Pushout

by Monique W. Morris

  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.

  Understand and Examine the Impact of Dress Codes

  Dress code policies must be revised and new ways of regulating student behavior developed that do not unfairly target Black girls or facilitate their objectification. Dress code policies are designed to encourage respectful student presentation, but as the narratives in this book demonstrate, many Black girls perceive these codes to affect them differently because of subjective enforcement and/or assumptions made about their sexuality. First, schools should examine the purpose and impact of their dress codes and remove all references to hairstyles that are historically associated primarily with Black cultural traditions (e.g., dreadlocks, braids, Afros, etc.). Second, schools should seek to remedy the differential application of dress code violations by developing an objective decision-making tool that provides administrators and staff with a rubric by which to gauge the acceptability of student dress. This tool or body should be co-created with a representative group of students and then communicated via peer-led processes that facilitate student buy-in and acceptance of school norms. Champions of these policies and practices should not only be adults. Likewise, students should also help design remedies to dress code violations that do not include suspension or being sent home.

  Engage in Practices That Facilitate Healing Opportunities for Black Girls

  To lead on campus is too often an elusive experience for Black girls. Our schools should provide ongoing examples and models of leadership. We should promote their engagement in school-based sporting and club opportunities, both to encourage their positive connection to school and to hone skills associated with the cultural norms of speaking out and asking questions in a healing and holistic way.

  In my work with girls, sacred inquiry* provided a framework for learning through discussion, experience, representation, understanding, action, and engagement.4 This foundation is capable of advancing us beyond a punishment lens to one that embraces transformation, shifting the emphasis to healing those relationships that have been harmed, along with the anger or frustration that may have led to the harmful action in the first place. A trauma-informed practice understands
that for a person who has experienced a severe or extremely harmful event or series of events, there are certain behaviors, words, and conditions that trigger in her or him a negative reaction—reactions that are often responses to past abuse and/or neglect.5 Developing a traumainformed learning environment provides considerations for these triggers and offers protections for girls, and those who work with them, against further harm. In such environments, there is an emphasis on physical and emotional safety. For example, inappropriate touching is not just disallowed as a rule; there is also constant education of students, faculty, and staff about how to develop healthy intimate relationships that do not include unsolicited comments and touching.

  Peter Reason described “sacred science” as a method of human inquiry that involves “nurtur[ing] the growth of love, beauty, wisdom and compassionate action.” My previous research has asserted that applying this lens to Black girls in contact with the criminal legal system may generate a path toward holistic responses to the harm and trauma these girls may have experienced in their educational institutions, as well as in other “systems” to which they are exposed (e.g., health, justice, etc.).

  Emotional safety is supported in learning spaces by emphasizing a respect for the diversity of thought and the rigor that comes from positive, appreciative reasoning and engagement with material. Ultimately the vandalism of school property or a school-based altercation must be seen as an opportunity to understand and respond to the conditions that underlie this plea for help, rather than just an act worthy of suspension or expulsion. Treating a girl’s ideas or “smart mouth” as violent when they are reflective of her critical thinking is outside the parameters of being trauma-informed. It is worth noting that community-based organizations are increasingly embracing a healing-informed approach that positively flips the trauma frame, focusing on the journey toward healing rather than on past experiences of trauma.

  Have “The Talk” with Girls, Not Just Boys

  “The talk” with Black girls and young women is also a discussion about racism in America, and as with boys, it should include tips for how to be safe in the presence of law enforcement and include clear instructions about how to behave when they are suspected of wrongdoing in the presence of someone with a gun, stun gun, or other weapon. But “the talk” also requires a candid discussion about sexism and patriarchy in our society, along with the justice movements that work to combat these forces. Our girls need to know how to identify sexism in all its forms, how to understand the ways in which it intersects with racism to create problematic narratives about the femininity of Black girls, and how their own education and self-determination can change these narratives and the devastating effects of biased policies and practices associated with education, justice, and the economy.

  Most importantly, we must all recognize that a racial justice practice without a gender-inclusive thrust is nothing more than a moot exercise. Only when we develop a national, fully funded investment in all of our young people will we finally breathe life into Maya Angelou’s simple phrase: “Equality, and I will be free.”6

  From Punishment to Transformation

  For many of these girls, my interactions with them were the first time that an adult had asked them about their future goals and their experiences with schools. Most of the girls in this discussion did not know how they learn best, and were deeply disturbed by the extent to which they were being labeled and tracked as behavioral concerns. They were also aware of others’ projections onto them that were leading them to a place of alienation.

