Morgan Anderson

Critical Race Theory

Final Paper

Effective or Affective? Wound Culture, Privatization, and the Neoliberal

Discourse

Despite a growing body of research that suggests charter schools are no more

effective—and often less effective—than traditional public schools, the support for the

charter school movement continues to gain momentum. Although we can problematize

our current metrics of “success” and “effectiveness,” or outline the often nuanced

polemics of charter school reform as articulated by Thomas Pedroni (2007), these

particular issues lie beyond the scope of this paper; the charter school movement is

failing to produce results on its own terms. Why, then, despite such evidence has charter

school reform gained popularity among a growing number of parents and elected

officials? This paper seeks to argue, using the joint theoretical frameworks of affect

theory and critical race theory that (1) the reason the charter school movement continues

to mount support despite empirical research that documents its ineffectiveness is the

manipulation of a “wound culture” discourse by the neoliberal agenda; and (2) this

affective manipulation of educational discourse continues to do the work of, ironically,

injuring communities of color.

In The Cultural Politics of Emotion one of Sara Ahmed’s (2004) projects is to

“attend to the different ways in which ‘wounds’ enter politics” (p. 33). She argues that by

employing discourses of pain and injury, we define and redefine social spaces, civic life,

and who is part of “Us” and who is relegated to “Them.” This “wound culture” becomes

a powerful tool in manipulating discourse and public opinion. For example, we might
easily point to ways the Bush administration employed a rhetoric of injury following 9/11

to rally support for the “War on Terror.”

As we consider the language utilized by proponents of charter schools, we

can see a “wound” discourse emerge. For example, the neoliberal agenda continues to

frame public schools as “hurting” our children by failing to produce adequate test scores.

This then leads to the recommendation that we retreat into charter schools to save our

children from such injurious trends. (Of course, “our” children are the White, middle

class, American born children which reinforces the “us/them” paradigm). Additionally,

we see evidence of “our” Eurocentric, American culture and curriculum being

“threatened” and “hurt” by an influx of culturally and linguistically diverse students1,

further enforcing that we must turn to charter schools to assert control over “our”

children’s education. On the flip side however, we can see instances of what Pedroni

(2007) would call “strange bedfellows;” many low-income parents of color are also now

placing their hope in charter schools, aligning themselves with conservative

organizations, and supporting vouchers in the face of a public education system that

continually neglects them. The author’s point here is not to create a simplistic racial

binary, but to highlight the notion that families from a myriad of subjective positionalities

—but especially communities of color—are showing support the charter school

movement, despite growing evidence that they are failing on their own terms.

As we examine the ways that a neoliberal “wound” discourse is being employed

to gather support by appealing to the public’s affective sensibilities, we can observe an

attack on public schools that serves the interests of a few, and ironically, injures many

1
For a treatment of the perceived danger of multiculturalism see Schlesinger, A. (1998). The Disuniting of
America: Reflections on a Multicultural Society. New York: Norton
more. By turning a critical eye to the questions, “Who is being hurt?;” “How?;” “By

whom?;” “Whose injuries are considered worthy of healing?,” I seek to argue, utilizing

critical race theory, affect theory, and Ahmed’s (2004) notion of a “wound culture”

discourse to analyze the changing landscape of education reform.

Wound Discourse and Charter Schools

In chapter one of The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Sara Ahmed (2004) poses the

question “How does pain enter politics?” (p. 31). Ahmed goes on to draw from Wendy

Brown (1995) who claims that there “has been a festishisation of the wound culture in

subaltern politics” (p. 32). Ahmed (2004) elaborates Brown’s work by explaining:

Subaltern subjects become invested in the wound, such that the wound comes to
stand for identify itself. The political claims become claims of injury against
something or somebody [society, the state, the middle classes, men, white people
and so on] (p. 32).

