








This article presents a study of state-imposed neoliberal education reform and resistance in post-Katrina New Orleans. In Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, the city's school system was dramatically reformed with most of its public schools replaced by privately administered "charter schools:" The article examines the social contradictions created by this reform and characterizes how the city's education activists articulate their resistance to education privatization. Situating the reform within New Orleans's post-Katrina neoliberal reconfiguration, it analyzes how simultaneous processes of education privatization and racial dispossession have made the reform lack popular legitimacy. The article concludes by considering how the neoliberal policies implemented after the storm were conditioned by race, arguing that racial politics should be considered fundamental, rather than adjacent, to the study of neoliberalization in US cities.
