Despite earning the highest grade point average (GPA) in her graduating class at the recently integrated Cleveland High School (CHS) in Cleveland, Mississippi, Ms. Jasmine Shepard, an African-American female, was named “co-valedictorian” with Ms. Heather Bouse, a White female, who had a lower GPA. Utilizing Derrick Bell’s rules of racial standing theory and Cheryl Harris’ analytical construct whiteness as property, this article examines Ms. Shepard’s lawsuit against the Cleveland School District. In addition to explaining how White flight was deployed as a policy distraction to justify the inequitable treatment of Ms. Jasmine Shepard, this article posits that the specter of Ms. Shepard becoming Cleveland High School’s first Black valedictorian triggered area Whites’ fear of losing the property value of their whiteness.
ArmourJ. D. (1997). Negrophobia and reasonable racism: The hidden costs of being Black in America. New York University Press.
2.
BellD. A.Jr. (1980). Brown v. Board of Education and the interest convergence dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93(1), 518–533.
3.
BellD. (1992). Faces at the bottom of the well: The permanence of racism. Basic Books.
4.
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 349 U.S. 294 (1955).
5.
Cowan v. Bolivar County Board of Education, NO. 2:65-CV-31-DMB-JMV Doc #215 (filed 5/13/16).
6.
Cowan v. Bolivar County Board of Education, 914 F. Supp. 2d 801 (2012).
7.
CrenshawK. W.GotandaN.PellerG.ThomasK. (1995). Introduction. In CrenshawK.GotandaN.PellerG.ThomasK. (Eds.), Critical race theory: The key writings that formed the movement (pp. xiii–xxxii). The New Press.
8.
DelgadoR.StefancicJ. (2017). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York University Press.
9.
DiAngeloR. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy, 3(3), 54–70.
10.
DonnorJ. K. (2005). Towards an interest-convergence in the education of African American football student-athletes in major college sports. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 8(1), 45–67.
11.
DonnorJ. K. (2013). Education as the property of whites: African Americans’ continued quest for good schools. In LynnM.DixsonA. D. (Eds.), Handbook of critical race theory (pp. 195–203). Routledge.
12.
DonnorJ. K. (2018). Cowan, Whiteness, resistance to Brown, and the persistence of the past. Peabody Journal of Education, 93(1), 23–37.
13.
DonnorJ. K.Ladson-BillingsG. (2018). Critical race theory and the post-racial imaginary. In DenzinN. K.LincolnY. S. (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research (5th ed.) (pp. 195–213). Sage.
14.
FaussetR. (2016). In Mississippi town, some fear school desegregation ruling may backfire. New York Times.
15.
FonerE. (1998). The story of American freedom. W.W. Norton & Co.
16.
FreemanA. D. (1978). Legitimizing racial discrimination through antidiscrimination law: A critical review of Supreme Court doctrine. Minnesota Law Review, 62(6), 1049–1119.
17.
FreemanA. D. (1988). Racism, rights and the quest for equality of opportunity: A critical legal essay. Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, 23(2), 295–392.
18.
GotandaN. (1991). A critique of “our Constitution is color-blind.”Stanford Law Review, 44(1), 1–68.
19.
HarrisC. I. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1707–1791.
20.
HarrisC. I. (2020). Reflections on Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review Forum, 134(1), 1–10.
21.
James v. Cleveland Sch. Dist., NO. 4:19-CV-66-DMB-RP (N.D. Miss. Jul. 30, 2020).
22.
Ladson-BillingsG.TateW. F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97(1), 47–68.
23.
Ladson-BillingsG. J. (1998). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education?International Journal for Qualitative Studies in Education, 11, 7–24.
24.
LopezI. F. H. (1996). White by law: The legal construction of race. New York University Press.
25.
MatsudaM. J.LawrenceC. R.DelgadoR.CrenshawK. W. (1993). Words that wound: Critical race theory, assaultive speech, and the First Amendment. Westview Press.
26.
MaxwellA. (2014). The indicted south: Public criticism, southern inferiority, and the politics of Whiteness. University of North Carolina Press.
27.
MillsC. (1997). The racial contract. Cornell University Press.
28.
OrtizD. R. (1989). The myth of equal protection. Stanford Lew Review, 41(5), 1105–1151.
29.
RowJ. (2019). White flights: Race, fiction, and the American imagination. Graywolf Press.
30.
Shepard v. Cleveland Sch. Dist., et al., NO. 4:17-CV-DMN-JMV Doc #1 (filed: 06/27/17)
31.
Shepard v. Cleveland Sch. Dist., et al., NO. 4:17-CV-DMN-JMV Doc#155-1 (filed: 10/20/18)
