ABSTRACT
Despite neoliberal theory of the weak state, in practice, the state has been interventionist when it comes to supporting markets and creating conditions for markets to exist where there are none. This is the case of the charter school industry and other forms of education privatization in the US This chapter argues that charter school expansion is an aspect of urban austerity politics and state disinvestment in low-income communities of color. The protracted economic crisis has created new opportunities to unlock public education as a lucrative investment sector. The school-closing process in Chicago has little credibility in African American and Latinx communities. In Chicago, there is growing popular understanding that the privatization of public education is integral to the neoliberal restructuring of the city for capital accumulation and racial exclusion. Coercive governance lays bare the logics of race and capital driving neoliberal urbanism.
