A Good Investment Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School

Amy Brown, "A Good Investment?: Philanthropy and the Marketing of Race in an Urban Public School"
English | ISBN: 0816691126 | 2015 | 296 pages | PDF | 3 MB
Select students and teachers worked the room at a fundraising event for a New York City public high school Amy Brown calls College Preparatory Academy. It was their job to convince wealthy attendants that College Prep, with its largely minority and disadvantaged student body and its unusually high rate of graduation and college acceptance, was a worthy investment. To this end, students and teachers tried to seem needy and deserving, hoping to make supporters feel generous, important, and not threatened. How much, Brown asks, does competition for financing in urban public schools depend on marketing and perpetuating poverty in order to thrive? And are the actors in this drama deliberately playing up stereotypes of race and class?