[Pnews] Black preschoolers make up almost half of all out-of-school suspensions

[Prisoner News]

    The School-to-Prison Pipeline Starts in Preschool
    <http://www.thenation.com/blog/179064/school-prison-pipeline-continues-be-racist-and-horrible>

Mychal Denzel Smith 
<http://www.thenation.com/authors/mychal-denzel-smith> on March 28, 2014 
- 2:46 PM ET

The school-to-prison pipeline, to my mind, is the most insidious arm of 
this country's prison-industrial complex. Under the guise of protecting 
our children, we push many of them out of school and into prisons, limit 
their opportunities, fail to and/or undereducate them, all while feeding 
our addiction to mass incarceration and retribution that is not justice 
at all. That the students who find themselves funneled into the 
school-to-prison pipeline are predominantly black is further proof that 
the United States system of racist oppression chugs along through the 
rhetoric of colorblindness.

Now that we have the niceties out of the way, let's talk about what 
really makes the school-to-prison pipeline the worst.

A study conducted by U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil 
Rights 
<http://ocrdata.ed.gov/Downloads/CRDC-School-Discipline-Snapshot.pdf> 
shows that black preschoolers (yes, four and five year olds) make up 
almost half of all out-of-school suspensions for preschoolers. What any 
preschool student has to do in order to be suspended is beyond me. That 
said, black students are receiving the message---at younger and younger 
ages---that their behavior will be regarded differently, as inherently 
more disruptive and therefore more deserving of punishment. They are 
being denied the right to their formative years of education and 
socialization. And then we wonder why there is an "education gap."

Across all grade levels, Black students represent about 16 percent of 
the overall student population, but are 32-42 percent of students who 
face out-of-school suspension, 27 percent of students referred to law 
enforcement and 31 percent of students who experience a school-related 
arrest. Black students are suspended or expelled at a rate three times 
higher than white students. 20 percent of black boys and 12 percent of 
black girls face out-of-school suspensions.

It's tempting to focus on the disproportionate percentage of black boys 
who are suspended---and when we talk about racism and racial injustice, 
we often focus on what's happening to boys and men 
<http://www.thenation.com/blog/178581/obama-himself-my-brothers-keeper-admirable-flawed>. 
However, it's important to note, as Crystal Lewis does 
<http://womensenews.org/story/incarceration/140322/pushed-out-school-black-girls-lose-huge-ground#.UzWjSK1dXfj>, 
that girls---especially black girls---often find themselves caught in 
the juvenile justice system for infractions much less serious those of 
boys. "In 2010," Lewis writes, "67 percent of the 500,000 young women in 
the juvenile justice system were arrested for larceny-theft, loitering 
or violating curfew, disorderly conduct and other low-level offenses. In 
comparison, 52 percent of males were arrested because of offenses they 
committed in these categories." Girls are more likely to be arrested on 
status offenses 
<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/five-offenses-that-can-land-kids-but-not-adults-in-jail-20140324> 
(like truancy, running away and incorrigibility---being a disobedient 
youth), things that would not be crimes were they adults.

It's those lighter offenses that often result in black girls being 
suspended from school, as well. Monique Morris, co-founder of the 
National Black Women's Justice Institute, told Women's eNews, "The 
majority of black girls who have been suspended got kicked out for being 
loud, even if they weren't being disrespectful." It's consistent with 
the way school discplined is meted out: black students' behavior is 
interpreted 
<http://www.thenation.com/article/178669/president-obama-extends-hand-young-men-and-boys-color-what-about-girls> 
as more threatening than that of their white counterparts. Combined with 
"zero tolerance" policies that heavily rely on the use of police to deal 
with school-level discplinary problems, this means more interaction with 
the law enforcement/criminal justice system for more and more black 
students.

It's appalling. Worse, it's completely unnecessary. But it's the logical 
result of a system dedicated to ensuring inequality 
<http://www.thenation.com/section/inequality?lc=int_mb_1001> persists 
along racial and gender lines. That alternatives exist apparently 
doesn't matter. We'll just keep criminalizing, suspending, arresting and 
locking away black children until there simply aren't any left.

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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