Pushout (23 page)

The criminalization and social marginalization that have been described throughout this book go hand-in-hand with society's expanding prison-industrial complex and the increased abandonment of a basic tenet associated with juvenile justice: redemption.
¹
It's established and widely accepted that education is one of the greatest rehabilitative and protective factors against delinquency for girls.
²
When we take education away from them, Black girls are exposed to more violence, and they are more likely to be victimized and exploited, to become incarcerated, and to experience
a lack of opportunity overall. When we prioritize discipline over learning in our educational institutions, we engage in a reactive politics that maintains a status quo of inequality.

As parents, educators, and concerned community members, we must examine the ways in which our educational institutions are underserving our children—and pushing our girls out of school alongside our boys. Changing the conversation about school discipline is not about excusing abhorrent behavior. Implementing alternative reactions to negative student behavior and developing relationships that teach young people about who they are and how they should behave in a safe learning environment doesn't conflict with developing personal responsibility. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

Rarely is there reflection upon the extent to which our reactions to girls' behaviors are rooted in whether they are being “good girls” or whether they have actually presented a harm or threat to safety, personal or public. We must also consider how expressions of Black femininity (e.g., how girls talk, dress, or wear their hair) are pathologized by school rules. In our haste to teach children social rules, we sometimes fail to examine whether these rules are rooted in oppression—racial, patriarchal, or any other form. Ultimately such a failure undermines the full expression and learning of Black girls.

Black girls need teachers, administrators, and school policies that do not see their Black identity as inferior or something to fear. Their Black femininity must not be exploited, ignored, and punished. Their words need not be seen as problematic, and their questions need not be seen as inherently defiant.

School-based policies and practices that expose Black girls to the disproportionate application of discipline, that emphasize society's dominant and negative constructs of Black femininity, or that seek to punish them for clothing and/or hairstyle choices must be eliminated and instead replaced by a pedagogy that embraces the healing and liberative power of talking.
³
The intention
should be to provide learning spaces for Black girls to thrive without feeling that they have to reject their own identity to do so.

When Nancy, a teacher from California, stated that in order to prevent school-to-confinement pathways she must “teach more than the curriculum,” she was putting forth a call for educators to see beyond the perceived attitude and the stereotypes that render too many of our girls invisible or unsuitable for the classroom. She was calling for a community response and an unapologetic rejection of the notion that our girls' learning is in any way less important than anyone else's.

There are no throwaway children. We can, and must, do better.

To eliminate the pushout and criminalization of our girls, the first step is for all those investing their time and energy in the fight for racial justice—advocates, scholars, organizers, and others—to stop measuring the impact of the criminal legal system simply by the numbers of people who are incarcerated. Incarceration is now framed as our generation's greatest civil and human rights challenge. We argue (and among like minds generally agree) that prisons and other carceral institutions are overused. We see the buildings, razor wire, and armed guards and understand them as physical monuments to inequality and pain. Prisons are tangible. They also hold more males than females; thus a racial justice agenda framed by the lens of incarceration elevates male endangerment. It leaves little room to consider the ways that females are also subjected to institutionalized harm and a prevailing consciousness that favors punishment over rehabilitation.

Focusing on criminalization, rather than just incarceration, would enable greater understanding of how institutions impact girls and facilitate important shifts in our thinking and decision-making processes. We could see women and girls in their
shared
spaces with men and boys, and develop strategies that are responsive to the conditions that threaten the futures of female and male children. Being more inclusive would save us from a lot of
head-scratching about why it is so hard to break harmful cycles, the negative patterns in student outcomes, and contact with the criminal legal system.

Our nationwide culture of surveillance and criminalization is much more pervasive and life-threatening than even the largest prison. Its reach into our schools and our classrooms has reinforced latent ideas of Black inferiority and cast our girls as angry little women who are too self-absorbed and consumed by themselves and their faults to participate in school communities.

We know it's more complicated than that.

A Race-Conscious Gender Analysis

A race-conscious gender analysis may sound like an esoteric academic theory, but it's not. In essence it is the process of acknowledging that Black women never stop being Black people, nor do they stop being women. Thus they are affected by the policies and practices that undermine their development and progress as both. Every intervention that schools, communities, and lawmakers design for our girls has to recognize that gender expression and identity—and sexual expression and identity—must figure prominently in order to support their well-being. During institutional slavery, Black women, like their male counterparts, picked cotton, constructed railroads, and were whipped, flogged, and mutilated under oppressive and dehumanizing conditions. These were deplorable conditions that affected men and women alike. However, the
gendered
way in which racism has played out in their lives also meant that they were routinely raped and forced to serve as wet nurses to the newborn children of slave owners. Racialized gender stereotypes about Black women and other women of color shape how they interact with the world today, and how the world perceives and interacts with them. We are at a moment in history that lends itself to informed community building. The failures of the past are haunting us, and truthfully, there are enough narratives and data to justify a new approach to curbing troublesome
behavior in schools. Also, our dominant social narrative—informed by a growing critique of mass incarceration—presents us with an opportunity to do more than just let people out of prison. At this juncture, we can choose the road less traveled and revisit the criminalization that has fueled a culture of incarceration in all its forms. An agenda for Black female achievement does not undermine or preclude any agenda or narrative on Black male achievement. An initiative for Black women and girls is not an affront to the efforts for Black men and boys—so it's time to bridge conversations.

