Another critique of restorative justice is that it fails to recognize that not all individuals are seeking to have relationships return to where they began (if they were negative); rather, some prefer to transform the nature of these relationships.67 Some might consider this an issue of semantics.68 But others view this as an important distinction associated with the use of restorative approaches to address the root causes of conflict and harm that produce pathways to poor academic performance, educational marginalization, and incarceration.69
METHODOLOGY
The study upon which this book is predicated collected narratives from Black girls regarding their experiences in education—including schools in the community and schools in carceral settings—toward the goal of identifying potential policy and infrastructure improvements to support the learning of Black girls in schools. The primary research methods that I implemented for this study were qualitative, phenomenological, and action-oriented, using critical narrative inquiry to explore and describe the educational experiences of Black girls that may facilitate, or reflect, criminalization. Quantitative methods are collected from previously published reports and data sets, and percentages have been rounded to the nearest whole number.
Phenomenological research elevates the meaning of the “lived experience” of those at the center of the inquiry. In this study, I employed qualitative research methods, because they are best suited for inquiries that seek to describe and present a deep understanding of an issue.1 The intensive nature of the inquiry allowed me to develop relationships of meaning and other patterns that informed how Black girls articulate their understanding of their educational experiences and how I have ultimately interpreted their narrative descriptions of these experiences.2 As a critical tool in qualitative research, the interview offers an opportunity for the interviewer to explore the phenomenon through the lens of the affected person.3 Methodologist John Creswell added that interviews allow for the researcher to “control” the line of questioning and possibly steer the person toward providing historical information that may be useful for the researcher.4 I also note that interviewing allowed for a dialogical engagement that can be liberative and therapeutic for the person being interviewed (i.e., the “storyteller”), particularly if she has not previously been able to release her thoughts and feelings about the phenomenon under study. A similar dynamic was present for the focus groups.
In writing this book, I used a composite narrative method, which represents narrative data and research from my study in a manner that blends the voices of participants with those of the researcher in order to demonstrate our “connectedness.”5 Narratives in this book were collected from intensive interviews and focus groups with girls, young women, educators and justice professionals in California (Northern and Southern), New York, Louisiana, and Illinois. These interviews and focus groups allowed the Black girls at the center of this inquiry to share their educational experiences from their perspectives, and in their own words. Specific scenes are described from observations that I conducted in classrooms throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California between November 2011 and July 2014. The majority of these girls—more than 60 percent, identified as Black, alone or in combination with at least one other race.6 In the facility in which I located my in-depth interviews, where the length of stay ranged from one day to several months, girls were required to attend school for at least 240 minutes each day. Girls who experienced longer than average stays typically remained in custody because they were awaiting a court-ordered placement, sometimes in another city or state. Academic institutions, school districts and administrators, and the appropriate government and nonprofit agencies that helped to coordinate participants for this work granted permission. Unless already a matter of public record, all names and other personal identifying information have been changed to protect the identity of participants.
A Note on Key Terminology
Black/African American: In this book, people of African descent are referred to as Black and African American. While African American refers to people of African descent who reside in the United States, Black is a larger umbrella term that captures individuals throughout the African diaspora (e.g., those of Caribbean and/or Latino descent who belong to the racial group indigenous to Africa). In this document, I prioritize the use of Black but also occasionally use African American, as data sources use these terms interchangeably.
Culturally competent: Joseph Betancourt, Alexander Green, J. Emilio Carrillo, and Owusu Ananeh-Firempong define cultural competency as acknowledging and incorporating “at all levels—the importance of culture, assessment of cross-cultural relations, vigilance toward the dynamics that result from cultural differences, expansion of cultural knowledge, and adaptation of services to meet culturally unique needs.”7 They also note that a culturally competent system has as its foundation, “an awareness of the integration and interaction of health beliefs and behaviors, disease prevalence and incidence, and treatment outcomes for different patient populations.” While cultural competency has largely been framed in the health context, its usage has greatly informed the discussion about organizational responses to people of color in other disciplines, particularly in education and juvenile justice.8 For this study, I use cultural competency as a measure by which strategies, programs, or individuals consider and reflect the cultural needs of the population they serve.