But might this phenomena go even further? Might we argue that in fact what is occurring

in the case of charter school reform is the dominant, neoliberal discourse claiming injury

for others? This seems to raise an even further set of questions, “Who has the right to

claim injury?;” and “Who gets to propose the possible remedies?” In the case of charter

school reforms and communities of color, I argue that we are observing a phenomena

where would-be educational reformers are—through standards, testing, and

accountability—setting the parameters of what constitutes a “failing” or “successful”

school, claiming injury on behalf of the affected communities, and subsequently

providing the range of possible solutions. This affective discourse then becomes the entry

point for communities of color to align with and support charter schools and other
privatization measures. In other words, the affective appeal allows for interest

convergence to emerge. Derrick Bell (1980) describes the notion of interest convergence

as the idea that the interests of Blacks in terms of advancements in racial equity only

become attended to when they align, or converge, with the interests of Whites.2

For example, we can point to many instances of neoliberal education reform

organizations seizing control over school districts of color, asserting that the existing

schools were “hurting” their schoolchildren. Kristen Buras (2011) has extensively

documented the assault on the Black community in New Orleans by charter management

organizations following Hurricane Katrina. In a moment when the city was experiencing

the greatest pain imaginable—loss of homes, family members, and livelihoods—the

“reformers” instead focused on the wounds allegedly caused by the New Orleans public

schools in an attempt to gain support for charter takeover.

By analyzing the most recent tides of educational policy form—both excerpts of

policies and the surrounding rhetoric—and current charter school reform initiatives, I will

argue using affect theory and critical race theory that the affect of the “wound” frames the

conversation between neoliberal reformers and communities of color, which allows

interest convergence3 between these “strange bedfellows”4 to emerge.

Educational Policies and Programs: A Brief Historical Account

2
See Bell, D. (1980). “Brown v. board of education and the interest convergence dilemma.” Harvard Law
Review, 93, 518.
3
Bell, D. Brown v. board of education and the interest convergence dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93,
518
4
Pedroni, T. 2007. Market movements: African american involvement in school voucher reform. New York:
Routledge
 When considering the recent proliferation of the charter school movement, it is

important to review the contemporary history of educational policy. How did we get

here? What assemblage of policies, programs, and public opinions has laid the affective

groundwork for the current charter school debate? Although my historical account of this

assemblage will be by no means exhaustive, for the purposes of this paper I will recount

the recent history of educational policy, beginning from 1983.

In 1983 under the Reagan administration, the National Commission on Excellence

in Education released a national report titled A Nation at Risk (1983), which warned

Americans of the “rising tide of mediocrity” that threatened to drown the public

education system and consequently, society as a whole, if we failed to take immediate

action. The report claimed that our national security would be at stake if we did not take

action to remedy our ailing schools. The report touted a promise to improve the

educational quality for American children, “thereby serving not only their own interests,

but also the progress of society itself (A Nation at Risk, 1983). According to Diane

Ravitch (2013) following the publication of A Nation at Risk:

public discourse about the nation’s educational system settled on the unfounded
belief that America’s public schools were locked into an arc of decline. Report
after report was issued by commissions, task forces, and study groups, purporting
to document the ‘crisis’ in American education, the ‘crisis’ of student
achievement, the ‘crisis’ of high school dropouts, the ‘crisis’ of bad teachers (p.
39).

If we re-examine Ravitch’s (2013) quote above regarding the “crisis” of public schools,

teachers, and students, we can see an instance of the neoliberal agenda defining how the

wound is manifested for the subaltern subjects (e.g. failing public schools, incompetent

teachers, “low” standards) and subsequently what the range of solutions ought to be (e.g.
charter schools, increased accountability measures, and “high” standards).

Unsurprisingly, an upsurge in standardized curricula and testing emerged following the

1983 report. However, by 1994, this program was deemed insufficient and outdated and

replaced by Goals 2000, which was proposed under the Clinton administration. As

Benjamin Superfine (2005) illustrates due to the “well-publicized shortcomings in

education,” Goals 2000 continued the project initiated by A Nation at Risk, claiming

“standards, assessments, flexibility, and accountability…could spur systemic reform in

the American education system” (p. 10). Goals 2000 offered funding to states to develop

their own educational standards and assessments. When this too fell short, President

George W. Bush signed into effect Public Law 107-110 on January 8th, 2002. “No Child

Left Behind” promised to strictly monitor and “review annually the progress of each

school” in order to ensure improved educational outcomes for all students (No Child Left

Behind [NCLB], 2002). NCLB mandates included increased testing, and if annual

progress was not met, increasingly punitive measures which could ultimately lead to

closing “failing” schools. “Failing” gained traction as a buzzword in the NCLB era to

describe schools that were harming our nation’s children by failing to provide them with

an adequate education. Ultimately, NCLB was condemned as a failure, and on February

17th, 2009 President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment

Act (ARRA) which allocated $4.35 billion dollars to the Race to the Top (RTT) program.

