Pushout Read online

  Literature exploring the school-to-prison pipeline is dominated by an investigation of discipline, and in particular, the use of exclusionary discipline (i.e., suspensions and expulsions) among Black males, and largely obfuscates the ways in which Black females and males experience this phenomenon together and differently.

  While leading a series of focus groups in New York to inform a report by the African American Policy Forum, Black Girls Matter, I encountered Tamara, who described her first experience with suspension as follows:*

  Tamara is a pseudonym. Descriptive details and the names of group members and research participants have been changed to protect the privacy and ensure the safety of all students whose stories appear in this book.

  I was in the 5th grade, and this boy, he kept spitting them spitballs through a straw at me while we was [sic] taking a test. I told the teacher, and he told him to stop; but of course, he didn’t. He kept doing it. So, I got up and I yelled at him, and he punched me in my face, like in my eye . . . my eye was swollen and everything . . . I don’t even remember if I fought him, ’cause that’s just how it ended, I think. But I remember that we both got suspended, and I was like, why did I get suspended? I was, like, a victim . . . all the girls rushed to my side, they took me down to the nurse and then, it was just a mess.26

  Tamara described this incident as the first of many subsequent suspensions. It sent her a powerful signal about whether or not she would be protected in school—and how she needed to behave moving forward. As she understood it, she was likely going to face suspension under most circumstances involving conflict, no matter the particular circumstances. The common approach in schools and outside of them for discussing this scenario would prioritize responding to his suspension, rather than equally responding to both. While patterns of exclusionary discipline have been found to produce similar outcomes between Black girls and Black boys, narrative-based research—the sort drawn on throughout this book—uncovers a more nuanced picture.27

  Through stories we find that Black girls are greatly affected by the stigma of having to participate in identity politics that marginalize them or place them into polarizing categories: they are either “good” girls or “ghetto” girls who behave in ways that exacerbate stereotypes about Black femininity, particularly those relating to socioeconomic status, crime, and punishment.28 When Black girls do engage in acts that are deemed “ghetto”—often a euphemism for actions that deviate from social norms tied to a narrow, White middle-class definition of femininity—they are frequently labeled as nonconforming and thereby subjected to criminalizing responses.29

  It has also been speculated that Black girls’ nonconformity to traditional gender expectations may prompt educators to respond more harshly to the negative behaviors of Black girls.30 For example, a 2007 study found that teachers often perceived Black girls as being “loud, defiant, and precocious” and that Black girls were more likely than their White or Latina peers to be reprimanded for being “unladylike.”31 Other research has found that the issuance of summonses and/or arrests appear to be justified by students’ display of “irate,” “insubordinate,” “disrespectful,” “uncooperative,” or “uncontrollable” behavior.32 These labels underscore the use of discipline, punishment, and the juvenile justice system to regulate identity and social status. They also reflect a consciousness that refuses to honor the critical thinking and leadership skills of Black girls, casting them as social deviants rather than critical respondents to oppression—perceived and concrete.

  Notwithstanding these trends, the narrative arc of the school-to-prison pipeline has largely failed to interrogate how punitive discipline policies and other school-related decision-making affect the well-being of girls. Ignoring their unique pathways to confinement and other contact with the criminal legal system that result from school dropout and delinquency has lasting and transgenerational impacts, particularly for those who have experienced victimization.33 Being abused and/or neglected as a child increases the risk of arrest among children by 59 percent and among adults by 28 percent.34 And female foster youth are at a higher risk of arrest (34 percent) by the age of nineteen than females and males in the general population (3 percent and 20 percent, respectively)—a reality that facilitates a “way of life” that is more likely to include surveillance, substance abuse, and participation in underground economies.35 Failing to interrupt pathways to delinquency for girls has lasting effects not just on their own adult lives but also on the lives of future generations of girls and boys, who are more susceptible to being involved with the judicial system as a result of their mother’s incarceration.36 There have been some notable programs and moderate support for the daughters, partners, and mothers of criminalized men and boys; still, exploring the deficiencies and investing in the education of Black girls and the women they become must be about more than whether their father, brother, son, or partner is struggling or incarcerated. The full inclusion of Black girls in the dominant discourse on school discipline, pushout, and criminalization is important simply because it affects them—and their well-being is worthy of investment.

  Toward this end, it has to be acknowledged that most Black girls experience forms of confinement and carceral experiences beyond simply going to jail or prison. Broadening the scope to include detention centers, house arrest, electronic monitoring, and other forms of social exclusion allows us to see Black girls in trouble where they might otherwise be hidden. Therefore, in this book and in general, I refer to “school-to-confinement pathways” as opposed to a “school-to-prison pipeline” when describing the educational factors that impact a girl’s risk of confinement.