Gender-responsive: Stephanie Covington and Barbara Bloom define gender responsiveness as a systems response “that, in both context (structure and environment) and content, are both comprehensive and relate to the realities of [women’s] lives.”9 The gender responsiveness of criminal justice programs and interventions is also characterized as those that “target women’s pathways to criminality by providing effective interventions that address the intersecting issues of substance abuse, trauma, mental health and economic marginality,” according to Barbara Bloom, Barbara Owen, Stephanie Covington, and Myrna Raeder.10 While this definition was developed in the context of building responses to women in the criminal justice system, studies find that gender-responsive programs for adolescent girls should also include responses to sexual identity, self-esteem, relationships and relational aggression, health concerns, and victimization.11
Juvenile hall: In this book, this term is used interchangeably with “juvenile detention facility.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First, giving honor to the Creator, I would like to extend my gratitude and appreciation to the ancestors and elders who struggled for human dignity and racial justice. Our work is to carry forward your legacy in the spirit of the liberation and uplift of our people and our nation.
I would also like to thank my family for their unwavering support and understanding during the research and writing phases of producing this book. Together, you all provide a foundation more powerful than anything. I love you.
To the many girls and young women who were fearless enough to share their narratives for this book, I offer you my heartfelt thanks and commitment to use your stories as a springboard for change. With love, this book is dedicated to you.
I would also like to express my gratitude to Marie Brown, who has so graciously guided and supported my work. I am equally grateful to my very talented editor, Tara Grove. I am so lucky to work with you two!
As one can imagine, this book is the product of hours and hours of thought partnership over the past four years with many of this nation’s most dedicated investors in the lives of Black women and girls. There are many people that I would love to thank for their participation in this project—the administrators, teachers, students, probation staff, juvenile court(s), and law enforcement professionals—but in order to protect their identities and those of the girls that I spoke with, I will not name them here.
To compile and respond to the questions in Appendix A, I consulted with a diverse group of committed people whose personal and professional engagement with and love for our girls and young women is unwavering. These people
include Dereca Blackmon, Falilah Aisha Bilal, Isis Sapp-Grant, Nola Brantley, Fran Frazier, sujatha baliga, and Wes Ware. Thank you, friends, for your guidance. Additionally, I am so grateful for the conversations, consultations, and general support that the following individuals have offered me on elements of this project: Fania Davis, Anna Deavere Smith, Celsa Snead, Joanne Smith, Nakisha Lewis, Avis Jones-DeWeever, Susan Burton, Tracey Robertson Carter, Nola Brantley, Larita LaFlotte, K. Jones, Stephanie Bush-Baskette, Alvin Starks, Yejie Ankobia, Shawn Ginwright, Charity Tolliver, JoHanna Thompson, Marlene Sanchez-Roy, Zandra Washington, Camisha Fatimah Gentry-Ford, Mariah Landers, Timothy McCarthy, Geoff Ward, Sonia Kumar, Maria Casey, Lenneal Henderson, Kitty Kelley Epstein, Kathy Tiner, Douglas Paxton, Irma Herrera, Jolon McNeil, Francine Sherman, Lesleigh Irish-Underwood, Erika Irish Brown, Stefanie Brown-James, Cedric Brown, Hector de Jesus, Berta Colon, Jeanette Pai-Espinosa, Agape Adams, and the community of scholar-advocates who refuse to leave our girls behind, including (but certainly not limited to) Angela Y. Davis, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Beth Richie, Coramae Ruchey Mann, Vernetta Young, Stephanie Sears, Elaine Richardson, Jamilia Blake, Simone Drake, Brittney Cooper, Nikki Jones, Priscilla Ocen, and many others upon whose shoulders I stand.
