Mapping the Discipline Gap With Critical Race Theory: An Intersectional Analysis of Black Students’ Lives

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 11:25 am
  In Roundtable Session: Exclusionary Discipline Through Policy and Policy as Practice (Table 39)

Abstract

Since the mass desegregation of public school districts, researchers have documented persistent racial inequities in disciplinary decisions that educators enact against Black students. In the call to action by President Tyrone Howard for “Dismantling Racial Injustice and Constructing Educational Possibilities,” the current paper, using Critical Race Theory (CRT), maps Black (African Americans, Black immigrants) students’ identities and experiences regarding school disciplinary action in the nation’s K-12 public schools. In our synthesis of extant conceptual and empirical scholarship, we employ Critical Race Theory to explain racialized gaps, along with forms of intersectionality as documented by gender, social locality, and colorism. Based on thematic findings from available literature, we identify future directions for theorizing and applying CRT within discipline gap research.

Authors

• Carla R. Monroe, North Carolina State University

• Jerome E. Morris, University of Missouri - St. Louis