You can Run, But You can't Hide: The Intersection of Race and Class in Two Kansas City Schools, 1954-1974 (ARTICLE 11) (Report‪)‬

As African American female Professors in the academy representing different socioeconomic backgrounds we explored the intersections of race and class in two Kansas City, Missouri schools from 1954-74. The purpose of our work was to situate our stories within the historical and sociocultural context of newly integrated institutions of the post-Brown era. "The assumptions underpinning this approach are that stories not only reflect culture, ideology and socialization, but also provide insights into the political and historical climates impacting on the storytellers' lives" (Grbich 2007). We aimed to make the personal political in hopes that the reading of our narratives will help educators and community members think more deeply about the socialization of children within institutions, where enduring historical and socio-cultural ideologies exist. Our dual narratives are connected to a context of assimilation ideologies and monocultural perspectives that existed long before the development of the common school. Such perspectives consist of Anglo-conformity, varying forms of social and economic middle classism, and the perennialism of the melting pot philosophy (Anderson 1992) as the bedrock of the American republic (Tyack and Hansot 1982). The nature of ideology in shaping the experiences of people is described by Adams: Ideology is seen as a set of interconnected and mutually reinforcing beliefs and values that provide members of a given society with a sense of who they are as a collective cultural enterprise and where they fit into the historical scheme of things. (Adams 1988, 4)