Black Female Adolescents and Racism in Schools: Experiences in a Colorblind Society

Abstract

This article takes up the questions: (a) How do Black female adolescents define racism?, (b) What kind of experiences with racism to they report having in schools?, and (c) How can these perspectives and experiences inform educational reform efforts? The in-depth analysis of 18 student surveys and interviews revealed that most of the definitions of racism centered on prejudice, discrimination, and differential treatment; and most of the experiences the girls described regarding racism in school illustrated issues of prejudice, discrimination, and differential treatment as well as stereotypes, labels and low teacher expectations. Critical Race Theory, Critical Race Feminism, and Black Feminist Thought were used as interpretive theoretical frameworks. Implications for teacher education, secondary education and broad reform efforts are discussed. Keywords: Black girls, racism, high school, ideology ********** In June, 2016, the United States Department of Education Office of Civil Rights released an initial analysis of the 2013-14 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC). The dataset includes data from 99.2% of all school districts in the U.S., 99.5% of all public schools, and over 50 million students. Initial analyses indicate that Black pre-school students are 3.6 times more likely than their White peers to be given one or more out-of-school suspensions. In K-12 the trend continues with 18% of Black boys receiving suspensions and 10% of Black girls while only 6% of all K-12 students receive one or more out-of-school suspensions. Further, Black students are 1.9 times as likely to be expelled from school and are 2.3 times more likely to be disciplined through law enforcement than their White peers (U.S. DOE OCR, 2016). The extensive analysis of U.S. Civil Rights Data provides substantial evidence that there are issues of racial injustice in U.S. public schools. However, current policies and practices are overwhelmingly engaging in approaches that do not take a serious stance on issues of race, racism, or racial injustice. For instance, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) passed in December 2015 continues the approach from the previous federal law, No Child Left Behind (NCLB), of requiring disaggregated data based on race. Further, it requires actions be taken to limit school suspensions and curtail negative discipline policies (Brownstein, 2015) as well as to disaggregate data collected regarding school discipline policies by race (as well as by other sub-groups identified in the law). Although, those policies appear to be positive, The Civil Rights data above suggest that the groups most deeply impacted by these policies are Black students (boys and girls), yet the law takes no proactive stance regarding racial justice issues in its approach to changing discipline practices. By treating school discipline issues as colorblind (Bonilla-Silva, 2006), like ESSA does, current policies and approaches are not capable of overcoming serious issues of racial injustice in school and society. In fact, approaches serve to hide, minimalize and overlook serious issues of inequity based on race in school and society (Jackson, Sweeney, & Welcher, 2014; Lopez, 2007; Urrieta, 2006). Black adolescent girls are an important group that is often overlooked in schools due to approaches and the complexities of multiple intersectional identities, based on race and gender. For Black girls, being overlooked can include issues of disempowerment whereby they are faced with hegemonic representations of beauty and femininity (Annamma, Anyon, Joseph, Farrar, Greer, Downing, & Simmons, 2016; Muhammad, 2012), and are more likely than any other group of girls to be suspended and expelled from school (Annamma et al., 2016; Morris, 2012). Gender and racial stereotypes, in part, significantly contribute to the creation of such climates. Therefore, educational leaders and policy makers should pay close attention and engage in important work to improve the educational opportunities and outcomes for Black girls. …