Silent Covenants in the Neoliberal Era: Critical Race Counternarratives on African American Advocacy Leadership in Schools

Abstract

The intent of this chapter is to present a critical race policy perspective on advocacy leadership exemplified by a group of African American teachers, parents and community members in one Midwestern community and their adjacent school districts. For the most part, the African Americans in this particular community believed in the promise of desegregation and equal educational opportunity would be achieved in due time. However, faith and trust in that promise has slowly eroded over subsequent generations of African American families whose children who have gone to these schools, and a desegregation plan that moved away from equal educational opportunity toward a neoliberal agenda for school improvement though measures of accountability. Our project’s significance stems from the interview data conducted with these advocates, and using critical race theory as a methodological lens to present critical race policy counternarratives about what these African American community activists have done to advocate for the educational well-being of African American students in this particular community. The African American voices inside this particular school district point to ways school leadership can be more broadly defined through the actions of teachers, parents and community leaders. They acted as advocates for African American student equity and seek to hold the school district accountable against the failed desegregation and neoliberal agenda that in reality seeks to work against the very students these policies support to leave no child behind.