At a moment when Black Americans are increasingly upheld as “perfectors of Democracy” (Hannah-Jones Reference Hannah-Jones, Roper, Silverman and Silverstein2021, 10; Crumpton Reference Crumpton2020; Ray Reference Ray2020), Sally Nuamah’s Closed for Democracy raises an important question: why are Black Americans asked to embody a kind of “superhuman, civic sacrifice” (2023, 139) to protect democratic ideals and processes that oftentimes do not serve them? Drawing on novel survey data, in-depth qualitative interviews, analyses of community meetings, and years of field work, Nuamah brilliantly documents the lengths to which Black residents organized to prevent the closure of hundreds of neighborhood public schools in Chicago and Philadelphia over the past decade. While anti-closure activism allowed Black residents to develop civic skills commonly associated with higher rates of political participation, Nuamah finds that the high costs of participation—and the low responsiveness of government—ultimately undermine Black Americans’ faith in political processes and future political participation. Thus, when schools close, “so too does Black citizens’ access to, and belief in, American democracy” (2023, i).
Racial identity emerges as a central factor for understanding how people come to develop their views about school closures. Leveraging survey data, Nuamah shows that Black and Latinx Chicagoans consistently held more negative views towards school closures than white residents. While Black students comprised just 42 percent of the student population served by Chicago Public Schools (CPS), 87 percent of the students affected by the 2013 closures were Black. Nuamah finds that Black residents—including those not affected by the policy—viewed closures as racially motivated while white residents adopted the position of the Chicago Board of Education, attributing the concentration of closures in Black neighborhoods to underutilization rather than racism (Nuamah 2023, 56). As residents targeted by school closures began to mobilize against this policy, movement spaces and community meetings became sites of political learning.
Being targeted by a school closure policy pushed affected residents in both Chicago and Philadelphia to pinpoint which elected officials to blame. Leveraging interviews with activists and survey data from the Cooperative Election Study (CES), the Chicago Democracy Project, and the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), Nuamah shows that the Black Chicagoans targeted by school closures—and particularly those who attended meetings about the policy—were most likely to blame Mayor Rahm Emanuel (2023, 69-72). This is an important finding given that the Mayor of Chicago unilaterally appoints every member of the Chicago Board of Education, the governing body that initiated the closures. In Philadelphia, Black residents targeted by closures blamed the governor and the state legislature (77-79). Thus, in both cities, the Black residents targeted by school closures—and particularly those who mobilized against the policy—learned to assign blame to political leaders with the most sway over educational decision making.
As demonstrated by existing work in policy feedback, educational policies such as school closures also shape how individuals behave politically. Analyzing survey data, Nuamah shows that poor, Black Chicagoans affected by school closures became more likely to participate in community meetings, more supportive of a public elected school board, and more likely to vote against Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the immediate aftermath of the school closure announcement. Moreover, the targeted residents who mobilized to save their schools appeared to develop higher rates of internal efficacy—the belief that one has the knowledge and skills to participate in politics.
However, Nuamah also offers a more sobering account of this activism. The last empirical chapter introduces what will likely be the book’s most significant contribution: the concept collective participatory debt. In the years following the massive wave of school closures, Nuamah returned to Chicago and Philadelphia to re-interview many of the activists she met years prior. The goal of this second wave of interviews was to have participants think about how their anti-closure activism continues to shape their understanding of political participation and the responsiveness of government. She finds that many of the activists who successfully saved their neighborhood schools harbor deep feelings of loss. Nuamah uses the concept of collective participatory debt to characterize a “type of mobilization fatigue that transpires when citizens’ repeated participation is met with a lack of democratic responsiveness” (2023, 3). Those affected by this debt question the utility of their own political participation, even when they achieve their desired political ends.
Like all pathbreaking books, Closed for Democracy raises several questions that scholars of education politics and policy feedback should explore. Future work should invoke the concept of collective participatory debt using longitudinal survey data. Specifically, do Black residents residing in neighborhoods most affected by school closures in 2013 sit out on future meetings and elections in 2020 and 2022? It is possible that questioning the utility of one’s future participation signals a heightened awareness of the costs of participating rather than a sign of future disengagement (Amna and Ekman Reference Amna and Ekman2014). Since participation is frequently habit-forming, it is important to understand the extent to which collective participatory debt tips the scale towards complete disengagement in the years following the initial wave of activism. While the Black activists Nuamah interviews certainly sound more aware of the costs of participation, we are left to wonder whether their neighborhoods–the collective—actually demobilize in the face of future political challenges or whether there is a generational “passing of the baton.”
Closed for Democracy’s persuasive analysis of the complex consequences of school closures offers an exemplar study of policy feedback in the context of education policy. Future studies can draw on Nuamah’s methods and the concept of collective participatory debt as they explore the multidimensional nature of policy feedback (Pierson Reference Pierson1993, 626; Sapiro Reference Sapiro2004). In particular, future studies should explore the feedback effects of the policies that make schools worth fighting for, such as meaningful content (Bonilla, Dee, and Penner Reference Bonilla, Dee and Penner2021; Nelsen Reference Nelsen2019), inclusive pedagogy (Bruch and Soss Reference Bruch and Soss2018; Campbell Reference Campbell2008; Hess Reference Hess2009), and responsive school administrators (Riehl Reference Riehl2009). After all—as Nuamah touches upon throughout her book—schools are more than just buildings we should keep open; at their best they are cradles for democracy.