Our girls, boys, and gender-nonconforming youth are sharing communities, institutions, homes, and lives with each other. Efforts to support women and girls of color are imperative to the successful navigation of any condition that places whole communities at risk. Programs to address family structures must not vilify single-female-headed households or assume that by supporting men and boys only, our schools and other institutions are meeting the needs of young women and girls. It's time to stop ignoring the very real conditions that push girls and young women to the margins of society and render them vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and debilitating legal issues.

What We Should Really Mean by “Respect”

Our work on behalf of Black girls cannot be about respectability politics. Etiquette lessons can be a part of other social practices and agendas, but if our anti-criminalization efforts are to have teeth, schools must look far beyond whether our girls are wearing tight pants, crop tops, or pink extensions in their braids. The crisis of criminalization in schools is an opportunity to focus on the policies, systems, and institutions—in other words, the
structures
—that place women and girls at risk of exploitation in private and public domains. Intervention strategies are needed that respond to the unique ways that women and girls of color are affected by these structures. The safety of girls in schools will not
be addressed only through metal detectors and the presence of security guards. Our challenge is to think through the very real triggers for girls, particularly those who have experienced sexual victimization or other abuse, and develop innovative approaches that reach out to girls through a holistic and healing lens (such as restorative processes that protect them from further exploitation and volunteers in the schools to help maintain a culture of respect and safety for girls), rather than a punitive one. Girls' learning can and should be positioned as an act of social justice and self-discovery rather than simply a mandate from the state. We cannot add ribbons and bows to a program, strategy, or agenda that has been developed in response to the circumstances of young men and assume that it will work for young women. Just because young women and girls are
affected
by similar conditions as their male counterparts doesn't mean that they
experience
these conditions in the same way. I hope the narratives in this book make the difference clear.

A new normal is in order with respect to efforts to support the healthy development of Black young women and girls. We need a radical shift in how we examine educational and punitive laws, policies, institutions, and systems—using rigorous race- and gender-conscious frameworks—so that we know how best to understand and remedy their impact on our girls.

We should examine these policies and ask the following central questions:

            
1.
   
What assumptions are being made about the conditions of Black girls?

            
2.
   
How might Black girls be uniquely impacted by school and other disciplinary policies?

            
3.
   
How are organizations, systems, and policies creating an environment that is conducive or not conducive to the healthy development of Black girls?

These questions are important to prevent Black girls from being ignored in policy decisions and the impact of those decisions at every level—in schools, in communities, in cities, and beyond.

A Centered Response to Victimization

Black women, and other women of color, bear scars that are both visible and invisible. Their rates of victimization and experiences with abuse and exploitation are higher than for most other women. And yet, despite these and other statistics, we have yet to center their voices in our public discussions on victimization. The assumption that Black women and girls should be able to “handle it all” dominates our consciousness. But in doing so, we mistake the resiliency of our sisters for the absence of harm, and we miss girls like Heaven, who then blame themselves when their actions fall short of this unrealistic and contrived ideal. Our responses to Black girls must embrace a strong anti-victimization narrative that produces safe learning environments—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—and fosters a creative and expressive pedagogy to combat racial and gender oppression in the twenty-first century. And our actions must be swift and forceful. For too long we have only reacted to the persistent murmur of sexual harassment (instead of trying proactively to prevent it), turned our heads away from the threats to sexual and physical assault, or shamed our girls into believing that their victimization is their own fault.

Prevent and Disallow “Permission to Fail”

To revoke the “permission to fail” that has been granted to too many Black girls, schools must provide ongoing professional development that emphasizes reducing implicit bias and engages all manner of staff in the school's process of institutionalizing fair discipline policies. Teachers need the opportunity to unpack their own unconscious decision-making processes and co-construct tools to help them better respond to students in crisis. Teachers
in low-performing schools are subjected to a high degree of stress associated with inadequate resources, pressures to teach to standardized tests, and fluctuations in student attendance, skill sets, and wellness. Regular professional development for the teachers that helps support their ability to more effectively manage the classroom using alternatives to exclusionary discipline is important for moving the dial toward an end to zero-tolerance policies. Also, ongoing professional development for teachers and administrators on how to shape the teaching of students and responses to their problematic behavior will only enhance learning, and will likely reduce the need for discipline related to students' low engagement in the work.

The majority of the young women who engaged in this inquiry mentioned poor student-teacher relationships as a concern. Teachers would benefit from training on the use of culturally competent and gender-responsive discipline protocols, objective decision-making training, and alternative practices that increase their capacity to utilize harm reduction strategies and promote safety, respect, and learning in the classroom. The protocol should be explicit and clearly define the actions that warrant removal from the classroom, such as fighting or threatening another student or the teacher with physical harm. The category of “willful defiance” should be eliminated by state and local governing bodies, such that schools are required to exhaust all other remedies before removing a child from school for failing to follow the rules. Instead, schools should develop an internal continuum of responses and agreements—created in partnership with students—that allow for tailored responses that promote learning and inclusion, rather than punishment and banishment.