Pushout (13 page)

“I Had to Defend Myself”

For Paris in New Orleans, it was the assault on her human dignity.

“I didn't have physical altercations up until probably my freshman year in high school,” she said. “That's when I learned that the
playground was a lot different and I was dealing with people with different mentalities and stuff. I never did mostly have a problem, but my thing was different because I transitioned through school. So I started my transition at sixteen, and I went all the way through graduation year still transitioning . . . but of course, further along my transition than I was at sixteen. So it was a lot different because once you became a junior and a senior—of course I was at the school all four years, so a lot of people had got to know who I was . . . so it wasn't nothing new to those particular students. But I did always have problems with the freshmen that were coming into the school because now they're new to the school, they're new to me as well, and now when I assume that everyone had gotten used to Paris, here come these new individuals that are just coming out of middle school, fresh out of middle school, and don't know how high school operates and stuff like that. So I had to punch a few people down within school. I always had to make an example out of one or two people. Eventually, the rest of the freshman class realized, ‘Well, maybe Paris is not the one to play with' . . .

“It was mostly because, again, mostly feeling like I had to defend myself,” Paris continued. “Because my mama always told me, like, people do to you what you
allow
them to do to you. So maybe I mix-messaged what my mama was telling me, but you know . . . well, then I'm not going to
allow
them to do
anything
. That's the mentality I grew up [with]. Don't get me wrong, my mama is very wise. She taught me a lot, but me as Paris, I took the message a little too far. I put my own little twist on it. . . . I just thought I had to fight. My mama gave me the freedom to go and fight and that's what I did. My mama gave me a green light, like, ‘You better fight . . . don't you let nobody do this or that to you.' So I kinda, like, waited . . . I wasn't the type to go start mess, even though my mama gave the permission that it was okay to fight. I never did went looking for it, but God, did it come knocking at my front door!”

The permission to fight—granted by both Paris and her mother—was a matter of personal safety. It's important to note that Paris was responding to bullying. That her physical safety was in danger is a statement both about the prevailing culture of oppression around her gender identity and about the absence of protection in schools for students who are transitioning their gender during these adolescent years. Paris was triggered by her inability to discover and live in her own body without judgment.

Disciplining Appearance

In September 2013, seven-year-old Tiana Parker was sent home from school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for wearing dreadlocks. Her small charter school had a dress code, which stated, “Hairstyles such as dreadlocks, afros, mohawks, and other faddish hairstyles are unacceptable.”
⁶⁸
A few months later that year, twelve-year-old Vanessa VanDyke in Orlando, Florida, faced expulsion from her parochial school for wearing her hair in a large Afro.
⁶⁹
Together, these cases raised a collective eyebrow among girls whose hair is no stranger to being the object of discussion, regulation, and, too often, ridicule. While neither of these girls was ultimately expelled for her hairstyle, because of decisions made either by the parents or by the school, these cases elevated the importance of protecting Black girls from policies that threaten to undermine their ability to learn in good schools simply because of
who they are
—not for something they have done.

The politicization (and vilification) of thick, curly, and kinky hair is an old one. Characterizations of kinky hair as unmanageable, wild, and ultimately “bad hair” are all signals (spoken and unspoken) that Black girls are inferior and unkempt when left in their natural state. Dress codes in the United States are arbitrary, and in general they are sexist and reinforce the practice of slut shaming. They can also reinforce internalized oppression about the quality of natural hairstyles on people of African descent.
While personal taste may lead many of us away from wearing leggings or dreadlocks at school, any school policy that is designed to keep girls from being “too distracting” for boys or presenting in ways that are deemed too ethnic is at minimum sexist and inappropriate.

Though often used to further objectify Black girls or police their sexuality, which I discuss in Chapter 3, school dress codes have also become tools for disciplining Black girls. Rules about how they wear their hair and clothes become grounds for punishment, rather than tools to establish a uniform student presentation. Young women in New Orleans attested to this.

“I was in the eleventh [grade],” said Gina. “They made you leave school because you didn't have on the right shoes, you didn't have on a belt . . . for real, you're going to stop my education because I don't have this stuff?”

“Tattoos,” Nicole, who was also educated in New Orleans schools, chimed in.

“Because it's a distraction,” Gina said, mimicking the voice of an adult. “It's a
distraction
.”

I asked the group to describe what they had observed as schools' responses when girls arrived in clothes that did not adhere to the dress code.

“They turn you around,” Gina said.

“It's like no other way you can get in class,” Nicole agreed.