As one of its major goals, RTT promises to promote “significant progress in raising

achievement and closing gaps” (Race to the Top [RTT], 2009). The “progress” here is

defined as implementing a nationally standardized curriculum—in lieu of the former state

developed standards—and increased scores on high-stakes standardized testing. Although

“standards,” “assessments,” and “accountability” had been the objectives of each reform

in A Nation at Risk, they have persisted as focal points in all subsequent policies. As

Kenneth Saltman (2012) explains:

Race to the Top dangles money in front of states to enjoin them to expand charter
schools, tie teacher evaluation and merit pay systems to standardized tests scores,
and encourage local districts to dismiss entire staffs of thousands of ‘failing’
schools (p. 11).

What began as a “rising tide of mediocrity” has seemed to translate into a rising tide of

neoliberalism. By casting schools as “failing” each reform initiative since 1983 has

managed to gain support for the same—and arguably more extreme versions—of the

same programs. This, in turn, has paved the way for the current proliferation and public

support of charter school reform.

As Fine and Fabricant (2012) have outlined, although the charter school

movement began as an innocuous attempt by Albert Shanker and the American

Federation of Teachers in the 1980s to improve the conditions of public schools:

There soon came a moment, however, when the social justice motor was
appropriated and reengineered by philanthropic corporate, hedge-fund and real
estate interests. While the charters of the 1980s were largely educator run and
community rooted, the charters of today have been catapulted into a corporate
movement associated with a relentless attack on teachers and teacher unions, the
ideological critique of public education as in “crisis,” and consequent seductive
advertisements for families to exit the public sector (p. 2).

This captures the idea that through a gradual framing of public education as “failing” and

“in crisis,” educational policy makers have incrementally introduced heightened

measures of standards, accountability, and testing to frame public schools as failing. This

affective discourse has in turn paved the way for charter schools to win favor as a viable

and more effective alternative, despite the evidence suggesting otherwise.

Educational Tides: An Affective Analysis

If we examine the past several decades of educational reform, we might better

understand this rising tide of neoliberalism through an affective lens. Specifically, I will

argue that the reform rhetoric—on both sides of the political spectrum—has employed a

“wound” discourse to cast public schools as failing in order to garner support for reforms

that increasingly hurt the very communities they claim to serve.

Consider the following language employed in A Nation at Risk (1983):

If an unfriendly foreign power had attempted to impose on America the mediocre

educational performance that exists today, we might well have viewed it as an act
of war. As it stands, we have allowed this to happen to ourselves. We have even
squandered the gains in student achievement made in the wake of the Sputnik
challenge. Moreover, we have dismantled essential support systems which helped
make those gains possible. We have, in effect, been committing an act of
unthinking, unilateral educational disarmament (A Nation at Risk).

The use of a war metaphor to describe the state of public education is alarming, which

seems to be the goal. What could elicit the idea that children are at risk of being injured

more effectively than comparing our public education system to combat? Additionally,

utilizing the launching of Sputnik to allude to American competition with the Soviet

Union, this report is affectively appealing to Americans through the idea of potential

injury or harm. It is worth quoting the report again at length:

History is not kind to idlers. The time is long past when Americans’ destiny was
assured simply by an abundance of natural resources and inexhaustible human
enthusiasm, and by our relative isolation from the malignant problems of older
civilizations. The world is indeed one global village. We live among determined,
well-educated, and strongly motivated competitors. We compete with them for
international standing and markets, not only with products but also with the ideas
of our laboratories and neighborhood workshops. America's position in the world
 may once have been reasonably secure with only a few exceptionally well-trained
men and women. It is no longer (A Nation at Risk, 1983).

Here again, we see the employment of a wound discourse. By not committing to

education reform we are at risk for sustaining a national injury that would affect our

sense of national pride, our economic standing, or our national security. (It is worth

noting that this section appears immediately under the subtitle “The Risk”). Additionally,

history here is personified; it “is not kind to idlers” (my emphasis, Nation at Risk, 1983).

