ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at how Ohio Magnet School (OMS) staff, parents, and students negotiated urban identity to their advantage. In its transformation from predominantly white desegregation-era magnet school to predominantly Black urban success story, OMS developed a kind of “urban cachet,” or prestige and uniqueness because of its urban-ness. Both Black and white families as well as the school exploited OMS’ urban cachet to gain benefits in terms of grants, awards, and college scholarships. However, I believe Black families understood the politics of their negotiations while white families and school staff were less cognizant of the larger racial implications. Rather than disrupt taken-for-granted assumptions about urban students or challenge the victory narrative of success that required an always failing urban other, they used these representations to pull at the heartstrings of grant committees and college admissions officers. Urban cachet became a valuable asset, and I am not disagreeing with the use of that cachet to support students. What I am interested in interrogating are the effects of that cachet as it continued to position students as objects rather than subjects in their own educational lives. This chapter looks at three examples of urban cachet and the effects of appropriating urban identity.