Dress codes do more than slut-shame Black girls. They marginalize and criminalize them. They cast them as deviant and reinforce social ideas about Black girls' identity in a way that can be very destructive. Getting turned away from school for not wearing the “proper” clothing—however that is defined—feels unconscionable in a society that, at least on the surface, declares that education is a priority. This practice is primarily about maintaining a social order that renders girls subject to the approving or disapproving gaze of adults. It is grounded in respectability politics that have very little to do with education and more to do with
socialization. So when Black girls respond to this treatment with cries of discrimination, it's important to see them as disruptors of oppression, not as defiant, willfully or otherwise.

The culture of zero tolerance has seeped into nearly every corner of school discipline, creating rigid, unforgiving policies aimed at a demographic—kids—whose existence is defined by growth, development, and change. Recall that Black girls were not at the center of the debate on public safety when zero-tolerance policies were being passed, so little thought went into how these new policies might uniquely affect them. Black girls' “attitudes” and “defiant” behaviors were often in response to feeling disrespected—by institutions that constructed conditions that facilitate failure (e.g., increased surveillance, no recess, and punitive discipline policies) and by individuals who triggered them with words and/or actions.

While observing at Small Alternative High in California, I watched teachers skillfully engage girls who might have otherwise been dismissed as “throwing shade” or as having an “attitude problem” under other circumstances.

In one instance, a girl let out a few sighs and then settled her head comfortably into her folded arms on the table, resting there for approximately five minutes. Finally a teacher walked past her and asked what was wrong. She lifted her head and shared details about being “tired and hungry.” The exchange between the student and her teacher was neither contentious nor judgmental.

The teacher, a Black woman, simply stated that the young woman's expressed fatigue was “all in [her] mind,” to which the student replied, “Really? I thought it was my body.”

I watched as the teacher pursed her lips, put a hand on her hip, and stared at the girl. In return, the girl raised her eyebrows and shrugged. On the surface, it appeared to be an “attitude” for an “attitude”—but it was more than the stereotypical, negative perceptions associated with the expressions of Black girls and women. This was a slightly comical exchange of information, and from
what I observed, it was based on a preestablished relationship in which the student trusted this teacher. A less attuned, empathic teacher could have easily caused the interaction to devolve into conflict and perhaps result in dismissal from the classroom. Yet the exchange, while playful, resulted in the young woman getting a snack, voicing her frustrations about being required to focus on her work, and then returning to her desk. No harm, no foul.

Across the country, Black girls have shared narratives that reflect their own understanding of the rules that push them from school and the behaviors that have rendered them increasingly vulnerable to the expanded use of exclusionary discipline. The examples in this chapter also show how Black girls often interpret responses to their perceived attitude and have normalized a disregard of Black femininity. The experiences related in this chapter have mostly focused on attitudes and violent behaviors as expressions of how girls adapt to this disregard. Just as common, perhaps even more so, is adapting to a disregard associated with the sexual and gender expression of Black girls.

3

JEZEBEL IN THE CLASSROOM

             
Tra-la-la boom-di-yay

             
I met a boy today

             
He gave me 50 cents

             
To go behind the fence

             
He knocked me on the ground

             
And pulled my panties down

             
He counted 1-2-3

             
And stuck it into me

             
My mother was surprised

             
To see my belly rise

             
My father jumped for joy

             
Because it was a boy

S
ee, my boyfriend, he's older than me,” said fourteen-year-old Diamond. “He's twenty-five. He's very older than me.”

On most evenings—and even during some days—Diamond could be seen strolling the streets for sex work or spending time with a much older man, the man she referred to as her “boyfriend.” For Diamond, the time that she was spending out of school was important to her ability to maintain her relationship with this man, and a critical part of her participation in the sex industry.

“When you're a prostitute, 'cause I have been one for a couple of months now, like, when you're a prostitute, you
gotta
stop going to
school because it's something that you have to do all day. And if you don't do it all day, you gotta hang out with your boyfriend all day, or like your pimp all day. You have to. You have to. All day. And if you don't . . . you could still go to school for like, a couple of months, you could still get your education . . . that's if he lets you. But usually, the girls that's in the sex industry stop going to school.”

If he lets you.

Diamond was aware of the power dynamic between her and her pimp. For Diamond, who floated between cities in California, there was often no personal choice regarding whether or not to attend school. Under the duress of this older man, she followed orders. Though she was in contact with the juvenile justice system as a result of “prostitution,” there is no such thing as a child prostitute (more on this point later). In this relationship, only he had the ability to determine whether or not she attended school—and most of the time, according to Diamond, she had to stay with him.

