How Milton Friedman Exploited White Supremacy to Privatize Education

Nancy MacLean
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Nancy MacLean: Duke University

No inetwp161, Working Papers Series from Institute for New Economic Thinking

Abstract: This paper traces the origins of today`s campaigns for school vouchers and other modes of public funding for private education to efforts by Milton Friedman beginning in 1955. It reveals that the endgame of the ``school choice`` enterprise for libertarians was not then - and is not now--to enhance education for all children; it was a strategy, ultimately, to offload the full cost of schooling onto parents as part of a larger quest to privatize public services and resources. Based on extensive original archival research, this paper shows how Friedman`s case for vouchers to promote ``educational freedom`` buttressed the case of Southern advocates of the policy of massive resistance to Brown v. Board of Education. His approach - supported by many other Mont Pelerin Society members and leading libertarians of the day --taught white supremacists a more sophisticated, and for more than a decade, court-proof way to preserve Jim Crow. All they had to do was cease overt focus on race and instead deploy a neoliberal language of personal liberty, government failure and the need for market competition in the provision of public education.

Keywords: School choice; Milton Friedman; public vs. private education; Jim Crow (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: B25 I20 I24 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 34 pages
Date: 2021-09-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his, nep-hpe and nep-pke
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:thk:wpaper:inetwp161

DOI: 10.36687/inetwp161

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