Deindustrialization, white flight, and inner city poverty have
spelled trouble for Baltimore schools. Marion Orr now examines why
school reform has been difficult to achieve there, revealing the
struggles of civic leaders and the limitations placed on
Baltimore's African-American community as each has tried to rescue
a failing school system.
Examining the interplay between government and society, Orr
presents the first systematic analysis of social capital both
within the African-American community ("black social capital") and
outside it where social capital crosses racial lines. Orr shows
that while black social capital may have created solidarity against
white domination in Baltimore, it hampered African-American
leaders' capacity to enlist the cooperation from white corporate
elites and suburban residents needed for school reform.
Orr examines social capital at the neighborhood level, in
elite-level interactions, and in intergovernmental relations to
argue that black social capital doesn't necessarily translate into
the kind of intergroup coalition needed to bring about school
reform. He also includes an extensive historical survey of the
black community, showing how distrust engendered by past black
experiences has hampered the formation of significant intergroup
social capital.
The book features case studies of school reform activity, including
the first analysis of the politics surrounding Baltimore's decision
to hire a private, for-profit firm to operate nine of its public
schools. These cases illuminate the paradoxical aspects of black
social capital in citywide school reform while offering critical
perspectives on current debates about privatization, site-based
management, and other reform alternatives.
Orr's book challenges those who argue that social capital alone can
solve fundamentally political problems by purely social means and
questions the efficacy of either privatization or black community
power to reform urban schools. Black Social Capital offers a cogent
conceptual synthesis of social capital theory and urban regime
theory that demonstrates the importance of government, politics,
and leadership in converting social capital into a resource that
can be mobilized for effective social change.
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