Across the country, the student identity of Black girls is often filtered, assessed, and understood through how much “attitude” she gives to others around her. Discussed as if it were as concrete as eye or hair color, the Black girl “attitude” cannot be defined by some set of static traits or actions. For the purposes of this book, the “attitude” is an open inquiry, one that informs not only how adults engage with Black girls but also how these girls identify themselves as young people and as students.
bell hooks explored the attitude as a complicated component of Black femininity, characterized in the public domain as Sapphire, a character on The Amos ’n’ Andy Show from the 1940s and 1950s.9 In these broadcasts, Sapphire was nagging and combative with her husband, Kingfish. Their relationship reinforced a narrative about Black femininity as dominant, overbearing, and unreasonably demanding of Black men—an idea that stands directly in opposition to the norms of what White femininity is supposed to be, which is passive, frail, and deferential to men. Both notions are incorrect and harmful exaggerations.
The angry Black woman meme—a neck-rolling, finger-in-your-face, hands-on-hips posturing—is at the center of the public misunderstanding of what it means to be Black and female in America. In schools, this misunderstanding sometimes manifests when girls speak their opinion, especially when it is unsolicited, or if they stand up for themselves when they feel that they have been disrespected by peers or by adults. When relationships between students and teachers are poor, Black girls may exhibit any number of behaviors that openly signal their dissatisfaction, including yelling at or using profanity with the teacher. Marcus, an administrator at a California high school, commented on a scenario in which girls could and do receive a disciplinary referral.
“I get referrals for the simplest reasons,” he said. “For a girl yelling, ‘I don’t understand!’ a teacher replying, ‘Did you come to school to learn?’ earning the retort, ‘You come to school to teach?’ . . . You know, our babies can be kind of snappy, so the way [they] say it, you know, it might have an expletive in there somewhere. And I mean, just overall, it’s just that . . . The sisters bring a lot of attention to themselves. . . . They’re not docile.”
Our babies can be kind of snappy. By itself, this statement reflects the assumption that Black girls communicate in a way that is biting and provocative. The suggestion that girls’ tones must be mediated and their questions made less incisive in order to be tolerated in the classroom is both problematic and sexist. That the comment was made by a well-meaning African American administrator reflects the pervasive and internalized nature of the “angry Black woman” cliché, which serves no one particularly well. Most often in this type of exchange, we’re left with a stand-off that leaves both the student and teacher harmed. It usually ends with the removal of the student from the classroom, thus beginning or continuing a negative school experience that can have lasting effects on her relationship with teachers, her faith in her ability to perform well academically, and her commitment to school. In this case, the young woman was removed from the classroom, but should her learning really be interrupted because of her sarcasm? Because of her “attitude”? Because she is not docile?
Students participate in constructing the school climate from the moment they walk through the door. How they see themselves reflected (or not) in the material and how they experience (or don’t) a welcoming reception into their learning environment, both the classroom and the school in general, all influence whether a young woman responds to others in a way that she believes is respectful. Because children co-create their learning environments—they either choose to abide by stated rules or work in ways to circumvent them, discreetly or overtly—they are active players in their own socialization, and in the socialization of teachers. Toss that dynamic in with interpretation and effective communication, and it means teaching is hard work. So is learning.
When the teacher asked, “Did you come here to learn?” it may have been heard as a challenge to the girl’s willingness to participate in reproducing that school’s social norms, or worse, a challenge to her perceived interest in learning as measured by whatever characteristics that teacher may have been using (the student’s chattiness, for example). Her reaction, “Did you come here to teach?” called into question the teacher’s effectiveness and commitment to her education. The implications of “Did you come here to learn?” might have triggered a feeling of inadequacy in the girl from her previous experiences in the classroom. Instead of saying, “Did you come here to learn?” the teacher could have phrased it as “Listen, your education is important. How can I help you focus on what we’re learning so that you can have your best chance to succeed?” This could have been followed by intervention and accountability processes that do not include a referral to the dean but rather elevate the collective responsibility in the classroom and the unconditional belief that all students possess an ability to succeed. Of course, that’s a reimagining of this incident—but it’s not as utopian as it may seem. Schools are modeling this kind of love every day, when they believe that the children they teach are worth it.
At another alternative school in California—let’s call it Small Alternative High—a new Black girl was being introduced to the classroom. She had been waiting to be shown to her desk for at least twenty minutes and was growing impatient with the entire process. I quietly watched as she grew more and more upset that staff members at the school were mispronouncing her name. Finally, after another mispronunciation, she became visibly agitated—folding her arms, sucking her teeth, and rolling her eyes. In other words, she was developing what some would perceive as an attitude.
“Y’all wanna call me every name under the sun!” she said, raising her voice.
Two teachers instantly responded to her. One quickly apologized for mispronouncing her name, explaining that her family was from a town in the South with a similarly spelled name, and that her inclination was to pronounce the name as it is pronounced in her hometown. “I’m sorry,” she said after completing her explanation.