One day, after feeling alienated and tired of constantly being challenged to fight, Diamond wrote in bold letters on the wall: “I hate the bitches at this school.” Administrators and teachers at Diamond's school had missed that she was being trafficked and that, consequently, the decision whether or not to attend school was often not her own. They had also missed that other girls were teasing her after one of them had spotted Diamond “on the track.” According to Diamond, the writing on the wall resulted in her immediate expulsion.

Diamond, who had previously been in contact with the criminal legal system, had been ordered by the juvenile court to attend school. The expulsion rendered her without a permanent learning community. Without a school to attend, Diamond was in violation of this order. She resorted to being with her “boyfriend” all day, every day.

“Girls are ride or die for their boyfriend,” Diamond said. “So [the police] try to get her too. . . . Usually, Black girls, they have older boyfriends . . .'cause their boyfriends have a car and they hanging out all day and driving around and stuff like that.”

Diamond's eyes were wide and flanked with cascading false eyelashes. Combined with her long hair weave, they might suggest that she was a little older than she actually was. But when she smiled, there was a youthful quality. Her skin, her teeth, her mannerisms—they belonged to a child, one who had been through too much, too soon. After a few months of truancy and being “on the run,” law enforcement finally found her. She was arrested and confined to a secure detention facility.

“The pimp or ‘boyfriend' that is keeping you from going to school, does he have an education?” I asked.

“Mm-hmm,” Diamond said, nodding. “My boyfriend, he graduated from college.” She looked proud.

“So why wouldn't he support that for you?” I asked.

“Well, he tried to . . . like tell me, go back . . . go back home. But I stayed with him because I love him . . . Now look at me,” she said, looking around the juvenile detention classroom where we were seated. Then she collected her thoughts, raised her head, and said, “My boyfriend's different.”

Different
, I thought.
Really?

Her eyes really tried to convince me—and herself—until they started to well up.

“Well, okay,” I said, in an admittedly halfhearted tone. “But in general, if you see a dude who's got his education, but he's like, ‘No, you can't have yours,' how does that make you feel?”

“I don't know,” she said, lowering her eyes to the table.

“Do you think that's fair?” I asked.

“Well, not really. But like, I've known girls who still go to school and do the sex industry. In the beginning, she'll probably still go to school for a couple of months, but when the students start finding
out she's doing it . . .'cause people find out. . . . They're on the bus. They see you on the track.”

“Like people from your school can see you?”

“Yeah,” she said. “After [kids] find out, [girls] just stop going to school 'cause they feel like, ‘Oh, nobody needs to know.' . . . They see your face. They know you.”

What Diamond had to say about what keeps girls like her out of school was insightful. Her own experience with bullying certainly informed her reaction to school—and why she might think that it was necessary to avoid seeing other students who may have spotted her “working.” My conversations with other girls who were victims of sex trafficking revealed that the primary motivating factor for being in the sex industry was the need for money. For many girls who were actively “on the street,” school stopped being a priority, especially if they had an older man reinforcing the idea that her greatest attribute was her sexuality. If a girl attends school, there is another influence in her life. In general, it's a game of control, and only one person can have it: the pimp. Diamond's use of the phrase “if he lets you” was evidence of that. She, like other girls I'd spoken with, was relatively clear that in addition to not having full control over her time when she's on the street, there was a financial incentive—something school doesn't immediately provide.

“It's the money,” Diamond said. “'Cause we think like, ‘Oh . . . if I go out to work today, I can get this, this, and this. If I go out to work today, I can get my nails and stuff done.' . . . It's usually about clothes and hair done and stuff.”

Diamond, like other girls who come from poverty, understood that education is a tool for economic success, but she was also feeling pressured to find a way out of poverty sooner rather than later, one of many outcomes associated with being prematurely cast as an adult. Along with “working” came an immediate gratification of material goods that otherwise seemed far out of reach—hair
and nails done, new shoes or clothes, and in some cases a much better living environment. Staying in school, even if it could produce these things later in life, required a longer investment of time in order to reap these sorts of benefits. Children from middle-class or higher-income families often take for granted the social and material investments (manicures, new shoes, new clothes, extracurricular activities) that reflect the inherent commercialism of a capitalist society. These are influences that reach all children. Choosing a life on the street is ultimately about survival—and that's what schools are up against. When girls in the sex trade are removed from school or sent the signal that their presence in school is problematic, they are being handed over to predators. Essentially, schools are throwing them away.