One is left to use their imagination to consider what “not kind” consequences will follow

if we fail to remedy our ailing schools.

In a Presidential address in 1994, President Clinton and his administration

delivered a speech on the lawn of the White House to celebrate the passing of his new

legislation “Goals 2000.”5 In the video of the event, the audience seems to be filled

primarily with Clinton’s constituents and members of Congress who assisted in crafting

the legislation. However, surrounding the audience members—who are arranged facing

the stage in a circular formation—seated on raised platforms are students and their

families from formerly “failing” schools who allegedly stand to benefit from Goals 2000,

seemingly brought there to publicly express their gratitude. The audience members who

are visible in the video are exclusively White, while the families surrounding them on

raised platforms are primarily of color. The optics of the display are highly unsettling as

the camera pans from family to family; one black mother even struggles to read her cue

cards and expressly states that this is due to the poor education she once received. The

students and their families are situated as wounded, while the crafters of the legislation

are presented as heroes who have come to rescue these, almost exclusively, families and

5
See White House Television Library. (1994). “President Clinton’s Remarks on Goals 2000.” Clinton
Presidential Library
students of color. Here, we can see Bell’s (1980) notion of interest convergence at work;

the Clinton administration is heralded by a group of students and families who have the

optics of being “at risk,” for saving their communities with this legislation, which thereby

validates the legislation as a remedy. In addition, families feel as though the federal

government has finally proposed a viable solution for their communities’ children.
Unfortunately, the narrative of the ailing public education system continued to

persist despite the initiatives taken by Goals 2000. When George W. Bush took office in

2001, the state of American public education was still in “crisis” according to many

educational reformers due to a lack of accountability and high standards.6 Under the Bush

administration, “No Child Left Behind” was drafted and signed into effect. Despite

claims that the legislation was bold and innovative, the legislation simply mandated an

increase in measurement, accountability, standards, and testing. In an address given to a

school in Indiana in 2007, President Bush lobbied to his constituents for support in the

reauthorization of the NCLB legislation. President Bush bemoaned that the current

system allows teachers to “quit early on a child and just move them through.”7 He goes

on to create an affective imagery for the harm being done to minoritized students by

stating, “Guess who generally got shuffled through the system? The poor, the newly

arrived…the minority student.” The audience is intended to believe that the public

schools before NCLB were injuring communities of color by what Bush later in the same

speech refers to as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” The presence of a wound

discourse here seems clear. By maintaining low expectations of minority students, the

public school system is guilty of bigotry. Interestingly, the Bush administration never

6
See P.L. 107-110, No Child Left Behind
7
See “No Child Left Behind: Re-Authorization Speech by President Bush” (2012). Retrieved from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-mbJznoz3I
publicly entertains the possibility that culturally irrelevant curricula or systemic racialized

patterns of underfunding could be negatively impacting the educational outcomes of

minoritized students. Here, "expectations" and "curricula" are seen as neutral. From a

critical race perspective, we can understand these seemingly neutral concepts as

reinforcing white supremacy. In his article "Education Policy as an Act of White

Supremacy: Whiteness, Critical Race Theory, and Educational Reform" David Gillborn

(2005) criticizes the notion that "crude quantitative data" by which student performance

will be measured serves the purpose of masking testing and data as color neutral when it

is in fact highly biased and racialized (p. 59). Furthermore, we see evidence of a wound

being claimed for others insofar as the problem of academic achievement among students

of color is defined by the dominant group, as are the range of possible solutions. For

example, in 2001, CNN aired a segment covering George Bush’s plan for the No Child

Legislation. A screen appears titled “Bush’s Education Plan” followed by three bullet

points. The points read “Annual testing for reading and math,” “Reward improving

schools and punish failing schools,” and “Allow parents of children in failing schools to

use tax dollars for private schools.”8 Here, we can observe evidence of these pre-

determined solutions, particularly the promotion of charter schools framing the discourse

on the state of public schools and the available remedies.