Meanwhile, the other teacher repeated, “It’s okay . . . we’re all human.”
The girl’s shoulders began to relax until she finally lowered her arms, nodded, and continued to work toward getting acclimated to her new learning environment. In this instance, teachers demonstrated compassion and effective communication, and were able to defuse a situation that could have become hostile. They saw her agitation and recognized her need to feel respected. She, in turn, responded by accepting their apology.
In some instances, the expressive nature of Black girls appears to fuel student-teacher conflict—particularly an almost instinctual need to get back at someone when they feel disrespected. Mia talked about this in the context of her own experiences in class.
“Us Black girls, like, if we don’t get it, we’re going to tell you,” Mia said. “If we don’t feel that it’s right, we’re going to tell you. Where everybody else want to be quiet, it’s like, no . . . we’re going to speak up, we’re going to speak what’s on our mind.”
On the other hand, teachers who felt successful with their students attribute their success to connecting with students beyond the classroom. At Small Alternative High, more than sixty students were collected in a large classroom, sitting in front of computers, while three teachers roamed to answer questions and work in small groups as necessary. The school’s walls were covered with inspirational quotes from prominent African American historical figures such as Malcolm X and Rosa Parks. Small Alternative High was, in many ways, a laboratory for educating students who have been marginalized by a traditional educational experience, combining individual instruction in an independent-study atmosphere with small-group activities. Students attended school for either a morning session or an afternoon session, depending on their schedules. Such flexibility supported student retention and completion of credits, particularly for students who may have a history of truancy, incarceration, pregnancy, or addiction. Nancy, a lead teacher
from this school, observed that given the plethora of issues that affect a student’s performance, “the teacher has to teach more than just the curriculum.” She offered, “In my experience, the young ladies that are having trouble and going through the justice system because they’ve been in trouble, a lot of it is because they didn’t feel success in school.” Indeed, education is a critical protective factor in the lives of girls.
“If they had something . . . if their self-esteem was better because they were feeling success, I don’t think they would have made those choices that they made,” Nancy continued. “Their biggest academic hurdle is self-esteem . . . [I teach] high school. I’ve got to talk about what I see as a teacher. Ninth-grade boys are exuberant. They’re full of energy. They’re dominating the conversation. They’re just ‘out there.’ Girls in the ninth grade have a lot more insecurities about puberty and [are preoccupied with the question] ‘Do the boys like me?’ You know, there’s a whole lot of social things that are happening with boys and girls that are different but that certainly impact each other in the classroom. . . . The boys get most of the attention. The girls are marginalized, which I think affects their self-esteem. . . . To feel more confident, sometimes they’ll act out to try to get more attention, but a lot of times it goes in a negative way.”
The pattern Nancy describes is even more evident in those cases where a girl feels disrespected. To put Mia’s point in a different way, sometimes these girls are triggered by adults “talking down” to them, or speaking to them as if they are not worthy of respect.
The student-teacher relationship is a critical component of whether a girl’s comments will be seen as part of her expression and learning, or as a deliberate and willful affront to the teacher’s authority. Neither of these is against the law, by the way. Yet many schools punish girls who speak out of turn or challenge what they feel is injustice as if it were a violation of law rather than an interrogation of fairness. Punishment often involves removal from class, which facilitates young people feeling disconnected from the material their classmates are learning, exacerbates underperformance on tests or other assignments, or leads to other situations that can and often do escalate to contact with law enforcement and the criminal legal system. Black children, who tend to display fewer “conforming” behaviors in the classroom than their White counterparts, are often subjected to less support and more criticism by their teachers.10 Black girls feel this and intuit the differential treatment. While teacher-parent relationships are also of tremendous importance, studies show that Black student performance and motivation are often a function of the students’ social relatedness with teachers, especially in the early grades.11 So when teachers feel physically threatened by a six-year-old or when “bad tantrums” are cause for handcuffs, there is a larger problem.
Anecdotally, when I have asked Black students why they underperform on tests or in other measures of school-based understanding, they often respond with “My teacher doesn’t like me” or “I don’t like that teacher.” This is the case even among high-performing Black girls, who recognize when they are being treated differently and can’t understand why.
For Sheila, who was a graduating senior at a university in California at the time of our conversation, this was a particularly confounding experience, because she couldn’t understand why someone like her—generally quiet and a good student—would be stereotyped into being a problem. Sheila went to a large public high school in an affluent community in Southern California, where the percentage of Black students was very low. She struggled to establish her own student identity, even when it appeared that teachers had different expectations of her.
