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‘Race was a motivating factor’: re-segregated schools in the American states

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2020

Richard Johnson Open the ORCID record for Richard Johnson [Opens in a new window]  and
Desmond King
Richard Johnson*
Affiliation:
Department of Politics, Philosophy, & Religion, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Desmond King
Affiliation:
Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
*
CONTACT Richard Johnson [email protected]
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Abstract

During the Obama presidency, Republicans made major gains in state legislative elections, especially in the South and the Midwest. Republicans’ control grew from 13 legislatures in 2009 to 32 in 2017. A major but largely unexamined consequence of this profound shift in state-level partisan control was the resurgence of efforts to re-segregate public education. We examine new re-segregation policies, especially school district secession and anti-busing laws, which have passed in these states. We argue that the marked reversal in desegregation patterns and upturn in re-segregated school education is part of the Republican Party's anti-civil rights and anti-federal strategies, dressed up in the ideological language of colour-blindness.

Keywords

Segregationschool integrationpublic educationracial policypartisanshiplocal governance
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy , Volume 35 , Issue 1: SI: Recent Social Policy in Canada and the United States , February 2019 , pp. 75 - 95
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

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Footnotes

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

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