In March 2020, Florida lawmakers passed the “Kaia Rolle” law. The law requires authorities to put strict procedures in place before arresting a child under 10 years of age. Kaia Rolle, a Black student with disabilities, had had a tantrum and, in the process, struck some social workers. School officials called the police. Released bodycam footage showed Kaia sobbing, asking officers to help her instead of arresting her. She was not only arrested but charged with a misdemeanor, labeling her a criminal at only 6 years old. This new law came into play only after the national outrage sparked by the released footage.
Kaia Rolle’s is one of countless stories. Black girls make up 15 percent of the female student population in the United States but account for 37 percent of girls arrested and 42 percent of girls referred to law enforcement. In fact, Black girls are four times more likely to be arrested on school grounds than their white counterparts. In states where it is permitted, they are also three times more likely to receive corporal punishment than white girls and two times more likely to be suspended.
Black girls do not misbehave more than other girls or commit more grave infractions. Yet their punishment is more severe. Their hairstyles, clothing choices and emotional expressions are heavily policed and criminalized in schools. There are multiple stories of Black girls being suspended, or given excessive amounts of detentions for wearing their hair in hairstyles associated with Black women such as braids, locs and Afros.
Black girls are being funneled into the judicial system by schools and “zerotolerance” policies that push them out of school. There is a clear correlation between the alarming rate at which Black girls are entering the criminal justice system and their rate of suspension and expulsion from schools.
Understanding the root cause
To understand how it is possible for Black girls to be more heavily policed and punished in schools, we need to understand that the education system replicates capitalist ideologies and structures. Capitalism utilizes racism to continue subjugating and exploiting people. Racism keeps people divided and entrenched in the idea that their problems are caused by each other and not capitalism. Thus, as institutions of social learning, schools are designed to indoctrinate and replicate capitalist ideologies, which means that racism is deeply embedded within them. Like all U.S. institutions, schools have not been spared from the legacy of slavery.
During slavery, Black women and girls were expected to work the fields and birth future generations of slave workers. Every inch of their body was scrutinized and attached to an aspect of labor whether manual or reproductive.
Dr. Carolyn West at the University of Washington writes about stereotypes of Black femininity such as the hypersexualized “Jezebel;” loud and combative “Sapphire” and the asexual and caring “Mammy” cause Black women to be viewed as being outside the “normal” standards of femininity: quiet, fragile
and obedient. She explains how these images “were derived from historically constructed conditions; were shaped by structural inequalities, such as racism and sexism; and continue to exist today.”
The legacy of slavery erases Black girls as children; they must carry the strength and ready-to-work attitude that slaves had, and are viewed through the lens of these stereotypes of adult women. There is a pervasive idea that there is something wrong with Black girls and they need to be fixed. Child-like behavior is frowned upon because “they should know better,” and any behavior that does not fit the idea of women as fragile, weak and obedient needs to be corrected.
When Black girls are not seen as children, their actions are perceived as being deliberate, and they are more likely to suffer harsher punishments. The empathy and compassion that would be extended to a child who makes a mistake is removed via the zero-tolerance policies of schools and the increase in police presence.
Systemic nature of the push-out of Black girls
The push-out of Black girls is not only a result of racist and sexist educators or administrators, but is a systemic issue. Scholars such as Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis have written about the idea that schools are structured in a way to replicate capitalist ideas and ensure there is a working class to be exploited. The constant underfunding of public education and the decades of attacks on the institution have also eradicated what gains were made by the struggle of oppressed people to access education and to demand that curriculums reflect the realities of their struggles against oppression.
The Obama administration’s guidance on school discipline called for a move toward restorative justice and eliminating discriminatory discipline practices. However, these guidelines failed because they are a band-aid solution proposed amongst a host of reforms that continued the underfunding of education and the attacks on teachers’ unions. These guidelines tell schools what they should do but do not change the material reality that creates the problems that schools face such as poverty, homelessness, and hunger. The Trump administration recently rescinded these guidelines and returned to zero-tolerance policies.
Research shows that the majority of Black girls who are pushed out from schools and end up entering the criminal justice system have histories of sexual and physical abuse as well as homelessness. Capitalist schools are not designed to support students facing trauma or whose needs are not being met. Schools should not be tasked with being the sole provider of meals for students nor should they be the only way students access mental health support. Teachers as a workforce have taken on the tasks of advocating for services and fighting for funding in the classroom and in the communities they live in, but it should not be left up to hard-working individuals to fight for resources and against the criminalization of Black girls.
A socialist program addresses these issues with fully funded schools, mental health services, and a continued public education campaign promoting multinational unity and advancing women’s rights. An entirely new system, with a socialist government at the forefront giving political and economic power to workers, will provide a free, quality education to every person from early childhood through post-secondary and higher education. The inequalities and disparities in educational quality and opportunities that disproportionately affect Black girls will be immediately addressed. Black girls deserve a socialist school system that eliminates racist and sexist policies and promotes their educational interests and freedoms.
