Equating Black Girls With Bad Attitudes Is Not the Answer
By: Monique W. Morris
Tags: Culture, Race, Racial Justice, Equality, Education

To fall from favor is emotionally taxing and physically draining, but when someone believes herself to be “fit to wear a crown,” she embraces her full potential. One of the girls I spoke with at Ms. Patton’s school referred to being Black as being part of “royalty.” To her, racial pride was at the center of her belief in herself as a member of this learning community. She was worthy of investment, worthy of praise. While most children may not be of actual royal lineage, when they believe they’re “fit to wear a crown,” they’re likely to feel worthy of redemption. Even when they make a mistake, they understand that the response is not intended to derail their learning or their lives, but rather to reconnect them to their true purpose. The neglect — or erasure — of this identity can lead to girls internalizing harmful historical narratives about their inferiority, and could even leave them feeling as if no one cares about them at all.

For teachers and other educators, reinforcing the royal mindset requires a commitment not to equate accountability with discipline and punishment. We have conflated them for too long. Rejecting this false equation should be the norm, a baseline for all learning institutions. It isn’t something to consider, debate, or negotiate. As a premise, it is simply too faulty and dangerous.

Disciplinary action against Black girls included dress code violations, disruptive behavior, and cell phone use — discretionary judgments that are often made through a racialized and gendered lens.

Overall, students in U.S. schools are effective learners who do not exhibit behavior that warrants exclusionary discipline. However, racial disparities continue to plague those girls who do get into trouble in school. The research on Black girls and other girls of color in assessments of school discipline shows that the actions that lead to their suspension or expulsion do include fighting but are more often minor infractions whose punishment is not in fact about protecting the school from violence. Girls of color are more likely than others to be suspended for violations of school rules (for example, dress codes embedded in codes of conduct), for failure to comply with adult requests (for example, producing identification when requested), and for subjective, even arbitrary, infractions that leave ample room for personal biases to reign supreme, such as “willful defiance.”

In Kentucky, where researchers Edward Morris and Brea Perry examined the specific infractions leading to the use of exclusionary discipline statewide, they found that African American girls were more likely than white girls to be suspended for subjectively determined “violations” of school order, and that the racial disparities were more prevalent among girls than boys. The study acknowledges that “black girls are much more likely than other girls to be cited for infractions such as dress code violations, disobedience, disruptive behavior, and aggressive behavior — and these gaps are far wider than the gaps between black boys and boys of other races for these offenses.” The Kentucky study found that the specific infractions leading to the disproportionate use of disciplinary action against Black girls included dress code violations, disruptive behavior, and cell phone use — discretionary judgments that are often made through a racialized and gendered lens. Morris and Perry found that Black boys were twice as likely as boys of European descent to receive a disciplinary referral; however, Black girls were three times as likely as girls of European descent to receive a referral, based largely on the school administrators’ interpretation of behavior as disruptive or disobedient.