  By asking why it is so difficult for Black girls to “simply survive,” Nikki Jones reminds us that there are structures, social conditions, and individual acts that prevent our girls from fully participating in this nation’s promise of opportunity.7 Ultimately, the failure to include Black girls fully in the articulation of American democracy has relegated them to the margins of society. Though many have achieved remarkable heights and their presence may be found on the front lines of activism and protest, their presence at the center of decisions about policy and practice is at best limited and underdeveloped.

  This book’s exploration into the criminalization of Black girls in schools provides an opportunity to center Black girls in our discussions about zero tolerance, school discipline, dress codes, child victimization, and the impact of increasing surveillance in our nation’s public schools. The hyperpunitive climate of many educational environments, particularly those that have adopted zero-tolerance policies, is antithetical to the cultural norms associated with Black feminine expression (e.g., the use of verbal and nonverbal cues to process information, or the practice of speaking up in the face of adversity).8 Black girls desire a safe space in which to learn, where they can earn credits toward graduation, where they can heal from harm and develop skills to support healthy relationships, where there is a reduced emphasis on discipline, and where positive student-teacher relationships are reinforced through dialogue and engagement by individuals with whom they can share historical and cultural experiences.

  New Futures

  Literature on the structure of dominance and the socially reproductive function of schools tells us that schools may reinforce and reproduce social hierarchies that undermine the development of people who occupy a lower societal status.9 For the Black girls we’ve met on these pages, the majority of whom live in poverty and under the normalized surveillance of law enforcement in their communities and schools, these socially reproductive structures constitute educational experiences that guide them to, rather than direct them away from, destitution and escalating contact with the criminal legal system. Their vulnerability is compounded by the individual biases that inform the ideological thrust of teachers and underscore their negative responses and low expectations for children who have been labeled as “delinquent.”10

  Our girls have ideas about how to change these conditions.

  Sociologist William Corsaro introduced the notion of children’s interpretive reproduction, the act of combining their peer culture with an adult-centric culture to generate new social constructs and norms, in order to explain how the social worlds of children evolve.11 Black girls will co-construct their learning environments whether or not we acknowledge that it is happening. They want to see themselves as fully integrated into the content being taught in schools, and they want to feel that their voices are not only heard but respected. These girls want to talk, and they need a learning culture that encourages them to talk as part of building community in the classroom or school.12 They must be allowed to ask questions, to respectfully offer their opinion (even if it differs from the instructor’s opinion), and to learn through an extended epistemology that honors their multiple ways of knowing and learning. Stripping Black girls of the ability to ask questions and process information through dialogue is culturally incompetent and antithetical to their development as critical thinkers. It reflects a reduced expectation for learning and generates feelings of hostility and alienation. That the majority of the girls in this discussion requested educational programming that was respectful, collaborative, and tied both to preparing for their futures and to building relationships signals their interest in a praxis anchored in the power of sharing one’s story and perspective—a learning process that has the added benefit of being restorative.

  Notwithstanding a history of negative experiences in school, girls can sometimes envision positive learning experiences—traditional and alternative—that bring them closer to their objectives, both academically and in terms of their options for the future. The girls I have spoken with identified specific elements that they considered to be important to the development of a culturally competent and gender-responsive environment for them. Leading the list is the quality of their teacher. Black girls are most interested in being educated by qualified teachers who teach from a curriculum that acknowledges the role of women from similar conditions in shaping the nation’s discourses on equal opportunity. They also want to be treated with dignity and to
learn from a curriculum that provides opportunities to discuss and apply their learning to future career or academic goals.

  Girls felt that caring and qualified teachers, along with other positive school leaders, should be a part of an effective and desirable learning environment. For example, Mia believed that educators could establish a better climate for learning by releasing some of their fear. “The teachers . . . I want them to stop being scared,” Mia said. “They just so scared. . . . Y’all so afraid to just send us out of class, y’all just letting us get away with hella shit. If y’all not going to send us out of class, y’all just letting us get away with anything.” It’s telling that Mia has been socialized to see being pushed out as the only option for dealing with challenging classroom situations. What she is really asking for is an effective, supportive space to learn.

  Our girls want structure, but not in a punitive, non-rehabilitative way. For Destiny, the reform she sought was to have someone, preferably a teacher that would monitor her progress in school. “I just need to be checked in on more often. Like that progress . . . [someone to ask], ‘How are you doing with school?’ So, like, I can make sure I have my focus on school and not on what are my friends doing this weekend . . . I’d probably want it to be one of my teachers, so that it could be more, like, immediate. It’d be right there in the classroom instead of it being, like, a counselor and I can tell him one thing and then go to class or not go to class. Yeah . . .’cause I feel like if it was put more in my face, I’d be like, yeah, more focused.”