UCLA

In policymaking, social movements, and media, education pathways are presented as the primary solution for low-income Black communities. To examine this dominant belief, this study utilized a critical case study approach to investigate a historic Black suburban neighborhood, Twinsburg Heights, in Northeast Ohio. The study combined Black Studies, Geography, and Education to understand Black residents’ experiences in three sites: the neighborhood, K-12 schools, and higher education. Using a multi-generational sample, 46 residents were interviewed about their education and life pathways. Residents’ pathways were contextualized in the geographic history of (under)development in the Heights neighborhood based on archival documents, a local documentary, and oral histories. Findings show Black people’s education opportunity is produced and their life pathways are structured at the intersection of anti-Blackness, capitalism, and geographic domination. At the same time, Black people practice place-making across the three sites that contest power. The places they form provide alternative models for valuing Black people both as human and outside their education outcomes. Recommendations focus on how education is a tool for racial justice, but not justice itself. Racial justice requires remedies and countermeasures that address racism in sites of schooling and redistribution that disrupts capitalism in wider society. The Heights neighborhood is one case that shows how Black people have imagined and practiced a racial justice that required more than degrees.