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Reframing the School-to-Prison Pipeline Within the New Eugenics of the Carceral State

Mon, April 11, 4:30 to 6:00pm, Marriott Marquis, Floor: Level Four, Liberty Salon O

Abstract

Objectives
The School-to-Prison Pipeline is an alarming trend of funnelling children out of schools and into incarceration through exclusionary policies and practices (Meiners, 2007). Yet the focus on the Pipeline neglects the ways society is imbued with a commitment to criminalizing unwanted bodies. If we re-frame the Pipeline as a new strand of a eugenics discourse (Baker, 2002; Gould, 1996), then the carceral state better captures ways that the new eugenics is being used to quarantine the undesirable.

Theoretical Framework
Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) allows an intersectional framing and therefore a comprehensive analysis of the ways racism and ableism fuel the Pipeline within the new eugenics of the carceral state (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013; Crenshaw, Gotanda, Peller, & Thomas, 1995). Beginning with the understanding that racism and ableism are normal, not aberrant, DisCrit exposes how new eugenics utilizes genetic pathology, economic, and cultural models to identify and punish black and brown bodies (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001; Valencia, 1997). In these models, genetics, poverty, and culture pass on immorality and lack of intelligence and therefore justify attempts to exclude or exterminate those found outside the norms (Menchaca, 1997).

Methods/Modes of inquiry
Discussions focused singularly on the social dimensions of the School-to-Prison Pipeline often decontextualize how society is imbued with a commitment to criminalization. If we situate the Pipeline temporally, we see how it is an iteration of eugenics; historically it is another in a long line of attempts to classify some as less-than and remove them from the public (Baker, 2002). If we position the Pipeline spatially, we see that there are macro- (global), meso- (regional), and micro-geographical (local) scales. These scales are not discrete but ‘are interconnected and…socially produced’ (Soja, 2010: 213). The Pipeline is often imagined as an isolated issue instead of an interconnected, multiscalular phenomenon. Said differently, a sole focus on the Pipeline highlights the local institution of school instead of the entire mesogeographic carceral state. Using schools as an arm of the carceral state, the Pipeline implements “coercive technologies of behavior” such as exclusionary disciplining, disability labeling, and aggressive policing to remove children of color from schools (Foucault, 1977: 293).

Conclusions
The new eugenics, one of quality control, sorts children and removes those furthest from the ideal from public spaces (Baker, 2002). Situating the School-to-Prison Pipeline within the context of the new eugenics socially, temporally, and spatially allows for a broader understanding of how the Pipeline functions in the carceral state, removing particular bodies.

Scholarly Significance
Much of the literature suggests that the School-to-Prison Pipeline is an important phenomenon to study. What remains a theoretical question is: How can social, spatial, and temporal understandings of the new eugenics and the carceral state help to dismantle the Pipeline? Ultimately, this work aligns with AERA’s aims seeking to harness ‘hope and determination that research can strengthen public education’ (2016 Call for Submissions). This work seeks to do this by using expansive social, historical, and spatial views of the new eugenics in order to dismantle them.

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