Zero Tolerance 2.0: Antiblack Aggressions as Policy in the Schooling Experiences of Black Girls

• In Event: All We Have, All We Need: Black Girls as Educational Stakeholders Disrupting Hyper-Punishment in Schools

Abstract

Overview. Black girls are criminalized in educational settings and overrepresented in exclusionary discipline—all instances that increase their proximity to the carceral state (Annamma, 2018). While research continues to explore the far-reaching effects of these experiences, Black girls remain on the margins of policy research specifically. To help mediate this gap, we investigate the implications and influence of zero tolerance policies (ZTPs) and mandatory expulsion policies (MEs) (Curran, 2019) on the schooling experiences of Black girls through an anti-Black aggressions lens (Author, 2018). We explore how school personnel evoke and ascribe their own meaning to “zero tolerance” when such policies are ambiguous in their language or altogether absent as formally adopted school policies. We pose three research questions:

(1) What does current policy research on zero-tolerance and mandatory exclusion say specifically about the schooling experiences of Black girls?
(2) How do Black girls describe the discipline disparities they experience?
(3) How do anti-Black aggressions manifest into unwritten policies that govern the everyday schooling experiences of Black girls?

Theoretical Framework. We employ a Critical Race Feminist framework (Evans-Winters, 2019; Evans-Winters & Esposito, 2010; Wing, 2003) to ground our analysis, counter majoritarian narratives, and recognize that Black girls are the authority on their lived experiences. By incorporating the anti-Black aggressions model (Author, 2018), we analyze disciplinary-related policies as examples of “conscious and subconscious forms of anti-Blackness and anti-Black racism that are expressed through verbal, non-verbal, interpersonal, and environmental violence” (Author, 2018, p. 66).

Methods. This paper reflects a subset of findings from a larger multi-site, phenomenological study examining the disciplinary disparities Black girls face in high schools. Across one school year, we conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups at two Midwestern high schools near Topeka, Kansas. Using snowball and purposeful sampling (Merriam, 2009), the principal investigator recruited 15 self-identified Black girls, who had experienced at least one out-of-school suspension, to participate.

Preliminary Findings. Analyzing first-hand narratives, district policies and data, and legal statutes, our findings reveal: 1) ZTPs and MEs as formal policies are inconsistently adopted across the school district and at the school-level. 2) In the absence of such formal policies, Black girls describe school personnel as defaulting to anti-Black aggressions to dictate their disciplinary actions. 3) In schools implementing positive behavior interventions and restorative justice measures, an undercurrent of anti-Black aggressions persisted as unspoken disciplinary policy.

Significance. While there is a substantial body of research dedicated to ZTP and ME policies (Skiba & Knesting, 2001; Skiba & Peterson, 1999), as well as an expansive body of scholarship centering the lived experiences of Black girls (Lindsay-Dennis, 2015; Patton, Crenshaw, Haynes, & Watson, 2016; Watson, 2016), there is a need to further investigate the wide-reaching influence of the former on the latter. This is necessary as we increasingly turn our attention to dismantling the school-prison nexus through policy reform. The material realities of school discipline and exclusion effect Black girls in unique and pervasive ways, and it is our intent to continue to amplify this discourse in the policy sphere.

Authors

• Jennifer M. Wilmot, The University of Kansas

• Dorothy E. Hines, University of Kansas