This book compares two challenges made to American public school
curricula in the 1980s and 1990s. It identifies striking similarities
between proponents of Afrocentrism and creationism, accounts for their
differential outcomes, and draws important conclusions for the study of
culture, organizations, and social movements.
Amy Binder gives a brief history of both movements and then describes
how their challenges played out in seven school districts. Despite their
very different constituencies--inner-city African American cultural
essentialists and predominately white suburban Christian
conservatives--Afrocentrists and creationists had much in common. Both
made similar arguments about oppression and their children's well-being,
both faced skepticism from educators about their factual claims, and
both mounted their challenges through bureaucratic channels. In each
case, challenged school systems were ultimately able to minimize or
reject challengers' demands, but the process varied by case and type of
challenge. Binder finds that Afrocentrists were more successful in
advancing their cause than were creationists because they appeared to
offer a solution to the real problem of urban school failure, met with
more administrative sympathy toward their complaints of historic
exclusion, sought to alter lower-prestige curricula (history, not
science), and faced opponents who lacked a legal remedy comparable to
the rule of church-state separation invoked by creationism's opponents.
Binder's analysis yields several lessons for social movements research,
suggesting that researchers need to pay greater attention to how
movements seek to influence bureaucratic decision making, often from
within. It also demonstrates the benefits of examining discursive,
structural, and institutional factors in concert.
