People acting like the college admissions tour is an information process when it is a sales process. There are many reasons why a woman would feel empowered to interrogate two Native boys, to summon the police and to police the tour: she implied she had a valuable exit threat
The exit threat works in the nation-state context but scholars like Lewis-McCoy have also shown how it plays out in schools. Because their whiteness is valuable, white parents is the threat of their leaving a school setting to exert control over the school sup.org/books/title/?i…
In k-12 that looks like threatening to pull your kids out of school and, more importantly, the school principal or superintendent valuing that threat enough to concede to parnetal demands. Surprisingly, non-white parents threat to exit isn't similarly valued. 🙄
In highered this looks like what we saw in Colorado, except the threat was directed at the police instead of an administrator, probably owing to the fact that the parent wasn't sure of any more direct powerful authority. But the outcome was the same.
The campus tour is a way to promote to parents that their children will be safe. That's why the campus police responded and instead of dismissing the parent's claims as ridiculous they sought to control the Native boys. If the white parents exits it is a material problem.
Because the idea of safety is racialized the nature boys' safety is never a concern for the school. That's because the corporate residential university has to make an implicit promise that they will protect, first and foremost, the values and property of white families.
And there is almost no more valuable white property than the prospects of their children. Those Native boys never stood a chance. Anyway, burn it all to the ground.
That mother was making a specific challenge to the uni: what will you do here to provide my specific idea of safety for my (white) child? And the campus police answered exactly how enrollment management would dictate. All this "omg I would never on my tour" may be true but...