“I was in AP European History my sophomore year,” she said, “and during that time, my uncle passed away and also with that, I was getting my contacts fitted. I had passed out and hit my head on the floor, so I was having migraines galore for about a good year, and they weren’t able to actually figure out what was going on because my brain scan was normal [and] everything else was normal. They couldn’t figure out why I was having these migraines. In that class in particular, I wasn’t doing all the notes at the same time that everyone was doing their notes, and she noticed that. She would constantly get on me, like, ‘Why don’t you have your notes?’ Even though I explained all of this to her, she wasn’t very sincere about it. I wanted to talk to her about it, like, ‘Hey, there was a death in the family, and [I’m] dealing with these things.’ She had none of it. It was like, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?’ ‘Why aren’t you keeping up in class?’ [Meanwhile], I was going to school every day and I had a really good understanding of European history . . . and it showed when I was in class and participating. . . . She was always doing little check-ins, but they always felt more invasive. . . . I noticed that she showed more preferential treatment toward my classmates. One week, [a white student] just didn’t want to do her notes, and the teacher was like, ‘Oh, that’s okay . . .’ Well, that didn’t happen with me! Why does she get to skip out on this, and I don’t? . . . The first semester, I ended up getting a B, and ended the second semester with an A. I remember [the teacher] coming up to me and saying, ‘I didn’t think you were going to finish.’ Like, no. This is really important to me.”
Before the end of the semester, the teacher suggested several times that Sheila take a less advanced course. Perhaps it was because of the initial interruptions, but to Sheila, it didn’t feel that way.
“Even after I was turning in all assignments and my test scores were really high, she continued to suggest it. That wasn’t the problem. I was like, ‘Why do you keep suggesting this to me?’ I really didn’t understand why she kept doing that.”
Sheila responded to her teacher’s differential treatment by trying harder, but for some girls the bias they experience is too upsetting for them to ignore. Some may have parents who taught them the mantra of having to work “twice as hard to get half as far,” but for others, that burden is so fundamentally unequal they refuse to play along. Instead, they find other ways to assert their dignity and to gain respect. Even if those ways get them in trouble.
In a society so shaped by race and gender, we all live with implicit biases that inform our ideas, stereotypes, and norms of Black femininity. Our perceptions of difference can sometimes fuel unconscious biases that inform our subconscious reactions to individuals based upon latent, involuntary ideas about race, gender, sexuality, or other aspects of identity.12 This is important because, well, educators are people. It’s unreasonable to think that they are not impacted by the barrage of negative images associated with Black female identity in the popular consciousness.
Certain individual interactions offer evidence of bias—as is the case with many of the stories offered by the girls and young women in this book—but we also see it at a structural level. The greater a school’s proportion of students of color, the higher the likelihood that punitive exclusionary discipline will be used in response to student behaviors deemed disruptive and problematic.13 It’s unlikely that administrators of these schools are intentionally of the mind to punish youth of color more than their White counterparts. But punitive responses to student behaviors are especially prevalent in schools where principals and other school leaders believe that “frequent punishments helped to improve behavior.”14 And these leaders are disproportionately found in schools with high numbers of students of color. Their presence there is not an accident.
Standing Their Ground: Zero Tolerance, Willful Defiance, and Surveillance
For two decades, the nation has been enthralled in a punitive whirlwind that has reshaped how educators respond to students, how administrators understand and interpret adolescent misbehavior, and how institutions respond to the learning needs of children in high-poverty schools. For their part, women and girls experience multiple ways of knowing.15 They gather information not only from what people (adults and peers) tell them but also from experiences, symbols, and metaphors that are woven into the tapestry of their environments.1
6 Black girls notice the verbal and nonverbal cues that signal what they are supposed to do and be in life, and they are astute enough to realize when the learning environment is producing something other than its stated goal of educating children. What is often being produced creates a climate so hostile that it pushes girls out of school, and so toxic that it is giving us all an attitude.
Zero-tolerance policies are rules and practices that emerged from the “broken windows” policing theory, first developed by criminologists George L. Kelling and James W. Wilson.17 It suggests that small criminal acts are indicative of more severe, negative behavior that may later manifest. In the 1990s, law enforcement, particularly police forces in many of the nation’s large urban centers, turned toward arresting individuals for minor infractions or incidents of misbehavior. The idea is that by not tolerating any infractions, they are mitigating future, possibly worse offenses. This preventative “tough love” has ushered in a climate and culture of harsh punishment in communities already strained by economic and social exclusion.
In 1994, at the height of a hyperpunitive approach to criminal justice policy and rhetoric in the United States, President Clinton signed into law the Gun Free Schools Act (GFSA), which required schools to expel for at least one year any student who brought a weapon to campus.18 The policy was in response to a series of school shootings—more than fifty across the country—that together garnered the attention of the American people, as well as national policy makers.19 Then, on April 20, 1999, two boys opened fire on the campus of Columbine High School in Colorado, killing twelve students and one teacher and injuring more than twenty other students before committing suicide.20 Columbine spurred a heightened awareness of gun violence on school campuses, and precipitated the implementation of instruments of surveillance that were said to provide the highest degree of “safety” for students.
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