ABSTRACT

In this essay, I focus on the advocacy of Betsy DeVos as a prominent exemplar of a larger trend among U.S. pro-market education advocates asserting school choice as a contemporary stage of the nation’s long struggle for civil rights. I argue that as DeVos championed her cause, she repurposed this right from a civil right seeking justice and equality to a property right serving privilege and the protection of whiteness as property. Engaging the foundational work of Cheryl Harris on whiteness as property, I explicate whiteness as property as a critical resource for rhetorical scholarship that illuminates the mutually reinforcing dynamics of racial and economic inequality and privilege as they operate in public life to enable and constrain efficacious participation in various publics. Discourses of colorblindness render market-based action as fair and neutral by decontextualizing people and policy and obfuscating the dynamics of power. My analysis of DeVos’s advocacy focuses on four themes: how DeVos constitutes students as individual market actors; how she presents herself as the heir of civil rights activists; how her vision of education freedom operates as market freedom; and how DeVos represents public schools as coercive government institutions.

摘要

在这篇文章中，我重点关注贝齐·德沃斯的主张，将其作为美国亲市场教育倡导者中一个更大趋势的突出典范，主张择校是美国长期争取民权斗争的一个当代阶段。我认为，当德沃斯捍卫她的事业时，她将这项权利从寻求正义和平等的公民权利重新调整为服务于特权和保护白人财产的财产权。结合谢丽尔·哈里斯（Cheryl Harris）关于白人作为财产的基础工作，我将白人作为财产解释为修辞学学术的重要资源，阐明了种族和经济不平等和特权在公共生活中运作以促进和限制有效参与时相互强化的动态。各种公众。色盲话语通过使人和政策脱离语境并混淆权力动态，使基于市场的行动变得公平和中立。我对德沃斯倡导的分析主要集中在四个主题：德沃斯如何将学生塑造为个体市场参与者；她如何将自己描绘成民权活动家的继承人；她的教育自由愿景如何作为市场自由发挥作用；以及德沃斯如何将公立学校描述为强制性政府机构。德沃斯如何将学生塑造为个体市场参与者；她如何将自己描绘成民权活动家的继承人；她的教育自由愿景如何作为市场自由发挥作用；以及德沃斯如何将公立学校描述为强制性政府机构。德沃斯如何将学生塑造为个体市场参与者；她如何将自己描绘成民权活动家的继承人；她的教育自由愿景如何作为市场自由发挥作用；以及德沃斯如何将公立学校描述为强制性政府机构。