promised Land meticulously reveals hidden dimensions of unequal power and influence among black and white parents as they attempt to advocate for their children's educational welfare in a presumptively evenhanded suburban school. Lewis-McCoy's rich ethnographic data highlights an entirely new style of 'concerted-cultivation' as he shows that white parents are uniquely able to 'cultivate' school administrators who are desperate to preserve the racial balance (read: majority white status) of their schools, while black parents are deflected as the 'fortunate beneficiaries' of public largesse. An original, powerful, and troubling indictment of suburban school patterns that are too often downplayed and rarely, if ever, confronted directly. --Deirdre A. Royster, New York University

Author Information

R. L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy is Associate Professor of Sociology and Black Studies at The City College of New York.

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