I would also like to extend my gratitude to the Open Society Foundations Soros Justice Fellowship; the W.K. Kellogg Foundation; the Akonadi Foundation; Fielding Graduate University; Girls for Gender Equity; the African American Policy Forum; the Schott Foundation for Public Education; the Advancement Project; the National Council on Crime and Delinquency; the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund; the National Women’s Law Center; Impact Justice; the National Urban League; Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc.; the Georgetown Law Center on Poverty and Inequality; the Institute for Research in African American Studies at Columbia University; and other institutions, collaborative efforts, and coalitions that support this work and the public discourse it seeks to engage at the national level.
NOTES
Introduction
1. Ashley Fantz, Holly Yan, and Catherine Shoichet, “Texas Pool Party Chaos: ‘Out of Control’ Police Officer Resigns,” CNN.com, June 9, 2015.
2. Kimberlé Crenshaw and Andrea Ritchie with Rachel Anspach, Rachel Gilmer, and Luke Harris, Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women (New York: African American Policy Forum and Columbia University Center for Intersectionality and Social Policy Studies, 2015).
3. Eliott McLaughlin, “Tamir Rice’s Teen Sister ‘Tackled,’ Handcuffed After His Shooting, Mom Says,” CNN.com, December 8, 2014.
4. Angela Irvine and Aisha Canfield, “Factsheet: The Overrepresentation of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Questioning, Gender Nonconforming, and Transgender Youth in the Juvenile Justice System,” Impact Justice, July 1, 2015.
5. U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights, Civil Rights Data Collection, 2011–12, available at http://ocrdata.ed.gov. Data notes are available at http://ocrdata.ed.gov/downloads/DataNotes.docx.
6. Civil Rights Data Collection, 2011–12.
7. Kevin Koeninger, “Arrested and Beaten for Dozing in Class,” Courthouse News Service, May 7, 2013.
8. Tamara Lush, “Kiera Wilmot Will Not Be Charged for Explosion at Florida School,” Huffington Post, April 15, 2013.
9. Ibid.
10. “Girl Arrested in Texas for Inappropriate Prom Dress,” Capitol Street, May 13, 2008, http://capitolstreet.wordpress.com/2008/05/13/girl-arrested-in-texas-for-inappropriate-prom-dress.
11. “Palmdale High School Student Battered by School Guard,” ABC News via YouTube, uploaded September 30, 2007, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_gr_VBRhO4. See also Jessica Valenti, “Teenage Girl Beaten, Expelled, and Arrested . . . for Dropping Cake,” Feministing.com, October 1, 2007, http://feministing.com/2007/10/01/teenage_girl_beaten_expelled_a_1.
12. Janice D’Arcy, “Salecia Johnson, 6, Handcuffed After Tantrum, What’s Wrong with This Picture?,” Washington Post, April 18, 2012.
13. Bill Bush, “Westerville Police Criticized for Handcuffing Children After School-Bus Fight,” Columbus Dispatch, November 17, 2011.
14. “Kindergarten Girl Handcuffed, Arrested at Fla. School,” WFTV.com, March 30, 2007, http://www.wftv.com/news/news/kindergarten-girl-handcuffed-arrested-at-fla-schoo/nFBR4.
15. Georgia Slave Code, 1848.
16. “Catherine Ferguson: Founder, New York City’s First Sunday School, Born 1779–Died July 11, 1854,” Early America, http://www.earlyamerica.com/catherine-ferguson.
17. Anonymous, “Katy Ferguson: The Woman Who Loved All Children,” OneHistory, http://www.onehistory.org/katy.htm.
18. “Douglas, Sarah Mapps (1806–1882),” BlackPast, http://www.blackpast.org/aah/douglass-sarah-mapps-1806-1882.
19. National Council of Negro Women, Inc., “Mary McLeod Bethune,” http://ncnw.org/about/Bethune.htm.
20. Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New York: Vintage Books, 1972).
21. See, for example, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, 347 U.S. 483, 1954.
22. See, for example, Wanda Blanchett, Vincent Mumford, and Floyd Beachum, “Urban School Failure and Disproportionality in a Post-Brown Era: Benign Neglect of the Constitutional Rights of Students of Color,” Remedial and Special Education 26, no. 2 (March–April 2005): 70–81.