Despite the public failure of NCLB, the affective wound discourse of failure and

crisis persists in the most recent wave of public school reform, Race to the Top. During a

speech delivered in Washington D.C. in 2009, President Obama—with Secretary of

8
CNN. (2011). “2001: Bush touts ‘No Child Left Behind.’” Retrieved from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EOrlOKkZq4
Education Arne Duncan behind him—announced the Race to the Top program.9

Challenging individual states to “incentivize excellence and spur reform,” the President

announced that the federal grant money allocated for education under ARRA would be

awarded to states that demonstrate their commitment to education reform by improving

test scores. Invoking similar affective language as has been used by presidents past,

President Obama reminds us that our public schools continue to fail our children, and that

increased accountability and standards will be utilized to ensure educational progress.

Ironically, Obama attempts to distance Race to the Top from NCLB by stating “this is not

about the kind of testing that has mushroomed under NCLB. This is not about more

tests.” However, he goes on to say that increased “data” will be necessary to accurately

assess state performance. As Obama explains that federal grant money will be allocated

to states based on their performance (i.e. test scores) he states, “this competition will not

be based on politics, or ideology, or the preferences of a particular interest group.”

Through a critical race lens, we can problematize this statement as an attempt to mask a

policy as colorblind or race-neutral. Immediately following his explanation that RTT is a

competition that will be determined by standardized test scores—two neoliberal notions

—he claims that the policy is ideologically neutral. Following this, Obama suggests that

one of the options states should consider is “converting a dropout factory into a charter

school.” Here, we see the affective language of characterizing a school as a “dropout

factory” wielded to propose a charter school conversion as the best alternative. In

concluding his speech he assures us that due to RTT, “America’s children, America’s

economy, America itself will be better for it.” Here, we see the neoliberal ideology that

9
White House Television Library. (2009). “President Obama on Race to the Top” retrieved from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNbDv0zPBV4
education should serve the economy, coupled with the affective appeal that our children

and our country will benefit.

Conclusion

This paper has argued that through the use of a “wound discourse” the neoliberal

agenda continues to gain support for charter schools, particularly among communities of

color. By framing public schools as “failing” and marginalized students as in need of

rescuing, educational policy has managed to gradually implement increased

measurements, standards, and testing to cast schools as failing and pave the way for

charter reform. This claiming of injury on behalf of marginalized communities has

allowed policy makers to define the problem, as well as the range of possible solutions.

The affective discourse employed by the neoliberal agenda continues to mount support

for charter schools, despite evidence that they fail to produce results on their own terms.

As Fine and Fabricant (2012) argue:

the contemporary charter movement has deployed and consolidated financial,

cultural, media, and political resources the sell charters to Americans as a wedge
institution to marginalize and shrink the old public sector and announce the
formation of the new (p. 3).

Despite the increase in support for charter schools among a growing number of

Americans, particularly African Americans, as outlined by Pedroni (2007), charter

schools continually perform the same or worse than their public counterparts.

Additionally, charter schools consistently show high attrition rates in communities of

color, which suggests that they do no better in educating the population they purport to

serve. As Ravitch (2013) illustrates:

Numerous studies by independent researchers have found that the achievement

levels of charters vary widely, when judged by test scores, from highly successful
 at one extreme to highly unsuccessful at the other…[t]ypically, in most states and
districts, charters do not get different test scores if they enroll the same kinds of
students (p. 247).

The charter reform movement is one instance where we see “pain entering politics,” to

use Ahmed’s terms. Utilizing a falsely colorblind vocabulary such as “data,” “high

standards,” and “accountability” coupled with claims of injury on behalf of communities

of color, neoliberal reformers continue to mount support charter schools among

communities of color by casting public schools as “failing” and ailing their children. The

result, I believe, is an interest convergence between two unlikely parties: African

Americans and neoliberal/neoconservative reformers. As Pedroni (2007) argues, this is

not merely a matter of African Americans being “duped” by reform rhetoric. Instead, it is

important that we understand growing African American support for charter schools as an

agentive alignment with a cause that, at least in part, claims to serve their interests.

Unfortunately, however, research regarding effectiveness continues to mount against

charter schools, as does the number of students of color who are pushed-out of these

schools, or never enter their classrooms. It is imperative that we challenge the colorblind,

affective discourse being employed to secure support for charter schools, as well as

advocate for culturally relevant curricula and pedagogy.

References
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Buras, K. “Race, charter schools, and conscious capitalism: On the

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