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This article juxtaposes two recent Chicago Public Schools (CPS) policies and expands upon Angela Valenzuela’s (1999) “politics of caring.” Given the unique space of Chicago for modeling neoliberal school reform policies, I analyze both the 2013 massive CPS closings that targeted predominantly Black communities and the subsequent institutionalization of African American and Latina/o Studies through CPS committees and curriculum. These CPS school closings and ethnic studies policies, I argue, mark a foundational relationship of racial and colonial power between students and communities of color and the settler city-state. Drawing upon community testimonies, news and popular media, and critical caring and ethnic studies scholarship, this article interrogates that racial-colonial relationship by tracing the manipulation of the politics of aesthetic and authentic caring through the Chicago public schooling apparatus. Finally, given current community struggles for education, I examine the possibilities of theorizing beyond authentic caring and towards a decolonial politics of caring.
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