Domingo Morel’s Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy makes this simple assertion about what Morel calls “conservative logic”: that not only are Blacks “not fit to lead their own communities but that they are not responsible stewards of their own children’s education and well-being” (131). Today, this shift, from public authority to private control under the guise of market efficiency and accountability, is called neoliberalism. But in the case of Black spaces, neoliberalism has become a technocratic term to obscure the racial politics that underlies the particular ways in which democracy and equity is applied to Black spaces and bodies. Morel’s work shows that the practice of school district takeovers; and alongside of it, the imposition of “emergency management” of Black jurisdictions like Flint, Michigan, rests not on the imperatives of neoliberalism as is often asserted but rather on a much longer and toxic history of racial politics. Takeover delivers...
University of California Press