Public schools are one of the last remaining universal public goods in the United States—and are also some of our most unequal institutions. In
Unsettling Choice, Ujju Aggarwal explores how the expansion of choice-based programs led to greater inequality and segregation in a gentrifying New York City neighborhood during the years following the Great Recession, mobilizing mechanisms rooted in market logics to recruit families with economic capital on their side while solidifying a public sphere that increasingly resembled the private. Here, Aggarwal is joined in conversation with Sabina Vaught.
Episode references:
Ruth Wilson Gilmore
Christina Heatherton
Cindy Katz
Selma James
João Costa Vargas
Praise for the book:
“A must-read to understand the racialized violence inherent within one of the most fundamental aspects of education in the United States: the logic of choice.”
—Damien Sojoyner
“Read this book, and be moved and transformed.”
—Sabina Vaught
What is University of Minnesota Press?
Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.