The Neo-Colonialism of a School District Pt. II

A hard truth is that conservatives and liberals aren’t as different as they claim to be. 

Both parties follow the same invisible laws of power, using their presumed ideological differences at home to distract from the harm they cause, both at home and abroad. Both parties engage in a foreign policy built on imperialism, war, and fascism that drains American tax dollars to fund harm abroad, while surveillance, policing, and censorship persist. 

Similarities between the parties can also be seen in their treatment of Black and Brown people. 

Despite appearing to be welcoming of people of color on the surface, even elevating some into leadership, political parties remain white institutional spaces where conformity is the price of admission. Historically, certain race-related issues, those concerning political autonomy, liberation, or reparations, have been deemed outside the approved agenda, leading to demotion, withheld support, or complete removal. 

That is exactly how Black and Brown folks continue to find themselves doing the party’s bidding, and rallying their communities behind policies decided elsewhere; the dominant power structure still holds deeply racist beliefs, including that these communities are incapable of governing themselves. 

You see this play out domestically, in cities like Camden, New Jersey, where state intervention shows up in municipal government and in the Camden City School District (CCSD) alike. Continued efforts to defund  CCSD, for example, thrive on the belief that Black and Brown parents should not be the authority on how to best educate their children, and thus their rights should be taken away entirely.

Racial Paternalism in Education

One reason statewide stakeholders want to discontinue CCSD is the belief that, while under local control, CCSD failed its students and families. This rationale drove the takeover of CCSD in 2013. According to Chris Christie, then governor of New Jersey, “Nearly 90 percent of Camden schools — 23 out of 26 — are in the bottom 5 percent performance-wise of all in New Jersey, including the three lowest-performing schools in the state.” Thus, for Christie, the state needed to act, which meant taking control away from Black and Brown communities because the state believed it could do a better job at it. 

The state applied the same rationale to Jersey City, Paterson, Newark, and now the Lakewood Township School District. These are all majority Black and Brown school districts.

The state’s original plan to improve education for Camden students was to inject competition into the education system. The Christie Administration received support from the legislative branch through the passage of the Urban Hope Act, which allowed charter school operators to take over one or more of the 23 failing schools, along with their facilities, to improve them. These charter schools were designated Renaissance Schools—publicly funded, privately run institutions created in response to the Urban Hope Act. 

The state sought to apply free-market principles to Camden’s education system. In other words, the state believed that competition between charter and district schools would incentivize both to improve their performance and put their best foot forward. But applying free-market principles to a public good meant introducing competition into a city whose schools were already the “have-nots” within a society shaped by institutional and systemic racism compounded over generations. 

Ultimately, KIPP, Uncommon, and Mastery charter networks took over seven CCSD schools. Although KIPP and Uncommon Schools are led, or co-led, by a Black CEO, Black (or Brown) representation does not indicate Black (or Brown) empowerment, as Camden City leadership shows. These governing boards are also not filled with, or led by, Camden citizens. 

Five CCSD schools were closed and never reopened. As a result, only 14 of the 26 CCSD schools remain, with the district recently tabling plans to close its three magnet schools, potentially reducing the number to 11.

History shows that state intervention into school districts targets Black and brown areas. According to NYU political science professor Domingo Morel, more than 80% of school district takeovers between 1989 and 2013 occurred in cities where Black and Latinos were the majority. In fact, between 1989 and 2016, “school districts serving larger concentrations of Black students were more likely to be taken over regardless of academic performance.”

What has taken place in Camden, therefore, is part of a much larger trend and not an anomaly.

The Employing of Political Proxies

Another reason the desire to disband CCSD is strong is that controlling Camden’s students’ education means controlling political power in Camden. Once the state controls education, it deploys political proxies to ensure its agenda is maintained and carried out. Professor Morel, in his book Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy, explained how, for Blacks and Latinos, public schools served as the entry point to gain access to political power:

“Although scholars and activists often point to the mayoral seat and seats in the city council as the standard for determining political power among African American and Latino communities, the reality is that the road to the mayoralty and the city council has often started with the ability to govern the schools… As the research shows, the rise of Black and Latino/a/e politicians in many cases begins at the school board.”

Before the takeover of CCSD, Camden’s mayor was Black, as were the superintendent and much of the school board. According to Dr. Morel’s research, increases in Black political empowerment in cities are associated with increased likelihood of a state takeover. This holds true for a takeover of municipal government, as it did for public schools. Camden’s municipal leadership and school governance board look similar to how they looked before state intervention in the city’s government. However, the takeover of Camden’s municipal government set the stage for Camden politics moving forward.

After Camden regained control of its municipal government from state control (from 2002 to 2010), the Democratic Party Machine, under party boss George Norcross, took an even greater role in “kingmaking” city leadership. By selecting city leadership through a manipulated ballot system, the party laid the groundwork for a takeover of schools and supported its preferred city leadership, specifically the mayor and city council. 

Dana Redd, backed by Norcross for mayor, along with the school board and city council presidents, supported Chris Christie’s takeover of CCSD after the state gained fiscal control of the district beginning in 2003. City “leaders” willingly ceded the ability of residents to elect their school board and its superintendent by proxy to an administration whose leader said that the state of New Jersey didn’t know any better how to educate Black and Brown children. 

It is true; Camden’s residents continue to elect Black and Brown political representatives. But what residents have—as a result of the manipulated ballot system—is representation that looks like them but doesn’t reflect their politics. Representatives who are amenable, if not outright enslaved, to the party machine if it means greater access to power within citywide politics. 

That is a political coup d’état; an overthrow of a representative government.

Because what the municipal takeover started, and the public school takeover can finish, is denying access to political positions of power to Black and Brown representation centered on empowering their communities. Grassroots organizers and regular citizens who would challenge the levers of power to stop the harms being done to Black and Brown people are neutralized because they are out-organized and out-maneuvered by a Black (and Brown) misleadership class dedicated to themselves and their people, rather than to the People. As Robert Staples shared: 

“A number of Black politicians have been nothing but neo-colonial pawns, whose primary allegiance has been to white institutions and values. Few of them have developed or implemented a single new program or policy of any benefit to urban Blacks.”

What It All Means

Improving these schools was never the takeover’s mandate. That is clearer now. The mandate was to dictate the terms of how children are educated in Camden under the guise of “competition” in the name of control. Paternalism is what has guided the state’s approach to Camden—namely Black and Brown people—from its municipal government to its law enforcement and public schools.

Maybe if Black and Brown people were the majority in these charter management organizations, the statehouse, and the governor’s mansion that control education policy in Camden, things might be different. But the thing about white institutional spaces is that no matter how many Black faces are in the space, the agenda and program of the space never shift towards liberation. Government takeover never shifts towards liberation. 

Part 3 of this series will dive deeper, beyond racism on the surface, to explore how exploitation is also the name of the game of a neo-colonial apparatus.