Publications
01
A Reflection on Engaged Scholarship
Educational Policy (2021)
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Jamel K. Donnor, College of William and Mary
While the policy distractions outlined in this collection manifest in myriad ways—and our authors examine them through a wide range of lenses and analytic tools—we were struck as an editorial team by the commonalities they share. What is clear throughout these articles is that scholars, most centrally, raise the ubiquitous power of policy distraction as it relates to ignoring systems and structures that serve to maintain normativity in many forms. Throughout, scholars instead point to policy distractions that locate both problems—and solutions—in individual actors (e.g., students, educators), symbolic gestures, and taken-for-granted procedures and practices that are rooted in white supremacy, cis-heteronormativy, anti-blackness, and patriarchy, to name a few. In this final article we, as an editorial team, offer insights about how we see the voices in the Issue in conversation, and, in the spirit of curious collaboration and engaged scholarship, we invite you to think along with us.
02
White Fear, White Flight, the Rules of Racial Standing and Whiteness as Property: Why Two Critical Race Theory Constructs are Better Than One
Educational Policy (2021)
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Jamel K. Donnor, College of William and Mary
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.
03
Understanding white racial sovereignty: doing research on race and inequality in the Trump era (and beyond)
Educational Policy (2021)
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Jamel K. Donnor, College of William and Mary
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.
04
Lies, Myths, Stock Stories, and Other Tropes: Understanding Race and Whites’ Policy Preferences in Education
Urban Education (2016)
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Jamel K. Donnor, College of William and Mary
Despite being academically unqualified for admission to the University of Texas at Austin, Abigail Fisher, a White female, argued that she was not admitted due to the university’s diversity policy. In addition to framing post-secondary admissions as a zero-sum phenomenon, Ms. Fisher intentionally framed students of color who are admitted to the University of Texas at Austin as academically unqualified. The purpose of this article is to examine Ms. Fisher’s arguments against the University of Texas’s diversity policy as presented in Fisher v. University of Texas from a critical race theoretical perspective. In addition to obfuscating the fact that admission to the top colleges and universities in the United States has become more competitive, Ms. Fisher’s anti-diversity arguments also are consistent with a racial ideology and socially conservative agenda that frames people of color as undeserving of the opportunities traditionally associated with White people. The goal of this article is to not only situate Fisher v. University of Texas as a strategic project of Whiteness, but to also discuss what critical race theory can still teach scholars and researchers concerned with understanding race in education.
05
Whose Compelling Interest? The Ending of Desegregation and the Affirming of Racial Inequality in Education.
Education and Urban Society (2012)
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Jamel K. Donnor, College of William & Mary
This article provides a critical race analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to declare voluntary public school integration unconstitutional in Parents v. Seattle School District No.1. The author contends that the high Court used a perpetrator perspective of racial discrimination to privilege the self-interests of white families over students of color opportunity to attend the Seattle metropolitan area’s top public high school. This paper not only explains how the decision locks-in racial inequity in education, but also, how education policies created to improve the learning opportunities for students of color are resisted, and ultimately thwarted by Whites. The article concludes with a discussion for the continuance of race as a proportional instrument to achieve equity in education.
06
Moving Beyond Brown: Race and Education after Parents v. Seattle School District No. 1.
Teachers College Record (2011)
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Jamel K. Donnor, College of William and Mary
Background: By a 5-4 margin, the U.S. Supreme Court in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 declared that voluntary public school integration programs were unconstitutional. Citing the prospective harm that students and their families might incur from being denied admission to the high school of their choice, the Supreme Court declared that the plaintiffs, Parents Involved in Community Schools (PICS), had a valid claim of injury by asserting a interest in not being forced to compete for seats at certain high schools in a system that uses race as a deciding factor in many of its admissions decisions. Purpose: The goal of the article is to discuss how conceptions of harm and fairness as articulated in Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1 privilege the self-interests of White students and families over the educational needs of students of color. Research Design: This article is a document analysis. Conclusions: By referencing the Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka decision of 1954 (Brown I) to buttress its decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has determined that programmatic efforts to ensure students of color access to quality learning environments are inherently ominous. The dilemma moving forward for policy makers and scholars concerned with the educational advancement of students of color is not to develop new ways to integrate America's public schools or reconcile the gaps in the Supreme Court's logic, but rather to craft programs and policies for students of color around the human development and workforce needs of the global economy.
07
Toward a New Narrative on Black Males, Education, and Public Policy
Race Ethnicity and Education (2011)
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Anthony L. Brown, University of Texas at Austin
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Jamel K. Donnor, College of William & Mary
This article examines the Black male crisis thesis promulgated by the social science literature, public policy, and mainstream discourse, respectively. The authors contend that the stock‐story that the majority of African American males are ‘at‐risk’ for engaging in self‐destructive behavior or on the verge of extinction perpetuates a discourse of Black male pathology, which leads to over‐emphasis of behavior modification as a strategy for their collective improvement. Subsequently, de‐emphasis on the historical and structural role of race as a life opportunity‐shaping variable occurs, which renders an incomplete understanding of the social and educational status of Black males in the United States. As a result, public policies and social programs guided by this deficit discourse are unlikely to create meaningful change for this population, because society’s existing political economic structures are left unchallenged. The article concludes with the assertion that a ‘new narrative’ is needed in order to rethink the complex and systematic ways the social and educational status of Black males in the United States are constructed.