Official Protest Thread...
- Thread starter Camille
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Rep. Ayanna Pressley of the Massachusetts 7th Congressional District, and Monique W. Morris, the creator of the documentary “PUSHOUT: The Criminalization of Black Girls in Schools” and the founder and president of the National Black Women’s Justice Institute, write at the Boston Globe: A Just Society Doesn’t Criminalize Girls. The policies and unfair practices that disproportionately push girls of color from institutions of learning stem from deeply entrenched biases that require bold, community-based solutions to correct:
Excerpt:
Too frequently, educational justice is denied for girls – especially for girls of color. Schools should be the safest place for our children and yet, for many girls of color, the school environment adds painful weight to their already heavy emotional backpacks.
Across our country, black and brown girls are pushed out of school not because they pose any sort of threat, but for simply being who they are. Society too often deems our hair too distracting and our bodies too provocative, our voices too loud, and our attitudes too mean — demeaning our very existence before we even reach adulthood. According to the National Women’s Law Center, black girls in preschool are 54 percent of the girls receiving out-of-school suspensions despite making up only 20 percent of girls enrolled in preschool. Preschool.
We are internalizing oppression before we’ve learned to read or write.
From kindergarten to 12th grade, black girls are seven times more likely than white girls to be suspended from school, and four times more likely to be arrested at school. Latinx girls are more than 1.5 times as likely as white girls to receive an out of school suspension, and Native American girls are suspended at three times the rate of white girls. When we unfairly discipline our girls, we rob them of their childhood by treating them as if they need less protection, nurturing, and comfort than other children. We fail to see their humanity and we fail to respond to the adverse childhood experiences that so many of us experience in our youth. [...]
The policies and unfair practices that disproportionately push girls of color from institutions of learning stem from deeply entrenched biases that require bold, community-based solutions to correct. Now is the time to support relationship-building, mental health support, and restorative interventions, as opposed to unfair and exclusionary discipline.
This alarming crisis is what led to the development of the Ending Punitive, Unfair, School-based Harm that is Overt and Unresponsive to Trauma Act. The Ending PUSHOUT Act aims to dismantle school-to-confinement pathways by creating an ecosystem within our schools where all children, especially children of color, can heal and thrive. [...]