  The criminalization of Black girls in schools is more than just a function of arrests on campus, or even the disparate use of exclusionary discipline—though those outcomes are certainly important to mapping the impact of punitive policies. Paramount to shifting our lens is understanding the convergence of actions with a prevailing consciousness that accepts an inferior quality of Black femininity. This is what underlies the exploitation and criminalization of Black girls. Historic representations of Black femininity, coupled with contemporary memes—about “loud” Black girls who talk back to teachers, “ghetto” Black girls who fight in school hallways, and “ratchet” Black girls who chew dental dams like bubble gum in classrooms—have rendered Black girls subject to a public scrutiny that affects their ability to be properly situated in the racial justice and school-to-confinement narrative. They are rendered invisible or cast as deserving of the mistreatment because of who they are misperceived to be. What suffers is not only their ability to shape their identities as young scholars but also their ability to develop agency in shaping professional and personal futures where they can live with dignity, respect, and opportunity.

  The colored woman of to-day occupies, one may say, a unique position in this country. In a period of itself transitional and unsettled, her status seems one of the least ascertainable and definitive of all the forces which make for our civilization. She is confronted by both a woman question and a race problem and is as yet an unknown or an unacknowledged factor in both. . . . May she see her opportunity and vindicate her high prerogative.

  —Anna Julia Cooper, 189237

  This book presents narratives that I hope will inspire us all to think about the multiple ways in which racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequity converge to marginalize Black girls in their learning environments—relegating many to an inferior quality of education because they are perceived as defiant, delinquent, aggressive, too sexy, too proud, and too loud to be treated with dignity in their schools.

  As I discuss in Chapter 1, while Black girls have been able to achieve a certain degree of academic success, they have also been subjected to powerful narratives about their collective identity that impact what they think about school, what they think about themselves as scholars, and how they perform as students. In Chapter 2, I look at how Black girls are disproportionately represented among those who experienc
e the type of discipline that renders children vulnerable to delinquency and future incarceration. This chapter also brings into focus why their experiences are important to understanding the full impact of zero-tolerance policies, and to developing classroom-, school-, and community-based interventions for high-risk youth. The intention is to demonstrate through narratives the importance of Black girls’ educational conditions and to improving the socioeconomic conditions of Black communities, and ultimately to decreasing the institutional and individual risks that fuel mass incarceration and our collective overreliance on punishment.

  Chapter 3 addresses critical questions of sexual and gender identity among Black girls and the ways in which they are affected by policies, practices, and a prevailing consciousness that seek to regulate their bodies in the learning environment. Chapter 4 explores Black girls’ educational experiences in correctional facilities, and Chapter 5 examines how Black girls can be supported in repairing their relationships with school and how institutions can better support their educational and career objectives. Finally, Appendix A offers a Q&A highlighting the most common questions that advocates receive from Black girls, their parents, educators, and community service providers about how to combat school pushout and the criminalization of Black girls, and Appendix B lists some innovative approaches that schools and facilities are currently testing out. The epigraphs to Chapters 1–4 are pulled from childhood rhymes and songs that have been recited by African American girls and others for several generations. While their origins and lyrics vary by the region of the country in which they were learned, they remain a fixture in Black communities.

  This work is intended to encourage a robust conversation about how to reduce the criminalization of Black girls in our nation’s learning environments. The pathways to incarceration for Black youth are worthy of our most immediate inquiry and response. Using gender and racial lenses to examine school-to-confinement pathways allows for an appreciation of the similarities and differences between females, males, and nonconforming students that is essential to shaping efforts that interrupt the pathways to confinement for all youth.

  This book is written with love. We’re in this struggle against racial oppression and patriarchy together, and unless we examine everyone’s experiences, we lose the ability to support our girls and young women as they seek to bounce back from adversity, to be in their best health, to demand the best education, to earn a decent living, to be healthy partners, to help raise strong children who will thrive, and to play an integral part in shaping strong communities and a better world.

  1

  STRUGGLING TO SURVIVE

  Mama’s in the kitchen, burnin’ rice,

  Daddy’s outside, shootin’ dice,

  Brother’s in jail, raisin’ hell,

  Sister’s on the corner, sellin’ fruit cocktail . . .

  There were fewer than ten girls in the facility that day, and all of them had been assembled into a small group for a book discussion I’d come to facilitate. Typically, girls there were between fifteen and seventeen years old, but as our exchange got under way, I noticed that some of the girls were younger. About halfway through the discussion, the youngest-looking face among them raised her hand.

  I invited her to speak.

  She nodded and then slid from behind her desk to stand. She adjusted the oversized county sweatshirt covering her petite frame and looked at me.

  “Well, my name is Danisha, and I’m eleven years old,” she said. “And I’m a ho, that’s what I do.”

  Danisha had a baby face. Her dark brown skin was flawless—not yet touched by acne—and her coarse hair was frizzy around the temples but otherwise neatly pulled back into a small bun. I remember her as a quiet girl who kept staring at the Marcus Garvey T-shirt I was wearing, her eyes examining with interest the words printed on it: SCHOOL OF LIBERATION. Her apparent interest in my shirt made me curious about her even before her arm shot up to declare how she had come to define herself.