In New Orleans, where girls are trafficked in strip clubs, commercial-front brothels, truck stops, hotels, and over the Internet, Black girls are at increased risk of sexual exploitation.
¹
The first-ever report on human trafficking in Louisiana revealed there was a significant increase in the reported number of sex trafficking incidents between 2012 and 2013.
²
In New Orleans, a city that is 59 percent Black, Paris understood Diamond's plight and the similar dangers of being trafficked for sex in Louisiana versus California.
³

“I was out in California and they have this one [area],” Paris said. “That's where a lot of the girls that perform sex work hang out at, and I tell you, it was just so mind-blowing to me to see that not only were they out there like damn near twenty-four hours around the clock, but how
young
a lot of those girls were that were trafficked. Because one thing that California does have is pimps. That is real. Houston, Texas, has pimps. They are real. In New Orleans, most girls that are trafficked are trafficked
through
our town . . . the girls that work here in New Orleans are [mostly] independent workers. But for the most part, those girls in California, I have witnessed it, I have outreached to a lot of those girls on the stroll, and they are nervous to even talk to you,
because their [pimps] watch other [pimps'] girls while he's out. Just like the prostitutes hang together, the [pimps] hang together. They know whose girl belongs to who, how many they have out there working, so it ranges from the ages of ten, eleven, twelve all the way up to fortysomething years old. . . . Even girls that's twenty-three or thirty . . . ‘if he lets me,' that is the thing.”

There it was again:
if he lets me
.

A recent report,
The Sexual Abuse to Prison Pipeline
, highlighted the way in which girls, particularly girls of color, are criminalized as a result of their sexual and physical abuse. Nationwide, girls who are victims of sex trafficking are routinely in contact with the criminal legal system for truancy and placed in detention and/or child welfare facilities.
⁴
This report was an important contribution to the public narrative on pathways to confinement and incarceration and broadened the lens on what has otherwise been a narrow critique of discipline practices. It has become commonplace to talk about truancy, discipline, and bullying as ways that children are pushed out of school, but quite often ignored is how sexual violence can also become a pathway to confinement. We flag chronic absenteeism as an indicator of underperformance and alienation from school, but not necessarily as a pathway to (and symptom of) exploitation, delinquency, and incarceration. Under these circumstances, it's not a stretch for a girl to see only what her pimp or much older “boyfriend” sees. Diamond may have bragged about her boyfriend's college degree, but just like sex traffickers, she perceives limited options for herself. The lucrative nature of the commercial sex industry provides a perverse and immediate financial incentive for sex traffickers, regardless of their educational attainment, to keep a girl or young woman out of school. This manipulated worldview often furthers her exploitation and facilitates a dynamic in which she is neither a dropout nor a pushout but instead a pullout—not of her own volition, but rather by someone who is already “out” himself or herself.

The Pullout: Sexually Exploited Children

Prostitution is the trade or sale of sex for money. For as long as our memory will carry us, terms such as “prostitute,” “whore” or “ho,” “hooker,” “streetwalker,” “harlot,” and “lady of the night” have been used to describe women who participate in the sale of sex. But here's the thing: children cannot be prostitutes. Children cannot legally consent to sex, which means that when they participate in the sale of sex they are being sexually trafficked and exploited, usually by much older men—and sometimes by women, teenagers, and even society at large (the use of women's and girls' bodies to sell other products such as apparel, alcohol, or chewing gum). Any and all of these may coerce girls into selling their bodies.

Girls who are commercially sexually exploited or victims of sex trafficking are children under the age of eighteen who are coerced into selling their bodies in exchange for money. In the United States, racial disparities in trafficking are pronounced. In terms of what's reported, 40 percent of sex trafficking victims in the United States are Black.
⁵
In New Orleans, the Bay Area, and Chicago, the reported number of Black girls being sexually trafficked is much higher. For example, the Los Angeles County Probation Department reported in 2015 that 92 percent of commercially sexually exploited girls in the county are Black. Despite ongoing legislative and legal interventions, there are inadequate (to put it lightly) educational interventions and partnerships to interrupt the pushout—and pullout—of girls in these areas who are being sexually exploited, or who are at high risk of being trafficked.

In the Bay Area, where Black girls are disproportionately represented among juvenile court cases involving commercially sexually exploited children, there are a host of services and programs that are designed to interrupt the likelihood that they will return to the sex industry. In Alameda County, particularly Oakland—which is considered the epicenter of a child sex trafficking triangle between San Francisco and West Contra Costa counties—the majority
of girls who are trafficked are between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, though some are younger.
⁶
The Bay Area has a sophisticated and growing network of service providers who continue to develop responses to the needs of trafficked girls. Still, the voices and influence of educators, who quite often are uniquely positioned to prevent the start or repetition of harmful cycles, are underdeveloped or completely nonexistent.