Black Power/White Power in Public Education

According to master-politician Thomas "Tip" O'Neil, all politics is local. In Black Power/White Power in Public Education (Praeger Publishers, June 1998), Drs. Ralph Edwards and Charles V. Willie examine dynamics of the community power structure among racial groups in relation to public education through the lens of two recent Boston events: the selection, appointment, and eventual removal of former Superintendent Laval Wilson and the changes in the Boston School Board before, during, and after Wilson's tenure.

Willie and Edwards review the history of Laval Wilson's superintendency in Boston. In 1985, Wilson became the first African American superintendent of schools in the city of Boston, following an expansion of the Boston School Board in 1983 that increased the number of African American board members. Wanting to show that he could serve a multicultural student body well, Superintendent Wilson distanced himself from advocating racial minority concerns early in his administration. As his earlier support from other interest groups diminished, Wilson turned to the black community and began to diversify the central administration staff more than any previous superintendent. However, by this time the black community's support of him had eroded. When Wilson also lost the backing of the school board due to the election of new members, his contract was terminated.

In Black Power/White Power in Public Education, Willie and Edwards argue that Wilson did not understand race as a power resource in his community and, therefore, did not cultivate the black community which later offered only token protests at his dismissal. Also, changes in the size and selection process of the Board of Education affected the Board's recognition of black community interests.

In contrast to the claims made by social scientists like Floyd Hunter and James Q. Wilson, Black Power/White Power in Public Education shows that urban black leadership tends to emerge from a decentralized consensus process rather than from the centralized bureaucratic structure which is common in the white community. Although Willie and Edwards found that leadership may change rapidly as a new consensus emerges, they assert that the Boston black community had not fully developed the conflict-resolution process necessary for negotiating consensus in a decentralized operation. Willie and Edwards' investigation into the shifting landscape of Boston's school system reveals to what extent public education interests of racial and ethnic groups have been served during the post-civil rights era.

Charles V. Willie, a sociologist, is the Charles William Eliot Professor of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he's been a faculty member for twenty-five years. Willie was a court-appointed Master in the Boston School Desegregation Case in 1975 and was retained by the mayor to develop the Controlled Choice student assignment plan in 1989. Ralph Edwards holds a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is Senior Research Associate in Northeastern University's Center for Innovation in Urban Education. Edwards, a former principal in New York City and a former Boston College professor, previously served on the board of Citywide Educational Coalition, Boston's leading school oversight organization. Willie and Edwards are long-term observers and participants in Boston public affairs.

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