23. See, for example, W.E.B. Du Bois, The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study (1898; Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). See also Charles S. Johnson, The Negro in Chicago: A Study of Race Relations and a Race Riot (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1922).
24. Patricia Hill-Collins, Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender, and the New Racism (New York: Routledge, 2004), 193.
25. Monique W. Morris, Race, Gender, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline: Expanding Our Discussion to Include Black Girls (New York: African American Policy Forum, 2012).
26. Kimberlé Crenshaw, Priscilla Ocen, and Jyoti Nanda, Black Girls Matter: Pushed-Out, Over-Policed and Under-Protected (New York: African American Policy Forum, 2015).
27. Daniel Losen and Jonathan Gillespie, Opportunities Suspended: The Disparate Impact of Disciplinary Exclusion from School (Los Angeles: Center for Civil Rights Remedies at the University of California, Los Angeles Civil Rights Project, 2012). See also John Wallace, Sarah Goodkind, Cynthia Wallace, and Jerald Bachman, “Racial, Ethnic, and Gender Differences in School Discipline Among U.S. High School Students: 1991–2005,” Negro Educational Review 59, nos. 1–2 (2008): 47–62.
28. Nikki Jones, Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner-City Violence (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009).
29. Jamilia Blake, Betty Ray Butler, Chance Lewis, and Alicia Darensbourg, “Unmasking the Inequitable Discipline Experiences of Urban Black Girls: Implications for Urban Educational Stakeholders,” Urban Review 43, no. 1 (2011): 90–106. See also Kristi Holsinger and Alexander Holsinger, “Different Pathways to Violence and Self-Injurious Behavior: African American and White Girls in the Juvenile Justice System,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 42, no. 2 (2005): 211–42.
30. Blake et al., “Unmasking the Inequitable Discipline Experiences of Urban Black Girls.”
31. Edward W. Morris, “‘Ladies’ or ‘Loudies’? Perceptions and Experiences of Black Girls in Classrooms,” Youth and Society 38, no. 4 (2007): 490–515.
32. Kathleen Nolan, Police in the Hallways: Discipline in an Urban High School (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).
33. American Bar Association and National Bar Association, Justice by Gender: The Lack of Appropriate Prevention, Diversion, and Treatment Alternatives for Girls in the Juvenile Justice System (Washington, DC: ABA, NBA, 2001). See also Monique W. Morris, Stephanie Bush-Baskette, and Kimberlé Crenshaw, Confined in California: Women and Girls of Color in Custody (New York: African American Policy Forum, 2012).
34. Cathy S. Widom and Michael G. Maxfield, “An Update on the ‘Cycle of Violence,’” Research in Brief, U
.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, February 2001, NCJ 184894.
35. Gretchen R. Cusick, Judy R. Havlicek, and Mark E. Courtney, “Risk of Arrest: The Role of Social Bonds in Protecting Foster Youth Making the Transition to Adulthood,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 82, no. 1 (2012): 19–31; Barbara Bloom, Barbara Owen, and Stephanie Covington, Gender-Responsive Strategies: Research, Practice, and Guiding Principles for Women Offenders (Washington, DC: National Institute of Corrections, 2002), 64.
36. Barbara Bloom and David Steinhart, Why Punish the Children?: A Reappraisal of the Children of Incarcerated Mothers in California (Oakland, CA: National Council on Crime and Delinquency, 1993.
37. Lerner, Black Women in White America, 574.
1. Struggling to Survive
1. Nikki Jones, Between Good and Ghetto: African American Girls and Inner City Violence (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2009), 158.
2. Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race and Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1981), 6.
3. Jones, Between Good and Ghetto.
4. Ibid., 48–49.
5. Gerda Lerner, ed., Black Women in White America: A Documentary History (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 165.
6. Katherine Gallager Robbins and Anne Morrison, National Snapshot: Poverty Among Women and Families (Washington, DC: National Women’s Law Center, 2014).
7. Bureau of Labor Statistics, The Employment Situation—December 2014 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, 2014). Unemployment rates are seasonally adjusted.
Pushout Page 26
