White Fear, White Flight, White Mediocrity, and the Legacy of Massive Resistance Toward Brown v. Board of Education

• In Event: Perpetuating Inequalities: The Role of Political Distraction in Education Policy Making

Abstract

Objectives/Purposes
The aim of this paper is to discuss the legacy effects of southern White resistance to Brown v. Board of Education in Cleveland, Mississippi. As the state that “stood most firm in its resistance to the civil rights movement” of the 1950s and 1960s (Andrews, 2004, p.3), Mississippi is the optimal site for explaining the historical impact of White opposition on Black Mississippians’ present-day quest for quality public schools.

Theoretical Perspectives
Utilizing DiAngelo’s (2011) racial fragility and Harris’ (1995) Whiteness as property constructs, I argue that despite consenting to desegregate its public schools in 2016 after evading the Supreme Court’s 1955 “all deliberate speed” decree from Brown II (Cowan, 2016), Cleveland school officials continue to perpetuate an unequal public education system that promotes the racial interests of White families over the educational needs and learning opportunities of African American students.

Data Sources/Methods
Reviewing court documents associated with Shepard v. The Cleveland School District et al (2017) and James v. The Cleveland School District et al (2019), the author posits that the ideological roots of White Supremacy and the procedural tactics used by White Mississippians to delay desegregation in 1955 were not only successful in thwarting Brown II, but were also triumphant in disparately impacting the present-day educational fortunes of African Americans in Cleveland, as described in Shepard and James, respectively.

Results
White Mississippians in Cleveland were not simply successful in delaying the desegregation of its public schools, they were equally accomplished in developing policy rationales and responses, such as White Flight, to justify the continued unequal treatment of African American students. For example, despite Olecia James, the plaintiff in James, “suffering loss of [academic] scholarships, loss of opportunities, [and] humiliation…” as result of Cleveland Central High School selecting a White male student with a lower GPA to serve as the class of 2018 Salutatorian, school officials justified their actions as an attempt to “prevent white flight by giving a White male student one of the two top academic positions” (James, 2019, p.9).

Scientific/Scholarly Significance
The findings from this paper suggest that scholars committed to racial justice must begin their quest by adopting what historians refer to as the longue durée (i.e., long-term thinking) (Braudel & Wallerstein, 2009; Guldi & Armitage, 2014). In contrast to the short-term or immediate, the longue durée contextualizes events, structures, and processes by highlighting the “social continuities, the multiple and contradictory temporalities of human lives, which constitute not only the substance of the past but the stuff of present-day social life” (Braudel & Wallerstein, 2009, p.173). In other words, what remains vital and central to understanding the workings of race, racial inequity, and the dismantling of White supremacy in public education is identifying the indispensable set of ideas, discourses, and narratives assigned to White people by White people, and the nation writ large (Kendi, 2016). When used in tandem with the legal literature, the longue durée reminds one that White opposition to the educational advancement of African Americans is not always hostile, but rather never-ending.

Author

• Jamel K. Donnor, William & Mary