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| WLP Conference |
“Let them haul the little monster
out of school and into jail”. These were
the words of a commenter on CNN.com’s site responding to an article on the
handcuffing of a six year-old black girl named Salecia
Johnson at a Georgia elementary school in 2012. Disproportionately targeted by zero tolerance
discipline policies, black preschool and elementary school children have the highest
rates of suspension and expulsion in the U.S. While demonizing black children has always
been a treasured American tradition, little black girls have never been
included in white heterosexual gender norms of sugar and spice and everything
nice. From Topsy to Sambo to Buckwheat,
the specter of the wild borderline criminal black pickaninny, destined
to come to a violent end, helped frame narratives of white childhood innocence
and American national identity from the 19th century to the present. The hapless motherless Topsy, a black girl
caricature featured in the novel Uncle
Tom’s Cabin, was one of the first and most enduring minstrel images of
black children under slavery. In the
book, Topsy is contrasted with the virginal angelic character of Little Eva, the
white daughter of a “benevolent” slaveowner.
The fount of moral goodness, Eva forgives Topsy her thievery and “heathen”
ways, making her promise that she will become a good Christian.
Images of chaotic uncontrollable
black femininity continue to influence the policing of black girls in public
space. The unique academic, social and emotional
toll that criminalization takes on black girls is the subject of the African
American Policy Forum’s (AAPF) new
report “Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and
Underprotected”. Under the direction of
legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw, the AAPF has been at the forefront of challenging President
Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper initiative to include girls of color. Nationwide, black girls are suspended six
times more than white girls. In big city
school districts like New York and Boston, black girls are a whopping 90% and
63% of girls who are suspended. “Rates of expulsion were even more strikingly
disproportionate between black and white students, especially among girls.” By contrast, black boys are suspended three
times more than white boys. Yet, much of
the national discourse around school-to-prison pipelining either focuses
exclusively on boys of color or shoehorns girls in as an afterthought. The traditional racist/sexist marginalization
of black girls’ lived experiences means they often fall through the cracks of culturally
responsive intervention and prevention strategies that address state
violence. According to the report,
“Black girls sometimes get less attention than their male counterparts early in
their school careers (because they) are perceived to be more socially mature
and self-reliant.” As Crenshaw notes,
the myth of black girls’ resiliency often precludes focus on the gendered and
culturally specific ways black girls are targeted by disproportionate
discipline policies. Hence, “It’s
important that (black girls’) resiliency not be used to cover real life burdens
and obstacles.”
The myth of the strong,
self-sufficient “everyone’s rock” black woman is legion within mainstream
American culture, helping popularize and sustain a thousand neo-mammy images. From a very young age black girls are taught
to be mega-caregivers; self-sacrificing and devout, placing everyone else ahead
of themselves, branded as unwomanly if they don’t toe the line of respectability
politics. When she was in her senior
year “Victoria”—a former foster care youth and first generation college
student—would routinely come to school three or four days a week. Entrusted with taking care of her younger
siblings, Victoria often fell behind on her schoolwork. She was also a sexual abuse survivor living
in a building where a female resident had been raped in the garage. Now in her second year of college, Victoria’s
experiences were common among the girls that I’ve worked with in my Women’s
Leadership Project (WLP)
gender justice program.
While male students are generally
not expected to shoulder the burdens of childcare and caregiving, these are
routine expectations for girls of color.
In her 2002 teen girls’ of color anthology My
Sister’s Voices, Iris Jacob (who was eighteen at the time) writes
poignantly about the toll the unequal burden of caregiving takes on girls of
color:
Girls
of color have forever been caretakers.
That is what we are taught, from babysitting our siblings to cooking for
our families. Part of being a caretaker
means defending men of color—our fathers, uncles, brothers…We have been trained
to stand by them…We as females of color
have been told that sexism does not exist for us or is not important.
WLP students report that
caregiving, domestic responsibilities and supporting younger siblings are a
tremendous source of stress, reducing time for self-care, schoolwork and
college preparation. Adding to this
dynamic, black girls disproportionately experience sexual violence, intimate
partner violence and trauma. Many of the
young women in WLP are abuse survivors. As
the report notes, because they live in an environment that normalizes
anti-black anti-female violence girls may “act out” due to “untreated trauma”.
Yet, even as they grapple with
trauma and victimization, black girls across academic lines are saddled with
the stereotype of being loud, unruly, “ghetto” and too outspoken. While being inquisitive and assertive in the
classroom is often encouraged in and expected of boys, these same qualities are
tacitly discouraged and viewed as disruptive when exhibited by black girls. As AAPF researcher Monique Morris notes: “There
is an important point of departure between the conditions affecting Black
females and males with respect to the role of discipline and educational
attainment in the ‘pipeline’ between schools and carceral institutions…the
behaviors for which Black females routinely experience disciplinary response
are related to their nonconformity with notions of white middle class
femininity, for example, by their dress, their profanity, or having tantrums in
the classroom.” Bucking white
hetero-norms, black girls are often targeted and penalized for not being
sufficiently “ladylike” or deferential to authority, a dynamic that is
especially insidious when they’re hypersexualized by male peers. The report notes that black girls are
particularly vulnerable to being disciplined for defending themselves against
sexual harassment, physical abuse or bullying on school campuses. My former student “Victoria”, who is
straight, was suspended for one day after she attempted to defend herself
against a boy who hit her and called her a bitch. “Jada” and “Megan”, 10th and 11th
grade WLP students, were pushed by their school principal after getting into an
argument with him about going to class. Getting suspended for fighting back
against sexual harassment, physical abuse or bullying is also common for queer
and trans girls of color who are may be viewed by school administrators as having
provoked attacks by straight or cis students.
In 2002 Washington Prep High School in South Los Angeles (a former WLP
site) was the subject of a lawsuit partly as a result of over-disciplining
LGBTQ students.
Damned if they do and damned if
they don’t, black girls who are pushed out of school are more likely to become
incarcerated and pregnant at an early age.
Yet, there is no mainstream fascination with, nor celebration of, the
untapped brilliance/dynamism of incarcerated “outlaw” black girls. Ever infatuated with the “primitive” hyper-masculine
ingenuity of black “thug” life and gangsta culture, mainstream America has no
cultural space for black girls who’ve been incarcerated. Indeed, the tabloid fetishization of young white
female convicts—from Amy Fisher to Susan Smith to Jody Arias to Amanda Knox and
Casey Anthony—humanizes them as privileged objects of sympathy, pity and cultural
identification (while demonizing or marginalizing women like Marissa Alexander).
At opposite ends of the state violence spectrum,
criminal white girls get framed as victims while slain black men get framed as
either public enemies or martyred icons.
Thus, when feminists of color
argue that the criminalization of black girls demands a national policy focus
we’re still confronted with the “all of the women are white and all of the
blacks are men” regime. As a publisher who recently rejected a book
chapter I wrote on the policing of black girls in K-12 schools indicated, black
boys “crises” should be our primary focus.
Pushing back against this rhetoric, the AAPF report emphasizes the need
for disaggregated educational data that reflects race/gender disparities (for
example, the U.S. Department of Education and most school districts do not
provide discipline data that has been disaggregated by both race and
gender). It also stresses the importance
of youth programming and curricula that address pushout intersectionally,
taking into account the impact sexual violence, trauma, caregiving/parenting responsibilities,
pregnancy and the educational opportunity gap have on black girls’ lives. These are radical notions in a nation that
preaches exceptionalism and profits from the violent policing of six year-old
black girls.