  She continued, sharing how the novel I had written inspired her to think about “leaving the life.” I was happy to hear that she was willing to consider alternative ways to circumvent the poverty and abuse she faced.

  But she was eleven years old. Eleven. And she was already referring to herself as a “ho.”

  In some communities, girls learn early on that selling “fruit cocktail” is one of the few options they have to escape poverty. It’s an idea effortlessly absorbed by the psyche of young girls from the moment they can play patty cake. In the absence of safer, healthier ways to connect—and in the presence of multiple factors that reinforce harmful thoughts and choices—sex can and often does become a type of conditioned response that is rarely interrogated. Danisha should have been telling us about her teachers or her fifth-grade homework; instead, she was describing her sex hustle. Not only was her tone unapologetic, but it elicited confirming nods from the group, as if everyone was in agreement that what she was engaged in was actually “ho’ing”—or prostitution—rather than rape or sexual exploitation.

  That exchange still haunts me, mostly because since that day, I have encountered many more Danishas in and out of detention facilities—girls struggling to overcome the exploitative conditions of poverty and abuse, who roam hallways and streets wondering if anyone really cares about their well-being. That was in 2001, and the sexual exploitation of children was just beginning to emerge as an issue for justice reform advocates, behavioral health professionals, and other adults concerned about the girls in the Bay Area who could be seen—day or night—strolling the streets as scantily clad sex workers.

  I had been to this particular juvenile facility many times before, watching the boys and the girls walk by in orderly lines, their hands clasped behind their backs and their hair disheveled. During these visits, I’d spoken to young people in focus groups and invited them to think about and discuss what might reduce their risk of reoffending. Even as a researcher trained to preserve objectivity, I hoped that my presence would somehow show these children—who were mostly Black at the time—that some of “us” could make it. So I was excited to find out that my novel about a family’s ordeal with prostitution had grown popular among the youth confined in this facility, thanks in part to a very dedicated librarian who ran a robust literature and speaker series in various juvenile correctional facilities. Returning as an author this time, I could shed my research posture and relate to the young people differently. I could tell them what was on my mind, share my own experience of what it means to be Black and female in America, and open new conversations to support and inspire them. Then I met Danisha, and I was stuck.

  Good Girls and Bad Girls

  In her book Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence, Nikki Jones poses the following question: Why is it that inner-city girls must struggle so hard simply to survive?1

  The question of survival among Black girls has always been about whether they are seen, and if so, how they are seen, particularly in economically and socially isolated spaces. Are they “background noise” in a larger view of urban life that prioritizes men and boys? Are they disruptive forces in the exploitation of Black communities? Are they loyal “ride-or-die chicks” who sacrifice their own safety and well-being in the name of love? Are they willing participants in their own oppression? Are they making a way out of no way at all? Are they good girls? Are they bad girls? These are not yes-or-no questions. The answers are anything but simple, and too often no one stops to ponder whether the questions themselves create or even worsen the very problems they seek to illuminate.

  Born into a cultural legacy of slavery, Black American women have interpreted defiance as something that is not inherently bad. Harriet Tubman was defiant. So too was Sojourner Truth and countless other enslaved women who dared to reject oppression. Early constructs of power, both racialized and gendered, dictated who could look where and who could speak when. Enslaved Black women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries were plagued by deh
umanization and a sexual victimization that Angela Y. Davis has described as “barbarous mistreatment that could only be inflicted upon women.”2 As children are routinely told to “speak only when spoken to” in many cultures, so too were those who occupied the status of minors. To be a “minority,” a colored person, or a woman in this context was to bear the mark of subjugation and relative insignificance. Over time, this wound has deepened through invisibility, violence, and objectification, and for Black girls who have lived in ways that align with and result from a castigated identity, the struggle to be a “good girl,” especially in the ghetto, is connected to performances of power.3

  For Black girls, to be “ghetto” represents a certain resilience to how poverty has shaped racial and gender oppression. To be “loud” is a demand to be heard. To have an “attitude” is to reject a doctrine of invisibility and mistreatment. To be flamboyant—or “fabulous”—is to revise the idea that socioeconomic isolation is equated with not having access to materially desirable things. To be a ghetto Black girl, then, is to reinvent what it means to be Black, poor, and female. Under these conditions, volume and force are powerful tools, but so too are love and loyalty. The “attitude” often attributed to Black girls casts as undesirable the skills of being astute at reading their location—where they sit along the social hierarchy—and overcoming the attendant obstacles. These were lessons learned through generations of struggle, and these lessons sit at the apex of what provides Black women and girls the audacity to demand being treated with dignity. However, when the way of the world includes a general lack of cultural competence and an aversion to valuing the unique considerations of gender, these survival characteristics are degraded and punished rather than recognized as tools of resilience. Under these circumstances, girls fighting for their humanity end up being pushed out of schools, jobs, homes, houses of worship, and other places where they might otherwise feel whole.