After seeing the viral video of the resource officer
flipping the student out of her desk, Monique Morris, (scholar, author and
activist) was concerned about what else happened… when the cameras weren’t
rolling. The article points to recent research that black girls are punished at
school at rates that are even more disproportionate than those experienced by
black boys. For example, they are suspended 6 times more often than white
girls. Morris calls this "a story untold," and she sets out to tell
it in her new book, Pushout: The Criminalization of Black Girls in
Schools.
Morris states, "Most teachers do engage in their work
with love. [But] we're all impacted by implicit biases. ... If we're not
actively monitoring and holding ourselves and institutions accountable, we're
missing the mark completely and leaving girls much more vulnerable." I
totally agree with her. I feel as social workers we must be aware of personal
bias and also the systemic bias within the institutions in which we work. Not
only must we have awareness, but we must hold others accountable and advocate
for the students who are being treated unfairly.
I wouldn't say that I see this so much in terms of suspension and things of that nature, but definitely in interactions between students and teachers and I don't believe it's intentional at all. I feel like part of it is because the teachers don't understand what these students are going through and they become so fed up, especially with the girls. So I think it's important for social worker to continue to advocate for those students.
ReplyDeletethis was interesting to read, I can not say that I have seen much of black girls being punished so reading this information shocked me. I really didn't think that it would happen at a higher rate than boys.I feel this issue need to be brought more into the light so that others like myself will become aware of the problem.
ReplyDeleteI saw this a lot when I was at a high school. The girls got in trouble for just "being loud" which is normal for their culture or "shutting down" which occurs usually when they won't to talk but don't have someone to talk to. They need support in schools because they go through a lot and it is harder when you are going through purberty and don't have the understanding of what to do when certain things happen.
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